Sean Payton says Broncos must ‘digest’ and ‘swallow’ tough loss to Jaguars

Denver Broncos head coach Sean Payton knows the team has to flush what happened against the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday quickly.

After all, the Broncos play again on Thursday night in Kansas City.

But while Denver will quickly turn the page to their Christmas showdown with the Chiefs, there were some concerning things that happened in a 34-20 defeat to the Jaguars.

In his opening statement at his postgame press conference, Sean Payton summed up everything that went wrong.

“Disappointing loss. All the things that are important to winning we didn’t do a good enough job with and that starts with me. They were better on third-downs, they won the turnover battle,” Payton said. “And so now we have a short week to digest it. You can’t spit it out, you’ve got to swallow it and that starts with every one of us.”

Payton is saying the Broncos have to take down this loss, even if it doesn’t taste good.

Denver saw it’s 11-game win streak snapped and fell to 12-3 on the season. They also lost at Empower Field at Mile High for the first time since October of 2024.

Sean Payton knows the Broncos must look in the mirror, on a day the defense, offense, special teams and coaching weren’t up to par.

“Part of this process is not fooling ourselves. They beat us tonight. They beat us good in all three areas,” Payton said. “And so, you know, even though that hurts going down, you can’t spit it out. You have to swallow. But that’s the truth. They beat us in all three areas. We got to coach better, we got to look at what we’re doing, we got to make sure we’re not doing too much.”

Maybe, a reset for the Broncos isn’t the worst thing. They still control their own destiny to win the AFC West and grab the No. 1 seed in the conference. That will require wins against the Chiefs and Chargers to close the season.

And considering Sean Payton said twice that Denver must “swallow” this, it’s clear he’ll try to use it as a (brief) learning experience before flipping the page to Kansas City.

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