Well, ain’t that a kick in the head?
Fresh out of new ideas, Sean Payton lost his coaching debut with the Broncos to the hated Raiders with such a tired strategy that even a knucklehead like Nathaniel Hackett wouldn’t have thought of it.
With an onside kick to begin an eventual 17-16 loss to Las Vegas, Payton plagiarized himself, stealing a page from the brightest chapter of his NFL career, when New Orleans beat Peyton Manning and Indianapolis 13 years ago in the Super Bowl with bold trickeration.
This time, it didn’t work.
“We came to win a game,” Payton said.
And you lost it, coach. This “L” is squarely on you, Mr. Payton.
Champions find a way to win. Chumps invent ways to lose. One game into the Payton regime, the Broncos look like the same sorry, boring losers that have missed the playoffs seven years in a row.
“We’ve got to break this cycle,” Denver outside linebacker Jonathan Cooper said. “When it comes down to the nitty gritty, somehow we don’t finish.”
While others will understandably blame kicker Wil Lutz for missing a point after touchdown and field goal in a one-point defeat, please allow me to humbly ask:
Who was the genius who cut Brandon McManus, figuring he could find a replacement on the street for a Denver stalwart who scored nearly 1,000 points for the Broncos?
“It’s tough. I was brought here to help win close games. And today wasn’t my day,” said Lutz, taking full responsibility for letting down his new Denver teammates.
It was Payton, however, who started a revolving door of kicker tryouts after the Broncos parted ways with McManus in May, finally settling (at least for the moment) on Lutz, who made some big kicks for him during their time together in New Orleans.
Shake those orange-and-blue pompoms for Payton for the bold move of attempting to end Denver’s six-game losing streak against the Raiders by opening the game with an onside kick.
But it’s only genius if it works. Payton handed Las Vegas a far-too-easy touchdown because his gamble didn’t pay off.
The strategy failed because Tremon Smith of the Broncos kickoff team committed a penalty, touching the football before it traveled the required 10 yards after leaving the boot of Lutz.
The Raiders, who will have trouble marching to the end zone against a strong wind, took the gift from Payton and went 44 yards in 10 plays to take a 7-0 lead before quarterback Russell Wilson and the Denver offense got on the field for the first time this season.
Here’s what irked me: It’s one thing to try trickeration on the big stage of the Super Bowl, especially when you’re trying to keep the ball out of the hands of Manning, among the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history.
But nobody confuses Las Vegas quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo for Manning. And the Raiders are a bad team, maybe the only team in the AFC West with worse talent than Denver.
Trying an onside kick to open the game against the lowly Raiders isn’t the aggression of a football pirate that Payton fancies himself to be so much as an act of desperation. It was as if the coach declared to everybody in Broncos Country he wasn’t at all certain his team could win a home game without an element of surprise.
The onside kick was a tacit vote of no-confidence in the Broncos’ ability to beat Las Vegas straight up. This ain’t prep football or intramurals, brother. It’s the NFL.
During a game as dull as the gray skies that covered Empower Field with a sense of gloom and doom, there were precious few compelling moments from two teams playing not to lose. It felt like football from the 1960s, with only 13 total possessions. Six by the Broncos. And seven by Las Vegas.
The first and only possession by the Raiders that started on Denver’s half of the field? The one Payton handed to the visitors with his failed onside kick.
The offensive game plan seemed designed to minimize mistakes by Wilson, who needed 34 pass attempts to gain 177 yards but couldn’t gain so much as a first down after Denver surrendered the lead in the fourth quarter. The Broncos defense, which failed to generate so much as one lousy sack, couldn’t get off the field as the scoreboard clock ticked to zero.
At the outset of training camp, Payton entertained a hand-picked correspondent from USA Today, blasting his predecessor, calling Hackett’s performance “one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the NFL.”
Well, this was the worst coaching job I’ve witnessed since Hackett was run out of our dusty old cow town. Payton got outwitted by Josh McDaniels, for crying out loud.
Could somebody maybe give Jerry Rosburg a jingle and get him off the dock? Or maybe the crazy-rich Waltons who own the Broncos could make Deion Sanders an offer he can’t refuse.
We comin’?
The Broncos are goin’. Straight down the tubes.
Oh, no. Not again.
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