Denver Broncos ownership sounds off on Nathaniel Hackett’s struggles
The honeymoon phase of being the new owners of the Denver Broncos didn’t last overly long, if at all, for the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group. After the NFL approved the new ownership group at an American sports record $4.65 billion sale, the new owners of the team were basically thrust into the rigors of an NFL regular season and a struggling team, which pretty much nobody expected.
The team is currently in London and set to face off against the Jacksonville Jaguars in a Week 8 battle between two struggling 2-5 squads, but the expectations are still obviously very high from Broncos Country and the new owners of the team. We’ve heard from just about everyone involved with the organization this week, including general manager George Paton and now owner Greg Penner.
Penner is obviously new to NFL ownership, but it hasn’t taken him long at all to discover just how passionate and “loud” the Broncos fan base is.
Denver Broncos owner Greg Penner sounds off on struggles of the team, head coach Nathaniel Hackett
"“I support Nathaniel and really want to see him succeed,” Penner said (via DenverBroncos.com) “He’s obviously a first-time head coach. There’s a lot of new things to get in place. He and I talk every week, and I love talking with him about the game. He’s obviously incredibly passionate. But he knows we’re not performing at the level that we expect to. But we’ve got high expectations for him for the second half.You have to have a level of patience,” Penner said. “We have a lot of new pieces and we’ve got to get those pieces working together. But at the same time, you have to have a sense of urgency around [saying], we need to win now. And we’ve been in a lot of close games that we could’ve won.”"
These are absolutely huge words from Penner, whose comments here seem to indicate that reports of Nathaniel Hackett potentially being fired after this game in London — win or lose, but maybe especially lose — were massively overblown. Looking at things in the big picture, the new ownership group doesn’t likely want their names to be attached to the list of first-year coaches that were fired in the middle of their first season with a new team.
They also likely don’t want to set a precedent that any struggles for anyone new in the head coach’s seat will be met with an immediate pulling of the plug. Nathaniel Hackett has been anything but perfect in his first seven games as an NFL head coach. To some, he hasn’t even really been good. With that being said, the Broncos are clearly going to afford Hackett some patience.
George Paton gave him a vote of confidence. The ownership group, while being firm about the team’s need to win as well as being compassionate toward the fans and the players, isn’t likely to step in during their first year with the team and just start firing coaches.
Broncos fans desperately and understandably want to win, and they want it now. Even at the expense of Nathaniel Hackett. We’ll see how things play out in London, but the Broncos obviously need to win this game. Regardless of whether or not the ownership group and general manager are currently preaching patience, what the Broncos are doing right now is not working.
Winning is the only thing that matters right now. The Broncos have to start converting some of these close games into victories, or changes are going to have to be made. For now, it seems like patience is a virtue the Denver Broncos will choose to enact.