This Post is Brought to you by our friends at Havokk Coffee. For those that run towards the chaos – not from it
The Denver Broncos’ Sean Payton is supposed to be one of the best head coaches in the NFL.
And he is. There is absolutely no question about that. he has been one of the best coaches for a long, long time. If the Browns announced in the next five minutes that they had hired Sean Payton as their head coach, then it would be a glorious day in Cleveland.
But at the same time, the two local coaches from the New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, completely outsmarted and outcoached Payton from start to finish. He made they made Payton look silly, which is why New England one 10–7 in the AFC championship game on Sunday and is headed to the Super Bowl while the Broncos are left behind to answer what happened.
Indeed, for everything that the Broncos tried to do, especially offensively, the Patriots had an answer for it.
Why Payton refused to take a short field goal early in the game that would’ve made it 10-0 and instead tried to go for it on fourth down, is mind-boggling. If Peyton didn’t know that the storm was coming in, and that the fuel conditions would deteriorate, and you needed to score early as much as you possibly could, then he ought to be ashamed of himself. That storm may have looked as if it cane up out of nowhere, but it didn’t. This isn’t magic fairy dust, this is meteorology. It’s called a Doppler radar.
And win the Patriots needed to take a field goal, they did. that’s the difference between a winning decision by a winning coach and a losing decision by a losing coach.
But the biggest slap in the face to Payton was when, on the last real play of the game as the Patriots had the ball and needed to get a first down any way they could to run out the clock and seal the deal, they did not run the ball up the middle, handing it off to a running back, as everybody thought they would. Instead, McDaniels had quarterback Drake Maye run a quarterback keeper around left end and he was wide open to get the first down. Game, set, match.
Again, Vrabel was working with the Browns as a consultantduring the 2024 season. If I were Brown’s owner Jimmy Haslam, I would’ve done everything under my power to try to entice him to stay — as the new head coach. The Browns didn’t do that, and Vrabel went to New England and took his old team to the Super Bowl.
Good luck to the Patriots, especially those two Ohio guys, those two local guys. We will be rooting like crazy for you.
Steve King
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