Did Sean Payton officially set the bar for the Denver Broncos? | The Rundown
[Music] Did Shawn Peyton officially set the bar for the Denver Broncos in 2025? How much pressure is on Shawn Peyton and his quarterback Bo Nicks to win this season? And how close can Bo Knicks continue to creep up toward the elite tier of quarterbacks in the NFL? All things to come on today’s rundown where we are live here once again at Broncos Park powered by common spirit. Another beautiful hot day here for practice. Broncos back in full pads today. Vet days for a couple of familiar faces. JK Dobbins, Malcolm Roach, and others getting a little bit of time off before the team prepares to head to Santa Clara for joint practices with the 49ers. While there was plenty of stuff to get into today, it was yesterday’s headlines that caught the attention of the local and national media coming from Shawn Payeyton, who had an an interview with Charles Robinson of Yahoo Sports. And thankfully for all of us, we got another one of what we call double latte days from Shawn Peyton. That obviously a reference to his first season here in Denver where he had a interview with Jared Bell, very respected NFL columnist and someone who Shawn Peyton considers a friend. And during that conversation and pseudo interview, Shawn Peyton went on to say that he would be pissed if the Broncos were a playoff team in his first season and that Nathaniel Hackett may go down as the worst head coach in the history of the National Football League. And that was how he started the Shawn Payeyton experience here in Denver from an official capacity. And so he went on to apologize, send some of those comments and basically chocked it up to the fact that he was chopping it up with a friend and had a couple of lattes. He had a couple latte moment from Shawn Peyton yesterday, specifically when he was talking about the future trajectory of his team and where he sees them going starting with this upcoming season in 2025. As a part of that conversation with Charles Robinson, Shawn Payeyton said that The short-term goal is winning the division, but this is a team capable of winning the Super Bowl. I’ve coached six teams that I thought could win the Super Bowl. Some went to the championship games, some went to the playoffs. This is my seventh team that I think has that. And by that he is meaning legitimate championship aspirations, Super Bowl visions, and the talent from top to bottom on a roster to compete with the best teams in the NFL. Obviously, this is coming off the heels of a 10 and seven season and a wildcard birth that ended some pretty significant painful streaks for the Denver Broncos, who hadn’t had a winning season since 2016 and a playoff appearance since 2015 when they went on to win the Super Bowl at Kate Manning Road in the sunset. And that season fueled by a surprisingly effective and efficient season from Bo Knicks who became Shawn Peyton’s kind of muse. His latest Drew Brees, someone that he saw parallels to and drew parallels to throughout the draft process. Someone who has worked with Bo Knicks and had Bo Knicks go visit Drew Brees and and learn about some of the intricacies and the nuances of Shawn Peyton’s offense. and somebody who already after one season in the NFL is voted not just a top 100 player by his peers in the NFL, but a top 65 player coming in at 64th overall. And that has completely changed the trajectory of this franchise and skyrocketed the expectations for a fan base that grew used to for decades of winning tradition and culture and a and a a championed attitude of success that was nurtured and fostered by Pat Bolan uh and carried on by the likes of John Elway and furthered by Pton Manning etc. But a lot of that had eroded in the last eight seasons or so since Pton Manning walked out those doors. And Bo Knicks is the first quarterback to truly bring that juice back in a way that is meaningful and tangible. And so for Bo Nicks going forward, the question is how much further can he go? If this is his floor, what is his ceiling? Shawn Pate is telling you that the ceiling as a team is a Super Bowl and he’s only experienced that a handful of times in his lengthy coaching career and he feels that with his 2025 Denver Broncos. And some people didn’t like those comments. Some people thought, hey, I don’t know if it’s, you know, maybe you should do that uh in privately. you don’t have to put it out there to the media and and I want my head coach to just, you know, get up there and say the the right things and be politically correct and neutral and this and that. I disagree with that, man. I think that Shawn Payeyton has earned the right to speak this way about his team because prior to his arrival, this team wasn’t worthy of speaking in any capacity like that at all. He comes into town. He assesses the situation in year one with Russ, bets on himself to the degree that he’s going to take on the largest dead cap hit in NFL history to move on from a Super Bowl winning quarterback at Russell Wilson and then calls his shot by taking the sixth quarterback off the board to be able to build a new franchise cornerstone around Bo Nicks. and the returns in the first season look like they did in 2024 with a 10-7 season after a rough start in the first three to four weeks. He’s one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL on the back half of the season. somebody who was contending for the rookie of the year and then that accelerates the rebuild into a retool and the Broncos are all of a sudden one of the more active teams in free agency bringing in the likes