Locked On Broncos - Daily Podcast On The Denver Broncos - STEP IN: Denver Broncos' Sean Payton RETAKES Play-Calling Reins From Davis Webb

Starting point is 00:00:00 It took four games of the Denver Broncos offense struggling for Sean Payton to officially take the play calling reins back. How does that impact the team? You are locked on Broncos, your daily Denver Broncos podcast. Part of the Locked on podcast network, your team every day. Broncos country. Cody Rourke, Sarah Bedinger here. And today we're going to be talking about the big news of Sean Payton taking back the play calling reins from Davis Webb after just four games. We'll also go through how this impacts Bo Nix

Starting point is 00:00:37 and whether or not this can spark the Broncos offense that desperately needs to find something with the stretch of games that is certainly coming up. You'll get all that here on today's episode of show brought to you by Kaushi for a limited time, download Kauci and use code lockdown to get $25 when you trade. $25. Cowshey trade what's next?

Starting point is 00:00:54 I was a little surprised. I was a little shocked that Sean Payton would be taking the play calling reins back from Davis Webb after just four games. I felt like four games might have been too soon. I've been asked the question this week for multiple people. And I said, you know, if he does take it back, I feel like maybe after the Thursday night football game against Seattle, things continue to persist in terms of the offensive struggles because they get a little bit

Starting point is 00:01:20 of a mini by week. That apparently is not the case. Sean is taking back to play calling Raines and that'll be on deck here for Sunday's game. It's going to be interesting to see how different this offense looks with Sean calling the plays. obviously we already knew and Sean made this clear during the off season that it was still his offense that Davis was going to be calling the plays for right so we know that this is his baby this is his offense anyway but having him make this change right now Cody I think indicates to me one thing is very clear Sean is not going to let Davis Webb be the fall guy if the offense

Starting point is 00:01:54 continues to struggle here early in the season and we know it's so important for this team to get out to a fast start. It's so important for this offense to now find some rhythm. And what we're seeing in the first four games is quite frankly, there's really none of that happening, right? Whether it's inconsistency from the running game or just ineptitude from the running game, inconsistency in the passing game. If it's blocking issues, if it's issues with penalties, if it's dropped passes, all of those things, you know, they go back to execution and the players on the field, not necessarily Davis Webb, but is Davis doing enough to say, hey, we're seeing the vision here with what he's calling. We're seeing the vision with play sequencing, all of that. I'm getting it. I'm understanding

Starting point is 00:02:36 where he's going. The players just got to do a better job. I think obviously Sean is sitting there saying, hey, look, the buck stops with me. It can't be on Davis to get this thing turned around. We want to invest in his development 100%. But at the end of the day, winning matters more than anything else. Sean also said too. He said Davis is going to be a future head coach. He said, you know, for us, it felt like the offense needs to get going. And look, I think for him to take it from Davis, because a lot of people are willing, is he going to fire Davis? No, that's not the thing. But also, I have another tin foil hat theory here, Sarah. This is something that just being around the team, this is just kind of the vibe I get for another reason why Sean made this decision.

Starting point is 00:03:14 Sean has said, he said it last year. He even said it this year. He believes that this is the team that could help him win another Super Bowl. that could win a Super Bowl, which ultimately helps his legacy. Do you think Sean is just going to sit by and let a couple of games go by that ultimately waste it? Like, this is a tough stretch that is coming up for them. Not only you have a Chargers game and they're a desperate team at O and 4, but then you got Seattle.

Starting point is 00:03:35 Then you have a matchup against the Cardinals who are a lot better than what we had all thought this offseason. And then you have the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes. We don't have first matchup went for them early on the year. And then you close things out before your buy week on the road at the Carolina Panthers. These are some tough games, and I feel like this is a window, and Sean made the allusion to it that, you know, this important stretch for us, that the season could get away from them if the offensive struggles continue to persist. But I also think it's worth asking the question here.

Starting point is 00:04:04 And I'm curious for your thoughts on it. Does making a change actually provide a spark? I know we'll dive deeper to that later, but I wanted your thoughts on that because realistically, Davis has been calling Sean's offense. And Sean is calling it the Broncos offense, right? It's not necessarily Sean's offense. They're calling it collectively the Broncos offense here. So how much of it really does change when you still have some of the issues with your personnel, with the blocking with some of those things?

