These Broncos Face Big Pressure As Season Approaches

Few teams face more pressure than those trying to repeat and go a little further, but that’s where the Denver Broncos are right now. They went 14-3 and got to the AFC Championship game, but that 10-7 loss to the New England Patriots combined with the pressure of repeating in the AFC West has a number of figures facing big pressure as training camps get set to open. 

Sean Payton

For a coach who made it to within a field goal of the Super Bowl, Payton’s had a busy offseason. He started by firing almost half his staff, then started trading medical barbs with his injured star quarterback. 

Payton then dropped the hammer on a bombshell trade to get a wide receiver after talking up his current group for a couple of years, and he also reluctantly promoted quarterbacks coach Davis Webb to be his new offensive coordinator, who will supposedly be calling plays. 

Yeah, it’s a lot, but that’s Payton in a nutshell. He was also the subject of a controversial piece by Seth Wickersham of ESPN that portrayed him as mercurial, impetuous, sometimes erratic and often dictatorial. 

He gets away with a lot of this because he produces a brilliant product on the field, but it’s hard not to wonder how he’ll do if Denver’s football luck doesn’t hold and the Broncos end up with a few less wins due to a brutal early schedule. 

Jaylen Waddle

Waddle’s been billed as the explosive fix for a group that seemed on the verge of supplying that kind of performance last year, but what if Waddle is just a slightly better version of what Marvin Mims Jr. was starting to provide, minus the big-play return factor? Pro Football Focus just rated him 15th among the top receivers in the league, and that’s not the kind of performance teams typically give up first rounders for. Waddle will need to come up big, and he’ll need to do it early, too. 

Bo Nix

It’s not Nix’s fault he got hurt, but Nix is on the hot seat now that Payton has transformed his injury recovery from a simple process to an ongoing medical debate. Nix’s inconsistency has been well-chronicled, and he’ll have to fix that in the middle of the field to find a way to meed the demands of his head coach. Nix is one of the least-respected top quarterbacks in the league, especially givn his impressive array of comebacks and clutch performances.