Sean Payton: It’s not just the QB change that’s making a difference

LAS VEGAS — Sean Payton knows that anytime there is a comparison offered from his first edition of the Denver Broncos to this year’s team, the focus will immediately turn to the quarterback position, where the team jettisoned Russell Wilson and handpicked rookie Bo Nix as his replacement.

So, when Sean Payton said, “A year ago we don’t win that game” after Sunday’s 29-19 win over the Las Vegas Raiders, the minds of some might turn — again — to the quarterback position.

But as Payton noted Monday morning, it was much more than that.

“There’s probably nine different men. There’s guys like Malcolm Roach that bring this chemistry,” Payton said.

“It’s addition, it’s subtraction, it — look, it’s not your sexy story about one QB for the other. That’s not the narrative here. That’s not the story at all. It’s a number of different changes. A new draft class, Brandon Jones, a John Franklin-Myers, Malcolm Roach, on and on and on.”

Mentioning Malcolm Roach was particularly relevant after Sunday’s win. Roach carried more of the burden on the defensive line as it absorbed the loss of Zach Allen to a heel injury. Allen spent his Sunday afternoon in sweats, wearing a walking boot as he ambled about the Broncos bench area.

“And I think Roach made a great, great point today after we brought it up after the win. And he was just saying, ‘The hardest thing to deal with is success and failure.’ He said, ‘We dealt with both of those things this year,'” safety P.J. Locke said.

“We dealt with those things last year too. And I think just being in those situations, just understanding how to persevere through them things, I think it’s real huge for us. And I think we just got to continue to take it one practice at a time, one game at a time, and we’ll look up and be accomplishing our goals, the things we want to do.”

Roach has become one of the Broncos’ glue players. Jones is part of a safety corps that, along with Locke, has provided play that is “better overall on the back end at that position than we were a year ago,” as Payton noted Monday.

“And sometimes as a coach, you’re not certain as to like, all right, who was the most important [addition] or if there was a most important one,” Payton said. “But — and then, then it was moving on from a handful [of players]. And then, and you know this, with the changes you have a different team.

“And so, it’s not at all a one-position discussion. It’s just a different team.”

And a team that is one game better than it was at the same point last year.

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