Starting point is 00:04:30 That's what I'm curious about. Hopefully that change really just does spark something in the players to say, hey, like, we got to kind of take ownership of the fact that it's a lot on us why this change was getting made, right? Because we were out there not executing. We were the ones that were out there forcing a third. third and eight instead of a third and three because of a false start penalty or because of an illegal motion or what have you or we're the ones who killed a drive because of a dropped pass or I mean it could be any of those number any number of those things right to have the players sort

Starting point is 00:05:01 to take ownership and say at the end of the day like we're professionals we got to take ownership for why this happened and we got to go out there and we got to make sure we write the ship this isn't about you know Sean Peyton being like see I told you so you all wanted Davis Webb to call plays and now you know look what happened it's didn't go well. It didn't go exactly how you thought it. The grass wasn't greener on the other side. But it's not about that. And it's more about the fact that like you mentioned, Kansas City. I mean, Kansas City is four and oh right now. The Broncos are already two and two. If they try to just say, hey, we want to keep investing in Davis Webb's development. We believe in him as a play

Starting point is 00:05:35 caller. And then all of a sudden you're two and three or you're two and four or whatever. Then you sit there and you say, hey, like you ruined and wasted a Super Bowl window year in the of developing Davis Webb. I know we talked about it in the offseason. Like it would require a worst case of worst case scenarios to get Davis out of this position. Like we believed fully that Sean was, hey, fully sending it into the Davis Webb era. But I don't think any of us could have anticipated that the offense would be this bad.

Starting point is 00:06:06 I mean, 27th in points scored, 27th and first downs, 20th in passing, 29th in rushing or 26th in rushing. It's just not good enough, right? It's not good enough in any respect. they're not scoring enough points. They're not moving the ball enough. They're not doing anything well enough at this point to not justify Sean making this move

Starting point is 00:06:26 already two games back from the division leader. And one of the bigger questions is you have to ask yourself, how does it change like this because of the relationship and the connection that Bo has with Davis Webb? How does this impact Bo Nix? We're going to look at both sides of the coin here on today's episode of the show. Today's episode of the show is brought to you by friends

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Starting point is 00:08:36 Download the game time app, create an account and use code locked on for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Again, create an account and use code. Locked on for $20 off. Bo Nix was understandably disappointed when he found out that Davis Webb would no longer be calling plays. But obviously he's got to pick up the pace.

Starting point is 00:08:53 He's got to be the one to take the ball in his hands and go out there and make some plays happen for the offense. Cody, obviously, Bo Nix is directly impacted by Sean Peyton now calling plays. As the first four games this season, it was Davis in his headset and calling the plays and orchestrating the offense. And now it's going to be Sean Peyton once again, as it was for the first two years of his NFL career. I don't, I don't think there's any sort of drama here or anything, but obviously Sean said he

Starting point is 00:09:20 went to Bo Nix and he talked to him about the change and he was disappointed like, you know, in terms of he felt like he let a teammate down, right? And that's where I feel like I really resonate and understand where Bo and his teammates may be coming from here is a change like this gets made. Davis Webb has these duties stripped from him and you feel responsible for that, especially as the guy who has the ball in your hand on every play. but how do you feel Bo is going to be more directly impacted on the field by this change? Or do you think it's going to just kind of be business as usual for him?

Starting point is 00:09:51 Yeah, part of me is wondering. I think that's the $6 million question right now that everybody's wondering about with Bo and this specific dynamic, right? Because Bo there were a lot of people last year like, oh, Paul and Sean don't get along. That's ridiculous. They get along just fine. They're both competitive. And Bo has been on the record saying he loves how competitive Sean is because he himself as a quarterback views himself as being just as competitive.

Starting point is 00:10:14 They both want to win, right? And I would say the one thing I like, and maybe this is the confidence instill a little bit, very much so it seems like this week, after what happened in San Francisco, right, where Beau was a little hesitant at pulling the trigger and wasn't as aggressive as we're normally accustomed to him, you know, to seeing him do or,

Starting point is 00:10:31 or hitting the open guys on the deep inbreakers, right? Like he didn't pull the trigger on those. John kind of came out this week and really kind of said, you know, like the people that are just throwing all these stones. at Bo. It's like there are so many things that impact the quarterback's job. There's so many things that we have to do to make sure that he's comfortable and that things are going well for him. We've seen that dynamic kind of play out here where you run into an issue where the Broncos offense, they have an offensive line gaff and protection or they have a missed block or, you know,

Starting point is 00:10:59 there's a time where Bo Nick is certainly missing it, right? But the thing is, it's like everyone wants to put 110% of everything on Bow specifically. And it's not all on Boe. Boe plays a hand in So Sean coming out and kind of going to bat for his quarterback, you know, through all this, I think is very important. It's something I can't, you know, think they can't fly under the radar. But naturally, you are going to hear, you know, from Bo, I think probably the next time we hear from what should be after the game on Sunday, you know, they probably, everybody in the offensive locker room probably felt like, hey, we let Davis down. We didn't do enough. That was kind of the theme going back to week one at Kansas City is we didn't make him look good. We didn't, you know, he's called some really good plays, but we didn't execute.

