Sean Payton reacts to ‘garbage’ written about end-of-half management

Sean Payton wasn’t having any of it on Sunday.

Near the end of a conference call with Denver-area media, the Broncos head coach fired back at critiques of the Broncos’ end-of-half process that saw a touchdown-saving interception lead to a three-and-out and, finally, an unnecessary-roughness call on a punt return that set up the NFL’s first successful fair-catch free-kick field goal in 48 years, allowing the Chargers to narrow the Broncos’ lead to 21-13 at halftime of what would be a 34-27 loss.

“Well, how do I say it? One of the dumber storylines was the end of the half in regards to us being aggressive with 44 seconds — 41 seconds, two timeouts, we punt the ball, the half’s over with,” Payton said Sunday.

“I read more stuff that I just looked at and thought, ‘This is garbage.'”

The Broncos began the sequence by losing three yards when Bo Nix dumped off to Javonte Williams in the right flat. The clock continued to tick down, and the Broncos could have simply let the clock run out, as Los Angeles didn’t use a timeout. But Denver went no-huddle and snapped the ball with 17 seconds remaining, from which a Nix pass was incomplete when Williams fell down near the right hashmark. That stopped the clock.

Payton called a handoff to Williams one play later, which used five seconds of clock time, after which Los Angeles called timeout to force a punt. Then came the fair-catch misadventures, when Tremon Smith ran into Darius Davis.

That was a “dumb penalty,” Smith admitted, using a similar adjective as Payton to describe the end-of-half critiques. Cameron Dicker subsequently drilled the 57-yard fair-catch free-kick field goal.

Payton took umbrage with the notion that the end-of-half lapse also changed momentum.

“Number one, it didn’t shift the momentum,” Payton said. “We got the ball back to start the second half, went down the field, kicked a field goal. We were back up 11.

“But this sequence, this area of the game you’re talking about is the area that, as a coach, you look at and you get frustrated just with, how do we put a brake on the momentum that it shifted, and I feel like we could have done a better job there.”

If anything, the momentum actually shifted with Justin Strnad’s unnecessary-roughness penalty when he grazed a sliding Justin Herbert, which wiped out a third-down stop. Los Angeles scored a touchdown one play later, starting a run of 21-consecutive points that turned an 11-point Broncos lead into a 10-point deficit.

It’s probably a question of semantics and details. But on a Sunday without a game, Payton couldn’t keep himself out of game-day attack mode.

 

View on Threads

 

Related

Ex-Broncos QB Bridgewater retires from NFLThree Broncos who are turning heads at training campDrew Brees calls Sean Payton ‘brilliant’ as Broncos boss presents him into HOFAfter Bo Nix, who is the second-most important Bronco this season?Schlereth isn’t having it after Mike Sando slots Bo Nix in tier threeBroncos see Bo Nix do what he does best, but injuries overshadow day