Denver Broncos head coach Sean Payton on the sideline. Sean Payton is in his first season as Denver Broncos head coach.
ArticlesNFLBy DJ Byrnes on

The Denver Broncos hired former New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton after a disastrous 2022 campaign.

The early returns on Payton’s tenure, however, aren’t great.

The Broncos fell to 1-5 on the season on Thursday night in a 19-8 loss to their AFC West rivals, the Kansas City Chiefs. Quarterback Russell Wilson played one of the worst games of his career, too.

Many NFL observers are speculating that Payton might bench Wilson given the Broncos have a 10-day layoff until they host the Green Bay Packers on Oct. 22.

While that would almost essentially be a waiving the white flag on the season, that might all be all part of the grand plan, according to a new theory floating around social media.

This week, an old appearance of Sean Payton on The Herd with Colin Cowherd resurfaced. In it, Payton called USC Trojans quarterback Caleb Williams a “generational player,” that teams would tank for.

In response, he predicted the NFL would institute an NBA-like lottery system to the draft to ensure that teams couldn’t guarantee their draft spots due to tanking.

Payton wasn’t yet the Broncos coach. But if they were indeed tanking for Williams, it would look a lot like how this season has gone anyway.

The NFL world was quick to react to the past appearance given the new light of the Broncos’ ongoing struggles:

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