Starting point is 00:11:39 you know, so much of this, Sarah, I think, you know, people are going to try to create like, oh, you know, now there's going to be this rift between Bo and Sean. I don't see that playing out. No, I don't see that being the case either, Cody. I mean, these guys are professionals at the end of the day and they want to win football games at the end of the day. There's a lot at stake for both these guys. I mean, we've talked about it with Sean Payton, you know, his legacy, potentially

Starting point is 00:11:58 becoming the first head coach to win a Super Bowl with two different franchises, yada yada, but for Bo Nix, it's obviously about winning football games. And it's also about becoming the long-term franchise quarterback. of this team. And so it's by whatever means necessary right now that you want success to be happening for this franchise and for this organization because you see that there's just, it's not happening on the field. It's not happening. So somebody's got to take the fall for that. Somebody's got to take the blame for that and it has to be the head coach. And Sean Payton is saying, look, I'm not going to sit here and just let Davis Webb be the reason why everybody's wondering,

Starting point is 00:12:34 while is Bo Nick's regressing? Is the offense just bad? Like he's going to be the one. to say, hey, the ball is in my court now. If we're going to struggle, then you blame me. You know, you can blame me because I'm the one calling plays. And so I think it's a level of accountability. I know that folks are seeing this as there's the other side of it of, well, was the least too short? Like Davis had other opportunities to leave Denver this offseason and they convinced

Starting point is 00:12:58 him to come back. And obviously the OC position and calling plays was a big part of that. I think that there's validity to both sides of that, right? And kind of feeling like, hey, this was not necessarily. necessarily a fair shake. You played against four of the best defenses in the NFL. That's another whole part of the reason, a whole other episode of the show of why maybe Bo has struggled to start the year.

Starting point is 00:13:19 You're playing against some of the best defenses in the NFL right now. So it's not an easy task to just go out there and say, hey, score 30 points, you know? So I think that we oversimplify some things and we overcomplicate others, but how this impacts Bo Nix, I hope it lights a fire in him, Cody. I know we're talking about, you know, in the next segment of the show, we're talking about being a spark for the offense.

Starting point is 00:13:41 I hope this lights a fire in Bo necks. Can you do me a favor here? As we're talking, can you pull up on pro football reference? Can you look at what Bo's numbers were through the first four games of last season, right, going into week five, like in terms of yards, touchdowns, interceptions? Because I want to pinpoint there's a specific difference here for the Broncos and their offense, at least coming into week five here. When you look at it through four weeks, the Broncos are averaging 81 yards per game

Starting point is 00:14:06 on the ground in the run game there. Whereas last year, they were averaging 140, right? They were the third ranked rushing offense at that juncture, going in a week five against Philadelphia. There's a significant difference. And that does impact Bo Nix. And I would say the offensive line has certainly taken a step back

Starting point is 00:14:22 when you talk about the impact of play of Luke Wattenberg, Ben Powers, and even Mike McGlinchy. I feel like the offensive line has had some struggles and some deficiencies. There have been some wide receiver drops. There's been some hesitancy on Bose Knicks. Like, it's not just this one problem. there are dirty hands on the entire operation. So that leads to the big question.

Starting point is 00:14:41 Now, can this type of move here spark the Broncos offense? Peyton taking the play calling reigns back, I think indicates one thing. He's not going to let this just continue. Today's episode of the show is brought to you by our friends over there at Fandul, America's number one sports book. And welcome to the most rewarding NFL season ever, only on Fanduel. How rewarding are we talking? More rewarding than a touchdown with time expiring,

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Starting point is 00:17:11 Thanks for rocking with us here today. Making us your first listen to the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. Also the number one sports podcast network in the country. We appreciate you so much here. Sarah, let's talk about this, right? Because asking the question as to whether or not this can spark the offense, well, when you make a move in terms of play caller,

Starting point is 00:17:26 like we certainly had our gripes and our complaints about Sean Payton from last season in terms of the flow of the offense from time to time. Play calls getting in late. the constant changing of personnel groupings and at times the inability to commit to running the football. That has to change here now with Sean calling plays. And I'm very curious to see if that's exactly what we'll see happening here. Will there be this concerted effort to come out like we saw a couple years ago on Thursday night football against the charges, ironically enough, where they come out and they run the ball and they run it well.

