SEATTLE – Instead of guiding Bo Nix to victory in his NFL debut, Broncos coach Sean Payton wrapped his rookie quarterback in a blankie and gave him a binky for an afternoon nap of boring football.
While hands were anxiously wrung throughout Broncos Country as a 24-year-old quarterback made his first start as a pro, blame for 26-20 defeat to the Seahawks fell squarely at the feet of Payton.
Nix “was into it, competing. We’ve just got to be better around him ,” Payton said Sunday, sounding more like a helicopter parent than a veteran coach paid the big bucks to win.
So preoccupied with keeping Nix safe, the game plan by Payton proved to be sorry.
Grading on a curve in recognition of his inexperience, let’s give Nix a gentleman’s C for a dinky-dunky performance. With many of his 42 attempts shorter than passing the ketchup at the dinner table, Nix required 42 throws to produce a meager 138 yards through the air. Rookie doing rookie things.
But Payton? He has no excuses. The coach deserves an F for failing his quarterback.
In his 276th game on the sideline of an NFL team, Payton was unable to hold a halftime lead and got outcoached with the outcome in doubt.
Worse, Payton was not outmaneuvered by Andy Reid or Mike Tomlin, but by Mike Macdonald, Seattle’s’ 37-year-old rookie head coach.
Macdonald had never led a football team on any level, from preps to the pros, until trotting onto Lumen Field with the Seahawks on a sunny summer afternoon.
In the one aspect of this matchup that should’ve tilted the field heavily in the Broncos’ favor, Payton got beat by a rookie on the Seattle sideline.
With two first-half turnovers that handed Denver the football in the red zone and two mistakes in their own end zone that resulted in a pair of safeties within a span of less than seven minutes in the second quarter, the Seahawks tried to gift-wrap a victory for Nix.
And Payton fumbled it.
On the first possession of his pro career in a game that counted in the standings, Nix was handed the ball at the Seattle 20-yard line, thanks to an interception by Denver linebacker Alex Singleton.
After a robust 9-yard run off left tackle by Javonte Williams on first down, the next two plays couldn’t have been more unimaginative if Payton cribbed them from Nathaniel Hackett’s playbook, and the Broncos had to settle for a short field goal.
Even worse: Early in the second quarter, with the visitors ahead 5-3, Seattle muffed a punt. Nix was in business at the Seahawks’ nine-yard line. But after a false start penalty, two uninspired runs into the defensive wall and an incomplete pass to Courtland Sutton, the Broncos again settled for a chip-shot field goal by Wil Lutz.
“You’ve got to score in the red zone. It has to be touchdowns. That’s just the way this league works,” Denver offensive tackle Mike McGlinchey said. “You have to be good in situational football. And we weren’t able to punch it in when we had the opportunity.”
That’s no way to win on the road in this league.
The book of NFL regrets is littered with sad tales of opportunities wasted.
How often during this franchise’s eight-year playoff drought have the Broncos been guilty of being not only bad, but boring?
To have any shot at winning with regularity, Denver needs to average at least 125 yards rushing per game. Denver needed 25 carries to gain 99 yards on the ground against Seattle.
Even that modest number is misleading, because Nix accounted for more than 35% of that total on scrambles from the pocket. Running backs Jaleel McLaughlin, Audric Estime and Williams averaged a meager 3.2 yards per carry.
“It’s going to be hard to play quarterback, period, if that’s the best we can do running the ball,” Payton said.
To put the complex methodology of the Denver passing attack in layman’s terms that any Broncomaniac screaming in frustration at the television from the sofa can easily understand, Nix rhymes with short of the sticks.
OK, I get it. Don’t ask a young quarterback to do too much. But the game plan of Payton was so heavily encased in so many layers of bubble wrap I’m not sure if the Denver coach could see anything more sophisticated than the most elementary thinking on his play sheet.
“It was tough to get explosive plays,” Nix said.
Who looked more like the rookie out there, swept away by the tide of changing momentum and the 12th man noise for which this stadium is famous? Who got more rattled? Who didn’t come through in the clutch?
Payton, in his 18th season as a head coach in the NFL?
Or Nix, making his first start at quarterback in a hostile environment?
When Payton won a Super Bowl ring with the New Orleans Saints, way back in February of 2010, Macdonald was coming off his second season as linebackers coach at Cedar Shoals High School in Georgia.
"I’m always nervous," Macdonald admitted prior to his head coaching debut. "Have you met me?"
A football mastermind should’ve exploited that gap in experience.
But after taking a four-point lead into intermission, the Broncos were outscored 17-7 in the second half. Playing more uptempo, Seattle increased its offensive efficiency to 5.6 yards per snap, while Nix and his teammates failed to move the ball past midfield until 5 minutes, 37 seconds remained in the fourth quarter.
“We’ve got to do better,” Payton said. “And I’ve got to do better.”
What’s the old football adage? The eye in the sky doesn’t lie.
When Payton reviews the video of this loss, the member of the Broncos that deserves the harshest criticism is a head coach that was too busy coddling a rookie quarterback to trust him with the necessary tools to win.
Local News
Comments / 0