PHOENIX – As Sean Payton made the media rounds in the week leading up to the Super Bowl here in the Valley of the Sun, he sounded in interview after interview like a coach who knew exactly what he was getting into in his return to the NFL as the Broncos’ new head coach.

And why wouldn’t he? Payton had done extensive research on the organization. He came away thoroughly impressed by the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group and the feeling was mutual. He developed a quick enough connection with general manager George Paton in their four-plus hour mid-January meeting in Los Angeles to constitute a starting point. He knew enough about Russell Wilson based on a decade facing him and a couple of stints coaching him at the Pro Bowl to at least come away with the baseline impression that the quarterback is competitive and willing to work.

Most jobs don’t come available if everything is hunky dory, he figured, and of the five that did open up this offseason, the Broncos had quite a bit to work with.

Seven straight seasons without a playoff appearance? Six straight losing seasons? A dismal 5-12 record in 2022 made bleaker by the fact that it came immediately after inking a seven-year, $245 million deal with Wilson?

Payton had a metaphor for all that baggage.

“I’m not too familiar with how it was in the last few years,” he said when he was introduced on Feb. 6, “but it’s kind of one of those where you really knock the rearview mirror off the automobile. We’re just looking forward.”

Yet seven weeks later, Payton returned to the desert and still hadn’t quite spit the bit on the problems that plagued Denver’s league-worst offense under former head coach Nathaniel Hackett.

Maybe even with a free agency shopping spree, the offensive horrors in the rearview mirror still feel closer than they appear. Maybe Payton confronted a higher level of disarray than expected when the March roster planning sessions and personnel evaluations pushed him deeper into the film.

Maybe he just wanted to make a point that, hey, this isn’t going to be an easy turnaround.

In the end, Payton found one last way to get something useful out of the 2022 season at the NFL’s spring ownership meeting Monday: To make it clear that, come April 11 and the beginning of his first offseason program, it will serve as a guidebook for how not to do things.

“I watched with every one of you the season that took place a year ago,” he said. “There’s probably a little bit of dirt on a lot of people’s hands. When you win five games, it is what it is. I don’t think I need to elaborate any more. It wasn’t good. Wasn’t good on offense, that’s for sure. It was hard film to watch.”

He did elaborate, though, in his own way, by outlining just how different this is going to be moving forward.

Payton didn’t go into any further detail about the extent to which Denver’s 2022 offensive film disgusted him, but the tone of his words in answering several questions dripped with contempt for the work done by Hackett and company.

Payton never actually said that the scattershot offensive approach last year gave quarterback Russell Wilson almost no chance at real success — he hasn’t exonerated the 34-year-old signal-caller of his role in the dismal season, either— but he made those points clear all the same.

Payton’s never said explicitly that he thinks the manner in which Hackett and company ran the offseason program, training camp and preseason contributed to the litany of injury issues that beset the Broncos, but he’s left little doubt about his hypothesis on the matter.

“I don’t know that there’s one bullet point. There’s probably a series of things,” he said Monday when asked about the injury-riddled season. “… I can’t look back and say, ‘Alright, this is why all these different things happened.’

“But I do know we’re playing tackle football and you have to practice tackle football.”

Denver will do that under Payton eventually, but not before a good, long stretch in the weight room.

Payton at one point Monday jumped into the middle of a reporter’s question to point out that, no, the Broncos were not holding a voluntary minicamp from April 26-28 as the NFL said they were in a news release.

“I don’t know where that came from,” he rebuffed.

Instead, the offseason program features only lifting and running until organized team activities begin in May. That’s how he did it in New Orleans.

“There’s a progression when you train athletes and I think we’re too quick to move out of Phase 1 into football after three weeks of lifting and running,” he explained. “That’s not enough time.”

That’s just the start of the changes.

Last summer, Hackett had almost no 1-on-1 or 7-on-7 work in training camp and explained, “I just want the guys to be able to play football together. That’s the game.”

Payton referenced that on Monday, saying, “The approach was much different than I’m used to.”

Same, not surprisingly, with Hackett’s decision not to play starters in the preseason.

“We’re going to play all of them,” Payton said with a dose of incredulity that the question even had to be asked. “In the preseason? Absolutely we are. That’s the pre-season.”

So yes, this is going to be a whole new world for the Broncos players, particularly those who have been around a while. To their credit, most this offseason have said they’re ready for whatever Payton has in store for them. They just want to win, and it’s easier to trust that will happen eventually when the new guy has 152 regular-season wins and can accessorize any outfit he wants to with a Super Bowl ring.

It’s nothing new for Payton, though. He essentially appears to be following the same course he did in New Orleans beginning in 2006. He’s turning the roster over quickly. The new guys have been identified for particular reasons. He’s hired several assistants who have worked for him, played for him or both over the past 16 years, most recently senior defensive assistant Joe Vitt. It should come as no surprise that he has familiarity on his staff in all three phases plus in vice president of player health and performance Beau Lowery and head strength coach Dan Dalrymple.

“Sean’s done it a lot of times and he’s won a lot of football games,” general manager George Paton said. “I like the plan, certainly, starting with the offseason program and getting after it. Getting into the weights, getting bigger and getting stronger and then in the preseason letting the guys play.”

Payton recently recounted telling New Orleans general manager Mickey Loomis during the preseason in 2006 that he didn’t think the team would win any games. They ended up going 10-6 and winning the NFC South, then knocking off Philadelphia in the divisional round before losing to Chicago in the NFC title game.

“The Saints were 3-13 before he came here and he built a Super Bowl winning team,” New Orleans head coach Dennis Allen said Tuesday. “He’s just a hell of a coach.”

That doesn’t mean the results will be the same in Denver this fall. But the process? It’s already Payton’s through and through.

Soon enough, no rearview mirror will be needed to see it.

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