The Denver Post’s Luca Evans<\/a>. “He’s one of the greatest offensive minds in the history of the sport. Now, where I do like it? I do think their offense was\u2014for a Sean Payton offense\u2014rather basic this year. I mean, if you really looked at it. And we watched film of the Broncos, and then I said, ‘All right. Let’s go watch the Bears, or the 49ers, or McVay, or McDaniels, and go look at some of the things they’re doing. You’d go, Woah. They’re doing a lot of stuff here.'”\u00a0<\/p>\nTwo of those teams that Simms referenced have quarterbacks drafted in 2024, just like Nix. But the Chicago Bears, with Caleb Williams, and the New England Patriots, with Drake Maye, have run a much more creative and sophisticated offense compared to the Broncos and Nix. <\/p>\n
Keep in mind, though, it’s not as if the Broncos’ offense has been bad. They finished as a top-10 scoring offense in 2024 with Nix as a rookie, and top-10 in total yards this past season. <\/p>\n
My educated guess is that Payton has structured it this way for a reason, and that’s to protect Nix and put him in the best position to succeed early on in his young career. It could also be a personnel issue, although that one is harder for me to believe, simply because Payton has had three years to remake the offense in his image. <\/p>\n
The players Denver has are exactly the guys Payton has targeted and wanted, with the exception of pre-2023 incumbents like wide receiver Courtland Sutton, left tackle Garett Bolles, and right guard Quinn Meinerz, all of whom earned Pro Bowl honors this year and were retained for a reason. <\/p>\n
Could Webb Really be Better Than Payton Out of the Box?<\/p>\n
What nobody is asking is this: How could you expect Webb \u2014 an NFL coach of only three seasons without play-calling experience \u2014 to step in and suddenly be a better play-caller than Payton, who has not only been doing it for a long time, but at the very highest levels?<\/p>\n
That doesn’t make much sense to me. And yet, the rumors persist. We know Payton was at least open to giving the play-calling to Brady, but the big difference is that he has been proven as one of the NFL’s best over the past several years in Buffalo. <\/p>\n
Webb has no NFL play-calling experience outside of the preseason. So, if Payton were to take a step back and pass the baton to Webb, I agree with Fowler that it would be a gradual process. It wouldn’t happen overnight, and it would be done with no small amount of oversight. <\/p>\n
If this is all smoke and no fire, there’s still every reason to believe that Webb will help spice things up for the Broncos’ offense and inspire Payton. As offensive coordinator, Webb will contribute even more to the in-week game-planning and will have some influence on which plays get earmarked for gameday. <\/p>\n
Some of them will be Webb’s plays, though Payton would be the one calling them into Nix on gameday. That’s honestly the more realistic way this thing will shake out. Then again, there’s been an awful lot of smoke on the subject for nearly two weeks, and in the NFL, where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire. <\/p>\n
This storyline isn’t going anywhere. Until and unless Payton opts to address it \u2014 perhaps at the NFL Combine later this month \u2014 we’re unlikely to get any definitive answers to this question until the summer. <\/p>\n
More On SI Broncos Offseason Coverage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since the Denver Broncos’ impressive season ended, speculation surrounding Sean Payton’s play-calling future has run rampant. The biggest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,85],"class_list":["post-465471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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