Denver Broncos head coach Sean Payton was “pissed off” about 14 things after his team won their preseason opener against the San Francisco 49ers.
That list has now grown, although the leader of the Broncos is making it clear this isn’t all about football.
Payton’s team was back on the practice field on Tuesday after having Monday off. Leaving Santa Clara after the 30-9 victory wasn’t exactly the smoothest process.
“We altered the schedule a little bit. And partly because of when we got home. We got home a little later on Saturday night than expected. We had some plane issues,” Payton told the media.
The Broncos didn’t return to the Mile High City until Sunday morning, so Sean Payton knew he had to change things up a little bit.
“The concern for me always is if we get back past 2:00 a.m., all the sleep studies give you the information on the days it takes to recover from that,” Payton said.
Tuesday was a ramp up practice for the Broncos, they’ll go again on Wednesday, then another joint practice on Thursday. That will be with the Arizona Cardinals before playing them on Saturday night at Empower Field at Mile High.
As for those 14 things Payton was ticked off about, he wouldn’t give specifics, but elaborated more as his answer went on.
“There are a lot of different things, none of which I’m going to go through now. When you take your first road trip and you’re seeing it through my eyes, there’s certain notes you make,” Payton said.
Payton decided to continue, even though he said he wasn’t going to.
“It could be sidelines, it could be hotel, it could be 2:00 a.m. there’s a festival outside the hotel. It could be the travel, it could be a number of things that you want to clean up,” Payton said.
And as mentioned, based on the plane troubles, the list for Sean Payton is now getting longer. Clearly this wasn’t the best few days in terms of his expectations.
“I’m not going to go through all 14 of them. There’s probably 17 by the time I got home. All of which can be cleaned up and easily corrected. They weren’t necessarily game related if that makes any sense,” Payton said.
Sean Payton said the Broncos have “a lot of interns” and everyone is getting on the same page.
What exactly went wrong specifically, we’ll probably never know, but let’s hope the Broncos next road trip — a date with the Saints for preseason game No. 3 — goes a little smoother than this past one.