Sean Payton has made it known right away that he’s in charge, having already made a major change that concerns Russell Wilson.
The new Broncos head coach said Monday that Wilson, who had a brutal first season in Denver, will not be allowed to bring his personal quarterback coach Jake Heaps or other outside personnel to the team’s facility, as he did in 2022.
“I’m not too familiar with that,” Payton told reporters about Heaps being in the building. “That’s foreign to me. That’s not gonna take place here. I’m unfamiliar with it, but our staff will be here, our players will be here and that will be it.”
Wilson, 34, was traded from the Seahawks to the Broncos last year after a decade in Seattle, where he won a Super Bowl and was a nine-time Pro Bowler. Denver then gave Wilson a five-year, $245 million contract extension with the expectation he’d help the team contend for a Super Bowl.
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His first year in town was a massive flop. The Broncos went 5-12, with Wilson going 4-11 as the starter while throwing for 3,524 yards, 16 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. He completed a career-low 60.5 percent of his passes, and first-year head coach Nathaniel Hackett was fired after just 15 games.
The Walton-Penner group, which bought the Broncos last year for $4.65 billion, then went big-name hunting in their coaching search. They flirted with Jim Harbaugh before ultimately hiring Payton, the longtime Saints coach who spent the 2022 season as a Fox analyst.
It’s now on Payton, 59, to get Wilson back in form and the Broncos back to the playoffs. Regarding his analysis of Wilson, Payton said he likes to evaluate what players do well to highlight their strengths and then try to minimize their weaknesses.
“I know he’s an extremely hard worker. That’s important,” Payton said. “You take that, you understand the skillset. He’s won a lot of games in Seattle. We [the Saints] played them quite a bit just because we were both playoff teams in the NFC at that time. And then you go from there. I think that’s the same case — although it’s a much more visible position — it’s the same case, it’s the same goal for us with every player on the roster.”
