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Is Beau Lowery the key to fewer serious injuries?

PumpFake

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After watching “hard to watch” Broncos film, Sean Payton sets offseason blueprint

PHOENIX — “It sounds like I’m being critical of the special teams and the offense, and I am.”

The 30-minute session new Broncos coach Sean Payton conducted with reporters at the NFL’s annual league meetings Monday morning wasn’t solely devoted to criticisms of Denver’s five-win performance in 2022. But in his most honest public assessment yet of last season’s failure, Payton made clear there is much to be fixed as he takes over for Nathaniel Hackett, who was fired 15 games into his first season as a head coach.

He called Denver’s film “hard” to watch and questioned the wisdom of a preseason the team waded through last season without playing the bulk of its starters.

“I do know we’re playing tackle football, and you have to practice tackle football,” said Payton, who added that he will “absolutely” play his starters when the preseason arrives in August.

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Payton has said he is going to park a car with no rear-view or side-view mirrors at the team’s facility, signifying that he only wants his team concerned with what’s ahead. But evaluating the roster he inherited required Payton to comb over last year’s disappointment. Now, he’s tasked with building a new foundation on top of the wreckage.

The 59-year-old coach laid out some of the blueprint Tuesday for how that work will begin. For starters, the Broncos will spend a month in Phase 1 of the offseason program — lifting, running, conditioning. The league sent out a schedule of offseason dates for teams last week that included a voluntary minicamp for the Broncos in April, but Payton said Denver will not conduct one. He’ll be following the same formula of a longer ramp-up period that he used in New Orleans.

“There’s a progression when you train athletes, and I think we’re too quick to move out of Phase 1 and into football after three weeks of lifting,” Payton said.

Payton emphasized that Denver is still in the early stages of its offseason plan. Though they signed a crowded free agency class, highlighted by new starting offensive lineman Ben Powers and Mike McGlinchey and defensive end Zach Allen, the team is still almost 20 players away from a full roster. But even at this point in the process, it’s clear Payton will be operating the offseason in a far different way than his predecessor. It will be a process, the Broncos hope, that will help reduce the kind of injury problems that have plagued the team in recent seasons.


Central to that plan is the work of Beau Lowery, hired by the Broncos as the team’s new vice president of player health and performance. Lowery, who previously worked alongside Payton in New Orleans, will “head up the training room, strength (and conditioning), sports science, all of it,” Payton said.

“For a period of five, six, seven years there (in New Orleans), I watched it flip with him in the trust of the players and the treatment,” Payton said. “So much so that this past offseason Drew (Brees) had shoulder procedure done, separate from football. When the surgery was finished, he flew to Baton Rouge to have Beau and his group work on it. That’s something you earn with your players. He’s got an amazing way about him.”

The new way of life under Payton won’t only feature changes to the way players prepare for the season. The way positions are identified will be different. At receiver, for example, “We’re not going to be, ‘This is the; this is the Z; and this is our sub, slot receiver.’ That’s just not us.”

There were no bold declarations from Payton on Monday. The season is still almost six months away. But it’s clear the Broncos are already operating in a far different fashion than they did in the build up to what ultimately became a “hard to watch” season.

Here are other takeaways from Payton’s question-and-answer session Monday:

• After the Broncos signed Powers and McGlinchey — Payton called them “really good fits for what we want to do” — four of the five starting positions on the offensive line appear set with the two new additions joining left tackle Garett Bolles and right guard Quinn Meinerz.

The Broncos may already have the fifth piece in place, too. Payton said he sees Lloyd Cushenberry “as our starting center.” It’s a role Cushenberry has held in Week 1 each of the past three seasons, but he missed the second half of last season due to injury and has had an up-and-down three seasons as a pass protector.

“We feel like he’s certainly going to benefit from these other additions,” on the offensive line, Payton said.

• Once it was clear the Broncos were going to lose Dre’Mont Jones in free agency, Payton said finding an interior pass rusher who could match Jones’ production became “a must.” There was not a wealth of options at that spot in the free-agency class, which quickly made Zach Allen a priority.

“We loved how he improved last season,” Payton said of Allen, who notched a career-high 5.5 sacks in 2022. “Obviously, Vance (Joseph) has been with him. So when you’re in free agency and you have a little bit more of an intimate knowledge with a player, it’s really important.

• Payton called new quarterback Jarrett Stidham an “ascending” player who was a priority for Denver when free agency opened.

“He’s someone we had a good grade on coming out (in the draft in 2019),” Payton said. “I think he played well in the two starts he had this year. He’s smart at the line of scrimmage. … I think he’s a No. 2 whose arrow is moving in a direction where we feel like he can become an NFL starter in our league. The evaluation was crystal clear for all of us.”
 

Mingo

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Beau Lowery - is fine the idea of getting scientific behind player conditioning is long overdue. Soft tissue injuries should not happen on the scale we have seen in Denver.

Two things I am overjoyed to behold is - Payton's attention to special teams and to conditioning.
 

Mingo

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If the Broncos want to be a better team - reducing the number of games missed by starters is a good place to start.

BTW - congrats to Hamler for getting an early start on being injured this season.
 
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