Of the lads making the 2023 PFT record of high 10 head coaches, just one didn’t coach in any respect in 2022. He nonetheless did sufficient throughout his years earlier than 2022 to land at No. 6.

Sean Payton — offensive skilled, Bill Parcells disciple, quarterback whisperer, and Super Bowl XLIV champion — will attempt to add one other label to his soccer story: Russell Wilson fixer.

That’s the problem for Payton in 2023, the factor that may cement his standing or jeopardize it. Then once more, if Wilson doesn’t enhance this 12 months, likelihood is Payton received’t be blamed. Chances are, if he doesn’t enhance this 12 months, Wilson can be gone for 2024, given the assure construction in his contract. And Payton may have a brand new quarterback.

Can Payton salvage Wilson? The coach’s historical past means that he can. That he’ll determine learn how to play to Wilson’s strengths, learn how to do the issues Wilson does nicely. How to keep away from asking Wilson to do the issues he doesn’t do nicely. How to place high quality assist round him, together with an improved offensive line.

Payton wanted a 12 months off to reset partly as a result of he spends as a lot if no more time than every other coach trying to find something and every part that may make a distinction for every sport, from an concept for a play that may ship a landing to a nuance that extends a second-quarter drive in a mid-October sport that has no obvious affect on the result of sport however meaning a lot. He searches and searches and searches. When he finds one thing, he incorporates it, anticipating his gamers to regulate and to execute.

If they do, nice. If not, Payton will discover another person to do it.

That brings us again to Wilson. Can he do the issues Payton expects him to do? If so, the Broncos might make issues fascinating in a really aggressive division and convention. If not, Payton possible will embark on the identical type of search that led him to Drew Brees again in 2006.