Starting point is 00:17:55 They got away from that second half. They've got to find a way to do it because this is the biggest spark. Now, I asked you previously in the last segment to look up Bo Nix's numbers through the first four games of last. season and he had 860-something yards, seven touchdowns, four interceptions. Right now he's at what, 819, 816 yards passing, five touchdowns and three interceptions. He's not too far off from where he was at this point last year, but the biggest difference is the Broncos are not running the ball well compared to where they were at last year,

Starting point is 00:18:25 where it wasn't great, but at least they had it. Once again, 140 yards per game on the ground going into week five against Philadelphia. That to me is where I look at this state. Spark needs to find its way here in week five against the Chargers. That spark has to come from those backs, right? J.K. Dobbins, RJ Harvey, you need those guys to show up and step up in a big way against the Chargers. And I think Sean Payton understands that because while he hasn't necessarily come out after every game and shown us great disappointment in Davis Webb and his play calling and play sequencing and things like that,

Starting point is 00:18:55 he has expressed disappointment in the running game overall and even just the number of running plays. We've heard him at halftime of games on TV talking about, hey, like we're not running the ball. enough. So I think what Sean is going to clearly do against the LA Charters is emphasize the run and building the passing game off of that, hopefully, because we've talked many times. Sean will use the passing game to let his running game flourish. And that just hasn't been the case this season. You haven't seen that work out in the Broncos favor. So now you got to flip the script. You got to say, hey, the run game has to be the spark for this offense. It has to be the reason why Bo Nix is able to get back on track and why everything just ultimately starts clicking. And it

Starting point is 00:19:34 It could turn out to be a win-win situation for Sean, right? The win initially is keeping Davis Webb and you say, hey, he's going to call plays. Well, what if it doesn't work out? Well, what if it does? And now that it hasn't, now he can kind of swoop in and sort of be the quote-unquote hero for the offense. It's a big win for him. It seems either way. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:19:53 And I think another thing, too, is, you know, Sean now taking over the play calling reins here once again. Not to say he didn't have this authority when Davis was calling it, but now is the head coach where you're in charge of that. I guarantee you the things that we're seeing with the offensive line, the inconsistencies in past protection from Ben Powers, Luke Wattenberg, and Mike McGlinchie, I guarantee you the, I would say the window of tolerance for some of those things might shrink a little bit more because Sean, you know, once again, if Sean's got his hands on it, he doesn't want it to look inefficient.

Starting point is 00:20:23 He doesn't want it to look ugly, though at times since Sean has been the head coach, there have been times where it has been ugly, where it has looked like that specifically. So I think that's one of the bigger things here that we've got to continue to follow going into Sunday's game. We'll hear from Davis on Friday. He'll meet with the media instead of Thursday, as was originally planned because of the whole announcement and the changing of the guard here in terms of the play calling responsibilities. But there is a lot of pressure now. I would even say more so on Sean Payton to be able to get this right because, hey, if you weren't going to be patient with this whole process and there were things that you're like, you know, it's just not where I needed to be. I need to take this back.

Starting point is 00:20:57 All right. Well, what are you going to do to fix those issues? because now that you're calling the plays, you're going to be more responsible for it. It's not Davis Webb's fault anymore. He's not the one calling plays. You are. So there is a challenge here in store for Sean Payton. And we'll see on Sunday if the Broncos can find a way to find a spark offensively because, quite frankly, they need it.

Starting point is 00:21:18 They're going to need it this week. They're going to need it on Thursday night football against the Seattle Seahawks here at two and two. They're not where they wanted to be. But if they want to get to where they want to go, the offense has to figure it out, plain and simple. And what that said, Broncos country did I wrap up. Today's bonus episode, Lockdown Broncos here on the Lockdown Podcast Network. Thanks so much for listening to us, making us your first listen. Hit that subscribe with that follow button so you never miss out on what's going on with your favorite team.

Starting point is 00:21:43 Tomorrow's episode, Sarah and I, we got you covered. We're going to go through our players to watch why Bo Nix is player number one that we've got our eyes on here in Sunday's game. And also, the Broncos' biggest keys against the charters include sinking a ship in Los Angeles, has taken on a lot of water with a patchwork offensive line. get that on tomorrow's episode of the show.

Locked On Broncos - Daily Podcast On The Denver Broncos - STEP IN: Denver Broncos' Sean Payton RETAKES Play-Calling Reins From Davis Webb

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