Report: Sean Payton Believes Broncos Weren't 'Pushed Enough' Last Year

Sean Payton's first priority is to toughen up the Denver Broncos.

The Denver Broncos are back in the building. For the first time, the Broncos are rallying around new head coach Sean Payton as players reported for the team's Phase 1 of the offseason training program. 

Although Broncos Country was excited to hopefully hear more from Coach Payton, quarterback Russell Wilson, and others this week, according to 9NEWS' Mike Klis, that's not going to happen. Payton has put the kybosh on unfettered media access and will limit what exposure his team and players have to press scrutiny.

So while fans might be deprived of hearing from coaches and players this week, which is a departure from the way the last few regimes operated, a few Broncos insiders have gone to lengths to provide insight on what's actually going on at UCHealth Training Center. 

In an NFL Network segment, Broncos insider James Palmer shared what Payton's primary message to his players on Day 1 of OTAs was, "'We're gonna close the chapter on last year,'" and revealed a few of the tectonic changes that are taking place, and why they're being shaken up. 

"He believes that these players obviously have taken it from every single angle physically, mentally, and through the media and everything that went wrong last year," Palmer said of Payton. "He wants to close that chapter, and he wants to move forward, telling them, 'Now is the time that they're gonna roll up their sleeves and they're gonna get to work.' And he mentioned that it's going to be difficult."

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What exactly does Payton mean by "difficult?" We heard Payton himself say this over the weekend. 

After taking it easy last offseason, in many ways, and skipping over some of the most rigorous aspects of training and football conditioning in what the previous coaching regime called an "overabundance of caution," Payton is eliminating as many possible distractions as possible, and putting the players through the refiner's fire with new strength and conditioning coach Dan Dalrymple. 

"It starts today with their conditioning," Palmer said. "But what he wants to focus on is those first two, and it's the conditioning, and it's the weight training because he believes these players just weren't pushed enough last year in the offseason, and that led to a lot of the injury issues this team had throughout all of last year—one of the most injury-plagued teams in the entire NFL. He has put his resources in and brought his people in. The ownership group, led by Greg Penner, has put up a lot of resources and a lot behind changing that in this offseason as well. And he wants this Phase 1 to go much longer than the three weeks that it is in the NFL. They have an added mini-camp on April 24th to the 27th. That's gonna be more of Phase 1. It's gonna be more conditioning, more weight training."

Like Payton half-joked at the Annual League Meetings, to be good at tackle football, you have to practice tackle football. While it'll be some time yet before the Broncos' cleats hit the grass to practice football in earnest, Payton is laying the groundwork to ensure that his team is physically and mentally ready for it all. Payton is still quite mystified over the previous coaching regime's tactics last year, which, in retrospect, seemed more appropriate for a flag football league than the NFL.  

"That is his No. 1 focus, that this team was not physical enough, it was not competitive enough during the preseason in his eyes," Palmer said of Payton. "No 9-on-7, no one-on-one drills. Everybody's gonna play in the preseason. We're going to see more competitiveness from this entire group, and that kind of started today." 

Sign me up. 

Broncos Country needs no reminder of how badly the team was bitten by the injury bug last year and how ill-prepared the team was for the intensity and physicality of the regular season. Payton's doing his best to nip both those issues in the bud in Phase 1 of OTAs. 

If it's about toughening up, the offseason training program is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg in Payton's demands for this team. The standard has been elevated, and that's a good, good thing for the Broncos. 

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