Russell Wilson took a sack on third down at the end of the first half in Week 6, and for some reason, Sean Payton decided to call a timeout, saving the Chiefs one. Listen, mistakes happen all the time, and we as humans make multiple mistakes each day. That's just how life works. Sean Payton made a slew of mistakes last night, but one of them stuck out to me.
Russell Wilson took a sack on third down with under a minute remaining in the first half of Denver's Week 6 loss to Kansas City. The Chiefs still had their timeouts, so the expected thing was for KC to call a timeout, stop the clock, and try to set up a field goal with a few seconds remaining. Well, instead of the Chiefs calling a timeout, the Denver Broncos did.
Sean Payton called a timeout after Russell Wilson took the third-down sack with just seconds left on the clock to end the half. At the time, none of the announcers made a comment about it. I guess they had just assumed it was the Chiefs who stopped the clock. After all, with Patrick Mahomes, they don't need a lot of time at all to get into FG range.
Anyway, here is what Payton had to say about the decision to call timeout:
""Yeah, listen. That's a boneheaded mistake by me," Payton told reporters after the game, via a team transcript. "They were calling one as well. I'm off a down. That was stupid.""Sean Payton
Now, it didn't really seem to matter a ton. I believe the Chiefs only needed to call two timeouts when they got the ball back, and even if Payton did not make that mistake, KC would have had two timeouts for that quick drive instead of all three. But I think this mistake just perfectly sums up the 2023 Denver Broncos.
Just a confusing, bad, atrocious football team. At this point, the Denver Broncos need to head toward a rebuild. They have 10 days before their next game in Week 7, and should truly take what they can get for guys like Courtland Sutton, Josey Jewell, Jerry Jeudy, Justin Simmons, and Garett Bolles.
The team likely won't trade all of those players by the deadline. They may hold off on trading some until after the season for various reasons. I'd expect two or three players from that group to get moved over the next couple of weeks.