Denver Broncos head coach Sean Payton answers questions during a press conference at Broncos Park in Centennial on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
Denver Broncos head coach Sean Payton answers questions during a press conference at Broncos Park in Centennial on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
The Davis Webb play-calling experience in Denver lasted all of four games.
Head coach Sean Payton met with Webb on Monday and informed the 31-year-old that he was taking back play-calling duties beginning this week.
“I’ll call the plays,” Payton affirmed to reporters Thursday in an impromptu news conference after the Broncos finished practice.
The wholesale change and Payton’s explanation for it after practice represented a dramatic shift in approach and tone from an offseason brimming with confidence and seeming conviction in the move. It draws to a close, at least for the foreseeable future, Payton’s foray into being more of a CEO-type head coach and turning play-calling over to a highly touted young assistant he thought would take the Broncos’ offense to another level.
Instead, Webb and the Broncos struggled as an offensive whole out of the gate — albeit against four of the best defenses in football — and now Payton is back in the seat he’s occupied for nearly his entire head-coaching tenure.
Payton, who had play-calling duties taken from him by Jim Fassel when he was a young coach in New York, said he still holds Webb in high regard.
“I said this to Davis the other day talking to him: I’ve done this long enough that I know when I have a future head coach,” Payton said. “He’s going to be one. Like, all the things that are hard to find.”
This, though, is a setback for Webb. Payton and Broncos players had high hopes for what the former quarterback would bring to the offense right out of the gate when Payton first turned the play sheet over to him this winter. Payton announced at the NFL Scouting Combine in late February that Webb would call plays in Denver after Webb’s promotion to offensive coordinator was finalized shortly after the Broncos’ AFC Championship Game loss to New England.
Payton said Thursday what he’s said over the past eight months: He made the change to Webb because he thought it would put the Broncos in the best position to win games this fall.
Eight months and a sluggish first four games later, that is no longer the case.
“As the head coach, it’s no different than evaluating your right tackle, your slot receiver, your running backs,” Payton said. “Something to change it up. Ultimately, I used that word, the collective, yesterday. When I met with the offense, it’s about buttoning up all the little things that keep you from sustaining drives.”
Denver has scored just 13 first-half points over four games and, at the de facto quarter mark, ranks No. 27 in yards per game and scoring.
Payton also told offensive players about the change Monday but sidestepped questions twice — once after the Broncos’ 24-14 loss to San Francisco and again Wednesday — about Webb’s future calling plays.
Payton made it clear that while game-planning and preparation during the week will continue to be a collaborative offensive staff effort, he is now calling plays. This isn’t a job share. He will be the voice in quarterback Bo Nix’s ear over the headset and he insisted that the things he didn’t like about his own performance last year — being decisive, bold, quick with calls into Nix and more — will be rectified going forward despite his musings earlier this year about how many good play-callers out there are his age.
“Well, I think I’m still one of them,” Payton said, adding that he’ll be “fast” and that he thinks that, “part of it is having that balance of proper sleep and all of that.”
Payton said that Webb was “fantastic” when they met Monday and he informed Webb of the demotion. Several players after practice on Thursday said they collectively felt responsible for Webb losing the job and that, regardless of who is calling plays, it was up to them to lift the offense out of its current funk.
“All I would say is it’s on us,” tight end Evan Engram said. “It doesn’t matter who’s calling plays, we have to go out and execute. There’s no coaches out there on the field with us. Obviously Sean is one of the greats. He’s been that.
“We just have to go execute no matter what.”
Engram is particularly close with Webb because the New York Giants drafted them together in 2017, Engram in the first round and Webb in the third. He was reluctant to go into much detail about Webb’s reaction to the news.
Offensive coordinator Davis Webb of the Denver Broncos reacts to a penalty called against his unit during the second quarter against the Jacksonville Jaguars at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver, Colorado on Sunday, September 20, 2026. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
Offensive coordinator Davis Webb of the Denver Broncos reacts to a penalty called against his unit during the second quarter against the Jacksonville Jaguars at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver, Colorado on Sunday, September 20, 2026. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
“He’s about the team, that’s all I’ll say,” Engram said of Webb. “We’re all about the team and about putting a better product on the field. It’s all a collaborative thing. … It’s a surprise that we’re not playing well. That’s where the surprise is. We have to be better.”
Part of what Webb did after taking over the offense this winter was overhaul not only formations and concepts within Payton’s general playbook, but also tweak terminology to streamline the process for Nix and the offensive players. Payton said he’d already adjusted some of the practice and meeting set-ups and said terminology will be an ongoing process.
“I said to the assistants, what these guys learned, I can adjust and learn,” Payton said. “Now, there might be something where I want to call it this and they’ll learn it. But the things that have been tweaked relative to certain formations and calls, that’s the easy part.”
The hard part for now really rests with Webb, who was a finalist for multiple head coaching jobs in the previous cycle and had chances to join other teams in a play-calling role for the 2026 season.
Along the way, though, in the two weeks after the Broncos’ season ended four points shy of the Super Bowl, Webb met with general manager George Paton and owner and CEO Greg Penner, among others. He was interested in staying. The decision became easy, he said, when Payton offered him the chance to call plays.“I didn’t really know what the situation was going to be for me,” Webb said in June. “But, I mean, I pretty much signed immediately whenever they offered that.”
Now that part of his job is gone. The future, Payton said, is still very bright for Webb. In the meantime, though, he will deal with the inevitable sting of this move.
So will players who were excited for Webb, too. Quarterback Bo Nix supported Webb getting the play-calling duties from the start and repeatedly said over the offseason that he was excited for what they would do together. After Sunday’s loss, Nix, off to his worst start statistically in three years as a pro, once again went to Webb’s defense.
“I’m real confident in him,” Nix said. “When you look at the overall landscape, we’ve played four of the top teams in the league. Not easy for a first-time OC, as young as he is, to go against some of the — quite frankly — the best teams in the league. He’s definitely going to continue to put us in the right spots. …
“We’ve got to continue to help him and execute and, as players, have to put him in a better spot.”
Payton on Thursday, when asked about Nix’s reaction, acknowledged that, “everyone is a little disappointed because you feel like you let one of your teammates down. That’s the human part of it. That’s our game.”
Now, Payton, Webb, Nix and the rest of the Broncos offensive staff will try to get the unit on track Sunday against the winless Los Angeles Chargers.
Denver’s first four opponents this fall, whom Webb called plays against, currently rank second (Jacksonville), third (San Francisco), tied for sixth (Kansas City), and tied for ninth (Los Angeles Rams) in scoring defense so far this season. The next three are No. 24 (Chargers), No. 5 (Seattle) and No. 29 (Arizona).
“I just felt like we needed the change right now,” Payton said.