Broncos coach Sean Payton shockingly omitted from head coach power rankings

The Denver Broncos have one of the best head coaches in the NFL in Sean Payton, but some people are shockingly low on the Broncos head man. It's just confusing, and the team's 2023 season should be looked at as an amazing coaching job by Payton, who drug a historically bad defense and a bottom-10 QB to an 8-9 record.

But for some reason, people are still not thinking highly enough of Sean Payton. PFF rolled out their top-10 returning head coaches for 2024, and Payton is nowhere to be found. The likes of Andy Reid, Sean McVay, and Kyle Shanahan are deservingly on the list.

However, while you can argue that a handful of coaches are better than Sean Payton, how is it possible to have someone like Kevin Stefanski or Sean McDermott on the list above Payton? PFF somehow ranked both coaches above Payton, and it's just flat-out wrong. Don't get me wrong; both Stefanski and McDermott know how to win, but neither one is at the level that Sean Payton is.

Sean McDermott continually fails in the postseason, and Stefanski just is not an elite head coach like Sean Payton is. When Payton took a year off from coaching in 2022, I think a lot of the NFL landscape soured on him a bit. Maybe they thought that the NFL was passing him by? Maybe they felt Payton just would not be as good taking a year off?

Who knows what the true reason is, but for Sean Payton to not crack this top-10 ranking is just embarrassing on the part of PFF. And no disrespect to Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans, but he's got one year under his belt, so there isn't any reason to put the young Ryans over Payton.

At the end of the day, power rankings are all subjective, but gross omissions like this are hard to not talk about.