Pat Swilling knows what’s coming next. He knows Sean Payton has found the Frank James to his Jesse, the Bonnie to his Clyde. He knows that when he sees Bo Nix, he sees a young man who’ll tear the heart from your chest while wishing you a Merry Christmas.
He knows the AFC is in trouble.
“Let me tell you something: You’re fortunate (in Denver). You’re fortunate,” Swilling, the ex-New Orleans Saints linebacker and five-time Pro Bowler, told me by phone Monday, laughing like a wise uncle.
“Just you wait. Bo Nix will be so much better after this year. And with the (rapport) that he is building with Sean, all of that, I think you guys are just getting started.”
Swilling knows he’s seen this movie before. When he sees the Broncos, 8-5 and a Sunday win against the Colts from sandblasting the franchise’s postseason demons, he sees his beloved Saints from 15-16 years back. When he sees Vance Joseph’s defense, he sees a team too young, and having too much fun, to know that they’re not supposed to be here. He sees an orange and blue version of the brick house Payton and Drew Brees built atop the NFC South, daring the rest of the big bad wolves to blow it down.
“I think Sean sees a little of Brees in him,” Swilling said of Nix. “And I think he thinks he can help him reel it in a little bit. …
“(There’s) going to be a long-standing relationship, I think, between those two. Those two are going to be together for a while.”
Swilling knows a killer coaching job when he sees it. The Broncos opened the season with the 31st-ranked roster in the NFL, according to the wonks at Pro Football Focus. They’re carrying $87.4 million in dead-cap costs ($53 million eaten up by Russell Wilson), per Spotrac. In Nix, they ran out a rookie at QB1 from the jump. Vegas set the preseason over-under at 5.5 wins.
Payton passed that exit three weeks ago by curb-stomping the Falcons. Just like old times.
“They might not make it to a Super Bowl, or win a Super Bowl, this year. But I think in the next year or two, he’s going to have (the Broncos) in a position to do that,” Rickey Jackson, the old Saints’ pass-rushing great and Pro Football Hall of Famer, told me Monday. “I’d give him about three years to do it.”
Even in the AFC West, which is loaded like a Cracker Barrel baked potato? A division that now runs three deep in good coach-QB combinations, with Payton-Nix joining Reid-Mahomes and Harbaugh-Herbert?
“Yeah,” Jackson replied. “You look at Kansas City, they’re beating teams by one or two points. That’s not going to keep happening. … I don’t see anybody dominating everybody. With all those teams, it can go either way on Sundays.”
If it goes the Broncos’ way against Indianapolis this weekend, Payton will have won at least nine games as an NFL coach for the 11th time in 17 seasons.
“Just as a coach, with Sean Payton, you’re supposed to win eight-nine (games), just from his coaching ability. Regardless of who he’s got out there,” Jackson said.
“One thing with Sean, as he showed in the Russell Wilson situation is, he’s going to do it his way. He doesn’t want one man being the team, you know?”
The Broncos opened the season with the youngest roster in the AFC with an average age of 26 years, one month, 19 days, and the third-youngest in the NFL after the Rams and Packers.
If it weren’t for Kevin O’Connell making a Minnesota Miracle out of Sam Darnold and Dan Campbell turning the Lions into a Honolulu Blue killing machine, Payton would’ve wrapped up the NFL’s Coach of the Year honors by now. With a bow.
“And that says a lot about Sean Payton,” Swilling said. “I think it’s his ability to coach, his ability to make good decisions, by getting rid of Wilson and getting rid of some other veterans and bringing in other guys. …
“It’s not just coaching (this year’s) personnel. It was having an idea a year ago, to be able to see where he wanted to be now. He knew where he was going a year ago. … ‘Get me some cap room, give me some room to do some things,’ and look at what’s happened, man. He’s a winner.”
Second verse. Same as the first.
“You know what makes (Payton) go?” Swilling laughed. “Sean Payton is one of the few guys that can command the room. And it doesn’t matter what superstars are in the room, he will jump their (expletives). That’s the difference — that’s what’s missing in today’s sports. Nobody else wants to criticize the superstars. … If you’re on his team, you better come to work every day, because he demands that. I like that about him.”
When it comes to Payton, as Saints fans don paper bags again, a Bayou legend knows this, too. And only too well.
“I know,” Swilling sighed, “that I wish we had him again.”
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