Broncos coach Sean Payton obliterates Nathaniel Hackett, Jets
Tell us how you really feel, Sean Payton.
The new Denver Broncos head coach torched predecessor Nathaniel Hackett in an interview with USA Today, where he opined on the current Jets offensive coordinator’s disastrous stint in Denver last year and how the fireworks show in Florham Park could potentially backfire this coming season.
“But everybody’s got a little stink on their hands. It’s not just Russell (Wilson). It was a (poor) offensive line,” Payton told the paper. “It might have been one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the NFL.
“That’s how bad it was.”
Hackett lasted just 15 games in his rookie season in Denver, where he teamed up with a Super Bowl-winning quarterback in Wilson, who was traded to the Broncos from the Seahawks in a March 2022 blockbuster.
Wilson produced the worst season of his career under Hackett’s tutelage, throwing a career-low 16 touchdown passes to go along with 11 interceptions.
“There’s so much dirt around that,” Payton said. “There’s 20 dirty hands, for what was allowed, tolerated in the fricking training rooms, the meeting rooms. The offense. I don’t know Hackett. A lot of people had dirt on their hands. It wasn’t just Russell. He didn’t just flip. He still has it.
“This B.S. that he hit a wall? Shoot, they couldn’t get a play-in. They were 29th in the league in pre-snap penalties on both sides of the ball.”
Payton also ripped Hackett for allowing Wilson’s personal quarterback coach, Jake Heaps, access to the team building and for holding players out of preseason games and one-on-one practice drills.
“That wasn’t (Wilson’s) fault,” Payton said of Heaps being allowed facility access. “That was the parents who allowed it. That’s not an incrimination on him, but an incrimination on the head coach, the GM, the president, and everybody else who watched it all happen.”
Payton added: “Everything I heard about last season, we’re doing the opposite.”
Hackett, who served as the Packers’ offensive coordinator before taking the top job in Denver, is now reunited with his former Green Bay quarterback, four-time league MVP Aaron Rodgers, in New York.
Much like the Broncos, who entered the 2022 season with playoff-level expectations following an offseason full of hype, the Jets are in a similar position with Rodgers, 39, now at the helm.
Payton, 59, cautioned how “Dream Teams” may not be able to deliver the wins a championship-starved fanbase is expecting.
“It doesn’t happen often where an NFL team or organization gets embarrassed,” said Payton, who was hired by the Broncos in January following the team’s disappointing 5-12 season. “And that happened here. Part of it was their own fault, relative to spending so much (expletive) time trying to win the offseason – the PR, the pomp and circumstance, marching people around and all this stuff.”
“We’re not doing any of that. The Jets did that this year. You watch. ‘Hard Knocks,’ all of it. I can see it coming,” Payton said. “Remember when [former Washington owner] Dan Snyder put that Dream Team together? I was at the Giants [in 2000]. I was a young coach. I thought, ‘How are we going to compete with them? Deion’s [Sanders] there now.’ That team won eight games or whatever. So, listen… just put the work in.”
Payton will get to see that “work” for himself when the Broncos host the Jets on Oct. 8.
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