The Penner-Walton group has owned the Broncos for less than a year, and they’re already adapting to their second head coach. Penner seems to be confident that they have found the right coach to lead the organization, in one very significant respect.
Penner has realized that Payton is constantly teaching.
“I think Sean has been tremendous,” Penner told reporters on Wednesday. “He came in and right away changed the tone in the building. He sets very high expectations. Everybody knows that they are going to be held accountable. At the same time, he’s a great teacher. [He’s] always wanting to teach.”
Penner later said that he has been most surprised — and pleasantly — by Payton’s non-stop teaching.
“I knew that he had the experience,” Penner said. “I knew that he was going to bring the offensive mind and a number of other things, but that teaching where he really takes moments consistently throughout the day — and that’s with his staff and others in the building. It will be in the cafeteria, and it will be in the field. That constant teaching was something that I hadn’t expected.”
Most recently, that attitude has manifested itself in Payton’s candid comments regarding the failure of the league to teach players properly about the expectations of the gambling policy. Penner was asked about Payton’s use of strong terms like “shameful” and “embarrassing” when discussing with Jarrett Bell of USA Today the suspension of defensive end Eyioma Uwazurike and the inherent hypocrisies of the league’s relationship with gambling.
“Obviously, this is a league matter,” Penner said. “I think Sean wanted to show support for a young player who is a good, young man who has made some mistakes. At the same time for our coaching staff and others around the league, everybody is adapting to this new policy and what the consequences are. That can be frustrating when you lose a player at this point in the season. This really gets to the integrity of the game and all of us — owners, coaches, front office and players — we have to do the right thing and that is what we are focused on.”
The right thing for the Broncos to focus on is winning games, and ideally to return to the postseason for the first time since winning Super Bowl 50. Payton’s habit of constantly teaching might not deliver a playoff berth immediately, but it is laying the foundation for Denver to compete, sooner than later, in a stacked division of a loaded conference.
