At the NFL owners meeting this past week, head coach Sean Payton was pretty clear about his opinion of bringing in Miami receiver Jaylen Waddle.
“Obviously we are excited,” he said, noting the long process of getting the deal finalized after first looking into the trade during the season. “He is explosive. I think if you asked me the single biggest thing that I think he does well is he’s extremely fast and he stops fast. He can sink his hips in transition and then the other thing that came up time
and time again is how competitive he is.”
Payton added that everything is important when looking at trade of “this magnitude” and he consulted withe people he is close to — such as Teddy Bridgewater and Nick Saban — who could speak to “everything” when it came to Waddle’s contributions to the team.
“When it comes to Waddle’s all the other stuff, it was 10, 10, 10, 10, 10,” Payton said. “So I think obviously it will help us.”
And in our SBNation reacts poll, it appears Broncos Country believes that too.
After the trade for Waddle, speculation about trading other receivers such as Marvin Mims, Jr., or Troy Franklin got a lot of attention.
But GM George Paton quieted that talk pretty quickly when he said they are happy with the current room.
“We really like those pieces, and they’re all going to help us,” Paton said. “They’ve all helped us up to now. We’re seven, eight [players] deep. We really like it, so why would we build up this room and then trade someone right now?”
Payton was more nuanced in his answer about being comfortable with the team at this point.
“I never feel good. We have the draft coming up and we are excited about that,” he said. “The point is, though, you have to apply some patience and have a good plan. We recognize where we are at. We understand exactly where we are at with Bo’s contract, our team.”
But the mistake most teams make, Payton added, is trying to win the day rather than the season.
“The mistake that two-thirds of the teams make is trying to win the day. Win the draft day, win the hiring cycle day and win the free agency day,” he said. “We are interested in winning. That’s why our fanbase is extremely important to us, but we are going to do what we think is best for our team to be better when this puzzle is finished, at the end of call it June. Then what do we look like at that point?”