of Dre Greenland Taloa and Aba Ingram and JK Dobbins drafting high caliber high character high IQ players like Jade Baron and then RJ Harvey who in tandem with Dobbins is going to reinvigorate a run game that has been dormant for a significant length of time and was an absolute hindrance to this offense’s potential in 2024. All of these things heading into a sweeping change in 2025. That to me gives Shawn Peyton a little bit of license to be able to talk like that. But the important thing and why Shawn Payeyton maybe gets a little bit more leeway in my book to be able to do that is because while Shawn Payeyton’s never afraid to talk the talk, more often than not, he’s backed it up with the wall. I think we’ve already seen the culture change and the foundational elements that this team was missing that they now have under Shawn Peyton. We talked earlier this week about Zack Allen’s comments and how he views Denver as his happy place and and and he’s so thrilled and excited about what they’re building here and why you didn’t hear drama from Portland Sutton and Allen or Bonito and all of these guys because there is renewed optimism, faith, trust, and belief in this Broncos organization that was missing. And while a lot of that is is due in part to Greg Penner and the Will Penner ownership group and George Payeyton with the work that he’s been able to do in free agency and the draft and scouting in the offseason to help build this roster back up. Sean Payton’s role in reestablishing that culture and making this a a place where players want to come play is a huge factor in that because I promise you there weren’t a lot of people who were calling Denver and the Denver Broncos their happy place while they were playing here regardless of how much money they will make. So, some people may take umbrage with it. I don’t because I think Shawn Peyton has earned the right to have some double latte moments from now on. But if he’s going to be able to walk that walk, it’s going to rely a lot and lean heavily on the shoulders of his quarterback in Bo Nicks. And while that Shawn Peyton has a hand ultimately in the development, the coaching and the installation processes with Bo, ultimately he can’t be out there slinging the rock to be able to have the fullest hand in deciding his future and controlling his destiny. That is going to rely on Bo Nicks. Well, how much faith and confidence does Shawn Peyton have in Boon Knicks to be able to reach those heights given the other half of double latte interview with Charles Robinson of Yahoo Sports from over the weekend? I’d say that confidence is pretty high because when asked about Bo Knicks’s ceiling and his projection ahead of the 2025 season, Shawn Peyton said he’s going to be one of the top four or five quarterbacks in the league in the next two years. That’s what we’re seeing right now. He doesn’t take sacks. He’s got exceptional arm strength. He threw the longest ball at 67 airs against Cincinnati. He can run. He can throw in funny body angles. Essentially saying Bicks can do it all. And again, with just one season of tape to go off of, there’s more evidence that proves Shawn Peyton right with that statement than wrong. He’s an exceptional athlete. He’s proven to be pretty sharp from the neck up. His ability to kind of drink through that fire hose and absorb one of the more intricate and complex offensive schemes that involves so many different personnel groupings and formations and shifts from play to play, drive to drive, game to game, and season to season. for him to be able to absorb all of that and then in the span of the month in the first month of his season in 2024 be able to suddenly flip what was one of the uglier starts for a rookie quarterback in recent history to becoming a rookie of the year candidate and somebody who was lighting defenses on fire at times especially in shootout games like we saw against the Cleveland Browns where he showcased a litany of different skills. I think we all remember that deep ball on that Monday night game against Cleveland. How about the one against the Cincinnati Bengals that Shawn referenced there throwing at odd body angles coming across the sideline and whipping it to Marvin Mims in a shootout game there with Joe Burrow who is one of the top four or five quarterbacks that Shawn Pton was referencing there. So, let’s just take that sentence for what it is at a moment. Shawn Payton believes right that his secondyear quarterback in Bo Nicks in the next two seasons. So by the time his rookie contract expires, he’s ready to get paid and maybe reset the market as the highest paid quarterback in the NFL. Shawn Peyton believes that Bone Eggs is going to dethrone. If he’s going to make it into that top four, he’s going to have to dethrone one of Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, maybe the reigning Super Bowl champ in Jaylen Herz, the fellow division mate Justin Herbert. These are guys that get mentioned in the top five amongst NFL circles, whether it’s fan bases, media, etc. So Shawn Payeyton already says, “I’ve got one of those guys, and it’s just going to take place, and you’re going to see the full maturation of it in the next two seasons.” That is a lofty, lofty ball and and floor to set for a guy like Bo Knicks. But if there’s one thing Bon Knicks has shown he’s able to do in his very brief tenure in the NFL thus far, it’s that he has the shoulders with the width and the strength to be able to shoulder that burden. Like I mentioned yesterday, there was for a long time because of the likes of John Elway, Pton Manning, etc. a