After missing the postseason for eight consecutive times, Sean Payton led the Denver Broncos to the playoffs this year. The Broncos’ return to the postseason, however, was anticlimactic as the Bills blew them apart in the Wild Card Round, summing up their season in a nutshell–mostly good and sometimes bad.
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Broncos HC Sean Payton reviewed the season through a similar lens as he lauded his players for their grit while being disappointed with the way things ended.
After having to part ways with Russell Wilson and deal with the financial implications of the move, not many expected the Broncos to have the season they had so far. Unsurprisingly, their season started on a rocky note as Sean Payton’s men started 0-2. But his players soon turned things around as they went on to win nine of their next 12 games.
During this tenure, two things stood out–Bo Nix’s emergence as a promising talent and the hunger in Broncos players to get back to the postseason. Speaking to the media after the defeat to the Bills, Payton noted the fight shown by his players during this winning stretch as the biggest positive of the season.
“Look, I think you can define success in so many different ways,” he replied. “Look, was it a team I was proud of and we were proud of? Yes. These guys fought. They came together like most teams in our league, hit stretches of adversity, bounced back. So there were a lot of positives to build on.”
The disappointment for Sean Payton and the Broncos came rightly in the final quarter of their season. After 14 games, they were 9-5 and needed a single win in their last three matches to clinch the postseason. Ideally, a consistent team would have gone for the kill at the earliest and tried resting their cohort in the final regular season game.
Despite all this, Sean Payton’s men lost 2 games on the trot before clinching the postseason on the final match day. Unfortunately for the Broncos, their inconsistent form continued in the postseason as well where Josh Allen & Co. swatted them away.
Losing to the Bills is not an insult when one considers the gulf in quality between them and the Broncos. In fact, Payton’s men should be proud of the journey they have had to reach the playoffs. But what they’ll beat themselves over is how they ended their season.
Despite allowing 311 points in the entire season, despite notching up 63 sacks with their aggressive defense, the Bills being able to neutralize Denver’s strengths with ease must have been a painful watch for the Orange Nation. It was evident that the Broncos didn’t perform to their potential and this is the biggest disappointment for Sean Payton from this season.
“And yet it still was disappointing to finish the way we did. I didn’t think we played up to our potential in the last game,” noted Sean Payton.
For a young team, there is no better way to learn than failures. From an objective lens, the positives outweigh the negatives from this season. Be it Bo Nix living up to his draft hype [3,775 yards, 29 TDs] or the Broncos defense getting Sean Payton’s aggressive ideology right most of the time, the Orange Nation has a lot to be proud of.
All that the Broncos need to do is build on this with a stellar offseason and things may be really different for them next season.
