Sean Payton’s Broncos 2025 do not only target AFC West. “I talked about a super bowl.

Englewood, Colorado – Sean Payton was talking about construction.

Sitting in the middle of his team’s cafeteria last week, in the middle of a cacophony of conversations of buzzing players and clandestinely of catering utensils, the head coach of Denver Broncos has set up three years of data on injury, crossing the signatures of the free agent of the team, evaluating the performance of the early training camp for the 2025 The evolution of quarter-arre in surface.

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At one point, he stopped and motioned towards a window. Outside, the point of view neglected a massive construction project transforming the headquarters of the formation of Broncos into a peak complex. A gargantuan crane slipped on a concrete and steel base. Far behind, decades of earth and rock were seated in a mountainous pile and moved on hectares of adjacent land.

“We are a bit like this new installation,” said Payton. “It happens.”

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There was of course an underlying message. And it was not really so subtle. Payton broncos are future in his third season. Even if you have not yet seen him against an opponent in 2025, it is almost visible in his chest when he speaks. He swells with energy and confidence, supported by key veteran additions This offseason, a trendy quarter-arre love affair towards his first years with Drew Brees, a defense built to carry victories, and a young group of players in a graph of depth which prospered before the last year of a salary cleavage of Russell Wilson.

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“I like this team,” said Payton. “”A plot. “”

But how much a lot?

Well, the coach who has long embraced the anti-hype BILLLLS anti-hype currency to “eat cheese”, served in private part of his own training camp.

“I talked about a super bowl,” said Payton.

“Since when?” I asked.

“The first meeting I had with them,” he said. “First meeting.”

For a team that has not won AFC West title since the 2015 season – and still has to go through the Kansas City chiefs to take up this crown – that’s what you call leaning path To start a season. Of course, there is also a difference between looking at difficult expectations compared to the odiously obnulating on your skis. Although the outside world can be skeptical about the fact that Payton found the right distinction between these two at the start of the training camp, it is clearly not.

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Instead, he looks through a list that has a layer in layers of veteran leaders and young directors – exploiting the internal growth of his first three recovery classes, then accentuating it with imported pillars of experienced free agents from this last offseason. The chief among the last additions? Three players chosen in the first 74 choices of the draft that is already suitable for coaches staff that they will play key roles this season, including the corner half Jahdae Barron, the Ballon RJ Harvey and the Large Pat Bryant. By their side? Three additions as a free agent who have already injected concrete into the fundamental foundations of the first practices: the second Dre Greenlaw, the security Talanoa Hufanga and the tight winger Evan Engram.

“When you bring some of these leaders, we are talking about who went to the championship matches – which were that Championship game – There is confidence here which is very different from that when you and I sat here a year ago, “said Payton about the signatures of Denver’s free agent.” We were in a return a year ago. We were young. But a young team can be very dangerous because she doesn’t know what she doesn’t know. »»

“We saw a young Seahawks team simply tear the league [a decade ago]”, Payton continued.” We have the confidence in some of those guys who played last year, and we took the major success of the Russell Wilson agreement a year ago and survived and did not let it be an excuse. “

Payton stopped.

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“It’s a good football team.”

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If he is right about the place where all this is going on – and that Payton’s confidence is certainly convincing – it would be a remarkable turnaround since he hired in January 2023. Like anyone who could not forget, he took control of a list that aligned 86 different players during the 2022 season and experienced an appearance of 53 years of opening which missed 130 games of the injury. Denver’s offensive was excruciating and his defense had been pushed into the ground by the end of the season. Pro Football Focus assessed the level of broncos talents near the bottom of the league and the only way they could escape burning criticism on Wilson’s extension was on a rocket chartered in Mars. And the fans base? If they did not spat the battery acid of the stands during the home matches, a large part left early to protest against what Denver had become.

Sometimes turning it around it seemed impossible. It was a fact that the ratings narrated the Broncos before the 2024 season, projecting the total of the team’s victories at 5.5 victories. It was a prediction that Rangled Payton to the point that during my last visit to the offseason, he whistled: “The next time I win only five games will be the first [expletive]-Ang time I only win five games.

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And it was then that Payton was in a GOOD The atmosphere of the camp last year, insisting that he had an exact quarter-Arrière for which he had included in Nix, not to mention a defense that was promising, as well as a mixture of recruits and second-year players which, according to him, could make a difference in 2024. Ten victories of the regular season later and the first appearance of the team of the Playoff team since the locking of the 2015 season.

Now, when you walk on the ground of the siege this summer, the full of hope that flows through the organization is less like what it dribbles with a tap and more as someone has opened a fire mouth. The team’s defense is responsible to the point of being one of the best in the league, anchored by the defensive player reigning from the Pat Freast II year to the corner and a secondary that has the potential to materialize as the most elite unit of defenders of the league.

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Meanwhile, Denver’s offensive completed the skills positions with two players who have the burst of Payton at Harvey and Engram. They potentially solve the ball carrier and the end places with the possibilities of gap and flexibility that Payton has been looking for since he landed in Denver. These are two additions which are a will, as well as the overall state of the list remained in just two seasons, which explains how Payton and the director general George Paton have met since the rally in 2023.

And Nix? The player who could be the greatest success in the center of all this before 2025 is in books? Do not start Payton, unless you have time to kill. The essentials – he does not see one in the second year to come for his quarter.

“It will be one of the four or five best quarters of the league over the next two years,” said Payton. “This is what we see at the moment. He doesn’t take bags. He has an exceptional arm force. … he launched the longest ball – [67] Air courses against Cincinnati. He can run. He can throw amusing bodies of bodies.

Without a doubt, Payton sees the growth of Nix and the arrival of a potentially elite defense as the two pillars that will support the confidence in which he asks his team to rely.

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“The short-term goal is to win the division,” he said. “But it’s a team capable of winning the Super Bowl. I trained six teams that I thought I could win the Super Bowl. Some went to the championship matches, some in the playoffs.”

“It is my seventh team who, I think, to that.”