heavy burden that comes with the gravity and the magnitude of being the starting quarterback for a franchise like the Denver Broncos who if you were to take this most recent stretch of football out are one of the more premier organizations in the NFL under the bowl and tenure they had a bragging right that almost has to be scripted to believe it in that they had more Super Bowl appearances than losing seasons leading into the Super Bowl 50 year and then things deteriorated. uh quickly after that. But there’s a gravitas and a meaning and a weight that comes with that. And almost all uh in fact all of Bick’s predecessors between Pton Manning and the Bon Knicks era proved pretty dramatically and pretty quickly that they weren’t able to carry that yoke and bear that mantle. The Bon Knicks has. And so for Boon Knicks and Shawn Payeyton together, I think that they are proving to be a match made in heaven. And I think that we as fans and we here in the media have should have no issue and no uh hesitation about believing that the building blocks are going to continue to stack for these two and that the the connectivity and the synergy between Shawn Peyton and George Payton from head coach to front office is going to continue to work as well as it has with the players that George has been able to identify and bring in to supplement what Shawn Peyton says that he needs or currently doesn’t have. And then it trickles further upstream to the ownership group which has done nothing but prove that they are the most valuable asset in sports. They are the richest ownership group in professional sports and they have not been afraid in any capacity to break out that checkbook and bring in what needs to be done as evidenced by the fact that they’re building a multi multi-billion dollar new facility over here to my right and that they didn’t let that construction impede the tradition of fans here in Broncos country being able to watch practices and maneuvering and finding ways to keep that going. Yeah. So, I guess if I were to sum all that up into one kind of concise thought, one of the better poets of our generation goes by the name of Wayne Michael Carter Jr., professionally known as Lil Wayne. And he once said, “Real G’s move in silence like lasagna.” That’s not at all how Shawn Payeyton operates. In fact, Shawn Payeyton to me embodies a different wheezy lyric that says, “I do what I do and you do what you can do about it.” And I think that that attitude, that swagger, that bravado and that confidence, even if you want to say it borders on or steps over into the line of arrogance, I think is backed up by his first two seasons heading into year three in Denver. and something that overall is a healthy thing to see back in Broncos country given how long we’ve gone without any right or opportunity or excuse to be able to feel that way. And even with all of that factored in, I believe the double latte words that Shawn Payeyton is saying, I believe that Shawn Payeyton and Bo Nicks and Greg Penner together will hoist the Lombardi Trophy for the Broncos here in Denver. And I believe that the conversation of Bo Nicks being a top five quarterback in the NFL, voted on by the media, voted on by the fans, voted on by his peers, evaluated by whoever wants to set eyes on his game. I believe genuinely that that is in the cards for the young man who’s currently starting at quarterback to the Denver Broncos. And maybe it’s getting swept up in the hype train. Maybe it’s getting caught up in in the fact that we’ve had such bad football here in Denver for so many years in the last decade or so. And now we finally got a taste of the good life back and we’re just ready to dive in with both feet. But again, I’m embodying and embracing the the mentality, the mantra, and the attitude of the head coach and saying, you know what, that’s okay. There is so much to continue to keep track of here at Broncos Park powered by common spirit as the team prepares to head to Santa Clara on the back half this week for a couple of joint practices with the 49ers who thankfully have been very generous in negotiations and discussions with the Denver Broncos and allowing them to poach a starting right tackle in Mike McGllinchi, a starting inside linebacker in Drake and a starting safety in Talenoa Lufanga. Oh, and then guys like Jaquan McMillan who’ve been here for a handful of years and stuff as well. So, these two teams are very familiar with each other. Think that might actually lead to some fireworks in practices over the next 72 hours. One thing is for sure, we will be here to chronicle it all for you on denverports1043 fan at denverports.com and across all of our social media channels. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it. Tik Tok, all across the social media platforms. Wherever you desire to consume sports and entertainment content, we have it here for you at Denver Sports 104 with shows like the rundown, Denver Sports Daily, Orange and Blue Today, our own Andrew Mason of Orange and Blue Today. We’ll be live on location covering the Broncos preseason game coming up this weekend and be there for updates from everything practice related. So keep your eyes peeled and your ears open for that content. In the meantime, we will catch you tomorrow at noon. [Music] I love what I do.
Did Sean Payton officially set the bar for the Denver Broncos? How much pressure is there to win in 2025? Can Bo Nix rise to the level of the elite quarterbacks in the NFL? Join @RichieCarni live from Training Camp right now!
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