Sean Payton had three goals; making the playoffs wasn’t one

Sean Payton didn’t give his Broncos a day off after their massive win Sunday.

“Victory Monday,” an extra day off for players that is common practice around the NFL after notable triumphs, isn’t a thing for the Broncos’ head coach. Thus, his players strolled into the office Monday morning for meetings and the weekly post-game debriefing.

That they had just defeated arguably the best team they’d faced, clinched a second-consecutive playoff spot and reached 12 wins for the first time in a decade and extended their winning streak to 11 games — the club’s longest run in nearly 13 years — didn’t matter all that much. All Payton did was trim the schedule a bit.

“I don’t have a philosophy on Vic tory Monday,” he said. “I look at where we’re at. Today we won’t be as long in meetings. We just finished a team meeting.

“Now I’m not like, ‘I’ll see you Wednesday.’ All right? Because even in a good win like that, there’s some things that we want to clean up. … There’s generally something here for the players treatment-wise, like today won’t be a long meeting scheduled with them. They’ll meet separately, may meet on their own, but I guess that’s my philosophy.”

Such an approach was no surprise given that Sunday’s win didn’t even allow Payton to check off one of the three goals he had for his team.

 

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“We have three goals,” Payton said. “… First goal: Win the division. Goal 2: best seed. Goal 3. Super Bowl. So, none of those goals have been accomplished. We’re focused on Jacksonville.

“Goal one is not ‘Make the playoffs.’

That should come as no surprise. Last year, that was considered to be an acceptable goal as the team emerged from an 8-9 season and stared down the barrel of a the NFL’s highest dead-money figure, thanks to Russell Wilson’s contract.

This year, the expectation was for a deeper advance; simply qualifying for the postseason wouldn’t be good enough. Which is part of why it was really just another Monday at the office.

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