With the Denver Broncos primed to start training camp on Friday, we had a few early acclimation practices this week where the media got to talk with members of the team with Head Coach Sean Payton being one of them. There were a couple of things he mentioned that really stood out to me.
The biggest being how he heaped praise upon new Broncos’ wide receiver Jaylen Waddle this week. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a coach refer to a player’s ability as ‘walking on water’ until yesterday.
“There are certain prototypes at every position, and then there is that one where if they can walk on water… He’s one of those players relative to how he runs, how he stops and his competitive instincts,” Payton said on Wednesday. “There is a clear vision for him. I think the knowledge we had with all the other pieces relative to a trade like that was important.”
While Waddle is clearly not Jesus out there, what Payton clearly trying to imply is that Waddle is so dang good at what he does that he doesn’t really have to coach him. All Payton and his staff need to do is create opportunities for Waddle to break the big plays.
Last season, this offense lacked consistency through the whole 60 minutes of a game. Whether it was the run game flailing about or the passing game misfiring for large stretches of the game, Waddle figures to help provide stability and consistency to help both find outlets. Defenses will be forced to account for Waddle, which should open things up for other wide receivers and also running lanes that would otherwise have stacked boxes.
No player will benefit more from this addition than Bo Nix. He had to single-handedly put this team on his back in comeback after comeback last year. Hopefully we only have to see him do that a couple of times in the bigger games.
