Sean Pay­ton has to stop coach­ing the team he wants and coach the team he has.

When look­ing at the Bron­cos’ offen­sive issues in the open­er, those includ­ed the line, run­ning back, receivers and … the coordinator?

When Pay­ton cut Rus­sell Wil­son in March, eat­ing $85 mil­lion in dead mon­ey, it sent an unmis­tak­able mes­sage that the quar­ter­back was the prob­lem. But are we sure it wasn’t the play-caller he left behind?

In Wilson’s 15 starts last sea­son, the Bron­cos aver­aged 21.7 points, 329.7 yards, 5.13 yards per play and 233.8 net pass­ing yards per game. In the three games with him benched and ditched, the Bron­cos have aver­aged 16.6 points, 277 yards, 4.26 yards per play and 194 yards passing.

Begin­ning Sun­day, Pay­ton needs to start show­ing why dis­patch­ing Wil­son made sense. It is known that they clashed pro­fes­sion­al­ly. Pay­ton wants an on-time, in-rhythm offense, not an attack based on street­ball plays that are not sustainable.

He is not wrong. But can he prove he was right?

Every­thing about Payton’s resume sug­gests he is capa­ble of doing so. But we haven’t seen it. It reminds me of my days cov­er­ing coach Mike Shana­han. The debate raged as the Bron­cos cap­tured back-to-back Super Bowl titles: Was it because of the play­ers or the system?

Shana­han post­ed a 7–1 post­sea­son record with John Elway as his quar­ter­back on teams that fea­tured Hall of Famers Ter­rell Davis, Shan­non Sharpe and Gary Zim­mer­man. His play­off record with­out Elway? A sober­ing 1–5 in Den­ver and Wash­ing­ton with zero vic­to­ries from a draft­ed quar­ter­back. He had his Bo Nix in Jay Cut­ler and couldn’t make it work.

Trans­la­tion: A coach can be a mas­ter­mind — and Pay­ton and Shana­han deserve this title — and not win with­out a star quar­ter­back and plen­ty of tal­ent around him.

Three games with­out Wil­son is a micro-sam­ple size but can­not be dis­missed. The Bron­cos have looked worse with­out him in Jar­rett Stidham’s two starts and Nix’s debut.

Wil­son will like­ly watch Sun­day from the side­line, his 35-year-old body strug­gling with a calf injury that has lin­gered for six weeks. His age and declin­ing skills offer sup­port for Payton’s deci­sion to cut him.

But Pay­ton must demon­strate he is capa­ble of mak­ing the pieces fit. It starts with patience. The Bron­cos offense is not a movie on Net­flix. He can’t skip to the good parts. There are times when it looks like he is call­ing a game for Drew Brees, Alvin Kama­ra, Michael Thomas and Jim­my Gra­ham. He wants to go fast. He wants to get it all back.

But “Go Bo Go” won’t work. Not yet.

For starters, Nix is start­ing his sec­ond game. He is the plant that needs to be watered, nur­tured. There is no sun­lamp avail­able to accel­er­ate his growth. Payton’s game plan must reflect that Nix is a rook­ie, some­thing he nev­er dealt with, save for one start, in his pre­vi­ous 16 sea­sons as a head coach. Evolv­ing togeth­er is crit­i­cal for Payton’s suc­cess and Nix’s development.

Pay­ton has won with under­whelm­ing sig­nal-callers, going unde­feat­ed with Ted­dy Bridge­wa­ter (5–0) in 2019 and 9–3 with Jameis Win­ston (5–2) and Taysom Hill (4–1) in 2021. His scheme has shown the abil­i­ty to be quarterback-proof.

The chal­lenges in Den­ver are more com­pli­cat­ed. Not only is he break­ing in Nix, but he lacks weapons. This is where there is room for Pay­ton to show cre­ativ­i­ty. Pay­ton is not a coach set in his ways, using a flip phone and watch­ing reel-to-reel film. He stud­ies trends and ana­lyt­ics and under­stands what works in the league.

Adding pre-snap motion could help goose the offense. With play­ers not con­sis­tent­ly win­ning their one-on-ones, the onus falls on Pay­ton to cre­ate mis­match­es through eye can­dy. In the open­er, the Bron­cos had the league’s sec­ond-low­est pre-snap motion rate at 21%.

Even in heavy per­son­nel, it would be a wel­come sight to see move­ment behind the line of scrim­mage even if it just amount­ed to cre­at­ing more man and zone indi­ca­tors in cov­er­age for Nix.

And Pay­ton must resist falling in love with the pass. The goal should be to keep Nix around 30 attempts. Stick with the run. Win the field posi­tion game. Let Justin Fields lose with a crit­i­cal turnover.

The Bron­cos offense was a mess against Seat­tle with a lot of coach­es and play­ers pick­ing a bad day to have a bad day. It was on the road, it was loud, it was the first game.

Those are all valid rea­sons, but with­out improve­ment Sun­day against the Steel­ers they will look like excus­es. Pay­ton nev­er lacks con­fi­dence. He has made a liv­ing mak­ing in-game adjust­ments and win­ning on the headsets.

This is the sec­ond chap­ter of his career. He want­ed it with­out Wil­son. It’s time to show he can suc­ceed with­out him.

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