Sean Payton says Russell Wilson was dealing with some of the 'worst coaching' in NFL history last season

Russell Wilson took a lot of heat for his poor performance during the 2022 NFL season. But new Denver Broncos head coach Sean Payton says the Pro Bowl quarterback shouldn’t be shouldering all of the blame.

In an interview with USA Today, Payton unleashed on the Broncos previous coaching staff, led by former head coach Nathaniel Hackett. While he didn’t dismiss Wilson from all of the blame, he said it hardly all fell on the quarterback.

“Oh, man,” Payton said. “There’s so much dirt around that. There’s 20 dirty hands, for what was allowed, tolerated in the fricking training rooms, the meeting rooms. The offense. I don’t know Hackett. A lot of people had dirt on their hands. It wasn’t just Russell. He didn’t just flip. He still has it. This B.S. that he hit a wall? Shoot, they couldn’t get a play in. They were 29th in the league in pre-snap penalties on both sides of the ball.”

Wilson threw just 16 touchdown passes during the 2022 season, the lowest total of his career. He also completed just 60.5% of his passes, the worst rate he’s owned since entering the NFL.

Unsurprisingly, the Broncos finished with a 5-12 record and had one of the worst offensive teams in the league. Payton attributes a lot of Denver’s failures from the 2022 season on a horrendous staff.

“They can only beat the (expletive) out of you so much. But everybody’s got a little stink on their hands. It’s not just Russell. It was a (poor) offensive line. It might have been one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the NFL. That’s how bad it was.”

The history of the NFL might be a stretch. There have been a lot of terrible coaches to occupy a sideline over the course of the league’s history. But it will be interesting to see what type of improvement the Broncos make under a new regime.

Payton is known as one of the best offensive minds in the game. His ingenuity should offset some of the issues the Broncos faced last fall.

Plus, Payton still has plenty of faith in Wilson, a nine-time Pro Bowler and Super Bowl champion.

“He’s still got gas left in the tank,” Payton said of Wilson.

Despite last year’s struggles, there’s a lot of optimism surrounding the Broncos in 2023. The arrival of Payton — and departure of that horrendous coaching staff from last season — are big reasons why.