Rubber, meet road.
The Broncos hadn’t even finished off a decisive, 28-14 win against Carolina on Sunday and coach Sean Payton already had his mind in the future.
He couldn’t put this win, Denver’s fifth in the past six games, to bed fast enough.
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He couldn’t outline his checklist of all the ways his team had to improve loudly enough.
Payton knew what this game against the Panthers was: The next one on the schedule. A game his team absolutely should win. A chance to get his young quarterback into rhythm.
He also knew what it wasn’t: Good for any kind of true measurement about his group’s growth or, really, a fair fight.
In fact, Payton made two things clear after a victory that was not nearly as close or competitive as the final score indicated.
First: He wasn’t wild about the way his team executed against a bad Panthers team he couldn’t help but describe in blunt terms. The list of issues that rankled Payton included another slow start, a pair of fumbles by his wide receivers and a lackluster day running the football.
“I said, ‘We’re going to play in bigger games than this.’” the Broncos coach relayed of his postgame message to his team. “But in bigger games than this, some of those mistakes will cost you. We’ve got to take care of that.”
Second: He and his team are champing at the bit to measure up against Baltimore and Kansas City the next two Sundays.
“We have a big game this week against a much better team,” he said. “A much better team.”
Payton told a story recently about looking at rookie quarterback Bo Nix when the team was losing by three scores against the Los Angeles Chargers and imparting a lesson about one way life is different in the NFL than at Oregon.
“We don’t have any — I’m not going to use a college team name because I don’t want to (offend anybody) — but we don’t have Such-and-Such University on our schedule,” Payton said earlier this month.
Well, this version of the Panthers is as close to Such-and-Such University as it gets at the pro level and Payton wasted no time using the matchup to his advantage.
He wanted to get Nix into a rhythm, so he set about throwing the ball early and often. Payton dialed up 29 passes against 12 run calls in the first half alone and watched Nix operate like he was dicing up Pac-12 defenses rather than the Panthers.
Nix put together easily the shiniest stat line of his young professional career, finishing 27 of 38 for 284 yards and three touchdowns. He was sacked twice, but he also ran for a touchdown, too.
Nix had done some nice things over the first seven games but Denver entered Week 8 as one of the worst passing teams in the NFL by nearly any efficiency metric. Nix had thrown five touchdown passes against five interceptions — then added three TDs to his ledger Sunday alone.
He’d made plays largely outside the …read more
Source:: The Denver Post – Sports
