Whatever you do, do NOT tell Sean Payton \u2018just to run it back.\u2019<\/p>\n
Whatever success a team has had in the past is mostly irrelevant in his mind to the coming season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not, \u2018Let\u2019s run it back.\u2019 I hate that term. It\u2019s not, \u2018Let\u2019s run it back.\u2019 Let\u2019s understand one thing \u2014 it is anything but that,\u201d the head coach scolded in his annual meeting presser, hinting at the difficulty the Chiefs had this season repeating their luck at winning one-score games. \u201cWhen you win 11 of 13 one-score games, like you saw the flip in just one season with Kansas City, it\u2019s how do you improve your team? The better you get, the harder it is to improve your team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Payton is more aware than anyone how fortunate many of the Broncos\u2019 wins were last season.<\/p>\n
But that doesn\u2019t mean he\u2019s not building on it either. He believes the byproduct of winning those kinds of games is building confidence within your players. And that definitely is a way to improve your team.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was great to see us, compared to the year before, play very well in those one-score games. That\u2019s a by-product of a little confidence, and it started, I think, in Philadelphia. If you pin-pointed a couple of key games, every one of you guys would say, \u2018Yes, that was an important moment.\u2019 Not just for Bo, but for a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n
And then when Bo Nix and the Broncos were in that situation again \u2014 the Giants, the Texans, the Chiefs, the Commanders \u2014 the mountain to climb back into the game was less surmountable.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou feel like you can do it,\u201d Payton added.<\/p>\n
But Payton is an analytics guy, and nothing in the stats says winning 11 of 13 one year means you\u2019ll keep that same ratio of wins the next just because of experience and confidence.<\/p>\n
In fact, Payton mostly fears the opposite.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is why I said to you that I never feel good. You are always understanding the next challenge,\u201d Payton noted. \u201cWe have a tough schedule. We don\u2019t know when we are playing these teams, but we are playing a real good schedule of teams that have been in the postseason. I do think that patience is important.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that is why Payton is also the long-game guy. He has \u2014 and has had ever since he came to Denver \u2014 a long-term plan for getting this team into contention. Year two may have been a little more successful than many thought (maybe even the head coach despite his Super Bowl comment in training camp), but the goal is always the next hurdle, not the last race.<\/p>\n
Asked whether Bo Nix and Caleb Williams \u2014 both about to be third-year QBs who won a lot of one-score games and had many fourth-quarter comebacks in 2025 \u2014 were likely to do that again, Payton reiterated his point like he was teaching a freshman philosophy class.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I would ask everyone here, if I said to you, \u2018Caleb and Bo, are they more confident this year?\u2019 Absolutely,\u201d he said. \u201cNow there\u2019s nothing that says that\u2019s promised the next year, and [Bears Head Coach] Ben [Johnson] knows this. You turn the board upside down. You place it and you collect your pieces, whatever the game is. You have to start back at zero. But when you start back there, you have a little bit of a bank vault that is filed with these positive experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you believe it can happen once, then you are a different player at the start of the next season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt provides you with [knowing], \u2018This is more the norm.\u2019 We might be down six, up six, up three, tied at half. You get used to living in that world,\u201d Payton added. \u201cI think that\u2019s a big thing, especially for the quarterback.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Whatever you do, do NOT tell Sean Payton \u2018just to run it back.\u2019 Whatever success a team has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":856729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2062],"tags":[232,231,258,1151,2426,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-856728","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-denver-broncos","8":"tag-broncos","9":"tag-denver","10":"tag-denver-broncos","11":"tag-denver-broncos-news","12":"tag-denverbroncos","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116357440856426547","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}