Coach of Raiders' AFC West Rival Admits to Week 1 Ineptitude

The Las Vegas Raiders rivals, the Denver Broncos, struggled in Week 1. To compound it, their coach, Sean Payton, pointed fingers. Now, he's admitting to ineptitude.

Aug 11, 2024; Indianapolis, Indiana, USA; Denver Broncos Head Coach Sean Payton shares a word with a referee during the second half against the Indianapolis Colts at Lucas Oil Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Marc Lebryk-Imagn Images / Marc Lebryk-Imagn Images

The Las Vegas Raiders' AFC West rivals, the Denver Broncos, have struggled over the last few seasons. The last true success they had was nearly 10 years ago with Gary Kubiak and Peyton Manning.

They have a Super Bowl-winning head coach in Sean Payton and a rookie quarterback with plenty of hype in Bo Nix. Hope for this season? They lost to the Seattle Seahawks in Week 1, 26-20.

Plenty of good teams lose in the first week of the season, arguably one of the toughest weeks of the season. Going in against "ghosts" and uncertainty, implementation. It is why the biggest gains are made from Week 1 to Week 2.

But -- Payton began pointing fingers and placing blame when it came to the loss. Blamed rookie quarterback Bo Nix. Blamed the run game. Then, he admitted to his own poor coaching.

"We have to ask ourselves, 'As coaches, all right, if we played it again, what would we have done different?' Payton said Monday. "And there are a handful of things that I felt like I didn't do a good enough job with relative to the inner triangle as to what we were seeing."

As Keith Cummings of Broncos On SI described the errors as "wide-ranging" when he cited Payton.

"Look, certainly like I saw a three-step and a hitch instead of a five and a hitch on a certain play; we'll get that cleaned up. But overall, when he's climbing a pocket or he's on the move extending a play, there's times where the ball is going to get away from you," Payton said. "But my bigger concern today, number one, the first half provided -- that game early was there a little for the taking. We didn't take advantage of the field position to really go up and we didn't take advantage of the field position there. Our red-zone offense wasn't nearly as good as it needed to be and we did have some drops early on. But I think when I watch this tape offensively, we need to be better around him and we will be."

The Broncos play the Raiders Week 5.

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