ESPN report details Sean Payton’s obsession with the details

The pre-snap penalties gnaw at Sean Payton.

You can hear it in his voice when he addresses media after a practice plagued by them. And, as an ESPN report detailed Tuesday, it’s even more evident inside the walls of Centura Health Training Center.

In the story, ESPN reporter Seth Wickersham spends time with Payton — first at his summer retreat in Idaho, and then during the two days of joint practices with the Los Angeles Rams Aug. 23 and 24.

“I’m going to be pissed off watching this,” Wickersham reports Payton as saying when he begins a two-hour session watching film of one of the practices.

SEAN PAYTON STEWS OVER THE LITTLE THINGS

As Wickersham notes, Sean Payton is more troubled by how the Broncos can’t seem to get over their mistakes, becoming “discouraged” after a bad play. That was evident to those watching practice from above; on both days, penalties or an injury — the sight of Jerry Jeudy leaving via cart — seemed to knock the Broncos off-rhythm for a while.

Per the ESPN report, Payton wrote the following on his notepad:

PEN. PRESNAP

4 OFFSIDES DEF

4 FALSE START OFF

1 FALSE START ST

9 TOTAL!!

A team meeting followed. He shows some of the team’s many pre-snap infractions from the 2022 season.

“Let’s not lose track of the part about knowing how to win first,” Payton told the team in the meeting. “We’ve gotta fix that.”

He continued, as the ESPN report notes:

“You false-start, I’m pulling you out. Take a lap around the whole f—ing complex. … It’s not just one group. There is an amount of mental discipline in playing this game. I don’t want to be first-and-15, honestly. I don’t. And I don’t want to be second-and-3 and then become second-and-8; we had a helluva run nullified.”

But Payton is designing mechanisms to help, working deep into the night to do so.

As Wickersham writes:

He’s not mad scientist drawing up plays in those hours. He’s doing something much harder: creating mechanisms for his quarterback to decode the opposing defense before the snap. Last year only two teams committed more pre-snap penalties than the Broncos. Payton knows that this year, if the play clock is under 10 seconds and Wilson is futzing at the line, the defense will probably win.

That goes hand-in-hand with something that became evident during practice: how quickly the offense got to the line of scrimmage pre-snap. Even when it didn’t have to do so. During two-minute periods, the offense operated after clock-stopping incompletions and plays that went out of bounds.

THE AFTERMATH OF HIS COMMENTS TO USA TODAY

Of course, Sean Payton made the football world stop in its tracks with his comments to USA Today‘s Jarrett Bell about the previous season and the perceived quality — or lack thereof — regarding Nathaniel Hackett’s coaching job.

ESPN reported that Payton earned a plastic golden-microphone trophy, “awarded to Broncos staffers who step in it publicly.”

In the story, Wickersham dismissed the notion that his comments were part of a plan. That removing pressure from players and putting it on himself wasn’t a concern.

“He got texts from coaches across sports who considered it a masterstroke,” Wickersham wrote. “But Payton simply has less of a filter these days, even if it later requires damage control.”

A close friend, Saints general manager Mickey Loomis, offered a rationale in the ESPN story.

“I think that happens to all of us,” Loomis told ESPN. “As you get older, you say the things that you think without caring about the consequences.”

Payton has earned that kind of hand.

But now he’s starting all over in Denver. With a deep focus on the details.

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