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Of the men making the 2023 PFT list of top 10 head coaches, only one didn’t coach at all in 2022. He nevertheless did enough during his years before 2022 to land at No. 6.
Sean Payton — offensive expert, Bill Parcells disciple, quarterback whisperer, and Super Bowl XLIV champion — will try to add another label to his football story: Russell Wilson fixer.
That’s the challenge for Payton in 2023, the thing that will cement his status or jeopardize it. Then again, if Wilson doesn’t improve this year, chances are Payton won’t be blamed. Chances are, if he doesn’t improve this year, Wilson will be gone for 2024, given the guarantee structure in his contract. And Payton will have a new quarterback.
Can Payton salvage Wilson? The coach’s history suggests that he can. That he’ll figure out how to play to Wilson’s strengths, how to do the things Wilson does well. How to avoid asking Wilson to do the things he doesn’t do well. How to put quality help around him, including an improved offensive line.
Payton needed a year off to reset in part because he spends as much if not more time than any other coach searching for anything and everything that can make a difference for each and every game, from an idea for a play that can deliver a touchdown to a nuance that extends a second-quarter drive in a mid-October game that has no apparent impact on the outcome of game but that means plenty. He searches and searches and searches. When he finds something, he incorporates it, expecting his players to adjust and to execute.
If they do, great. If not, Payton will find someone else to do it.
That brings us back to Wilson. Can he do the things Payton expects him to do? If so, the Broncos could make things interesting in a very competitive division and conference. If not, Payton likely will embark on the same kind of search that led him to Drew Brees back in 2006.