Sean Payton handed the Denver play sheet to Davis Webb in February. Eight months and four games later, he wants it back.
“We’ll make a change offensively,” Payton told reporters Thursday. “I’ll call the plays.” He said he reached the decision Monday, after a Week 4 road loss to San Francisco dropped the Broncos to 2-2.
The Numbers That Forced His Hand
Denver has scored 13 first-half points all season, the fewest in the NFL. The Broncos rank 29th in rushing at 81.3 yards per game, 27th in points per game, 27th in total yards and 24th in yards per play. Both of their losses came with 14 or fewer offensive points, starting with a 31-10 beating in Kansas City in Week 1.
Bo Nix has completed 60 percent of his passes for 819 yards with five touchdowns, three interceptions and an 80.4 passer rating, a pace that would produce career lows across the board. His Week 4 air yards per attempt was 4.6, and 29 of his 42 throws that day traveled either behind the line of scrimmage or less than 10 yards downfield.
Payton did not soften the diagnosis. “This isn’t championship football, what we see,” he said.
Webb Keeps the Title and the Sideline
Webb remains the offensive coordinator. He is a first-year coordinator who was promoted from quarterbacks coach after Denver fired Joe Lombardi in January, having added the offensive pass game coordinator title in 2025. He will stay heavily involved in game planning and will be next to Payton on game days, which is why the demotion reads as unofficial rather than announced.
Payton was careful with him in public. “I think Davis is very fast, very quick and understands what we’re doing,” he said, and he volunteered that Webb is headed for a head-coaching job someday. NFL Network and ESPN reported the shift before Payton confirmed it, with ESPN describing a more collaborative arrangement than a clean takeover.
Worth remembering what Payton gave up in the first place. He called plays for most of his 20 seasons as an NFL head coach, and he had already been running Denver’s weekly game plan. Webb was handed the headset but never the whole operation.
This Is the Right Call and Also an Admission
Delegating the play sheet was the experiment. Reclaiming it after four games is Payton conceding the experiment failed faster than he expected, and he deserves credit for saying so in October instead of waiting until the Broncos are 4-7 and the answer is obvious to everyone.
It also strips away his last layer of cover. There is no coordinator left to absorb the blame. If Denver is still scoring single digits before halftime in November, that is Payton’s call sheet and Payton’s quarterback, and the conversation moves from Webb to whether the Broncos have a Bo Nix problem.
The schedule hands him a soft start. Denver travels to play the 0-4 Chargers on Sunday as a 3.5-point favorite, then hosts Seattle on a Thursday night in Week 6. “We’re 2-2,” Payton said, “but we feel like there’s more there.” He just made himself the one person responsible for proving it.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.