This is the stinking truth. Do you get the sense in talking to Sean Payton that he is prepared to let Davis Webb go? He said he gave him play calling duty and he's not taking it back. He said, I am not going to take it back. Until? No, he just said, I'm not going to take it back. Now, obviously, if things aren't going well, he'll be more and more involved as that goes on. But he's completely committed.
And I think from a David, like you think, how's it going to be different? Well, you're still running Sean's plays, right? And everybody in the NFL, let me just say this right now. Everybody runs wide zone. They may call it differently. Like when I was in Washington, wide zone was 60, 70 outside.
When I was in Denver, it was 18, 19 handoff, okay? So everybody runs it. They may call it something different, but everybody runs wide zone. Everybody runs tight zone, mid zone. Everybody runs gap plays. Everybody runs counter, you know, F counter, you know, GT counter, which is the guard and tackle pulling, right? F counter would be the backside tight end pulling with the guard. Everybody runs power. Everybody runs, like, everybody runs the same crap. Everybody runs curl flat. Everybody runs dagger. Everybody runs drive. Everybody runs, like, they all run the same stuff. I think one of the things to talk to Davis Webb that he wants to make different, and I believe in this philosophical approach, I believe you have to have,
some core plays that you hang your hat on, some tenants that you believe in. And out of those core plays, how many other plays can you create that look the same but are different? So if we're going to run, let's say we're going to base wide zone, okay? We're going to base in wide zone. So we're going to run our wide zone thing. Now how many different, if we're running wide zone, how many different ways can we attack the backside? We can man up the backside tackle.
We can scoop the backside tackle and have a tight end pull across for the backside defensive end. That's called split zone. We can line up and scoop the backside. We can have the fullback hit him. We can have, like I said, the tackle man him up and all of a sudden the tight end skate across the formation and have the tight end go for the weak side backer. We can have the bootkeep hold him and not do anything. There's a lot of different ways to attack that. I just explained one run with four or five different ways to attack the backside of that defense.
So now all of a sudden to the backside, it's not one play. It is for us as an offense, but it's four or five plays that you have to defend for the backside of that defense. Now, all of a sudden, I can attack them in play action with a bootkeep game. I can attack them frontside with a waggle game. I can attack them with a play pass game or drop back. And so now that one play to the defense really becomes eight or nine different things that they have to defend, right? And can we create that? It's, you know, can we sequence that? Can we create that opportunity to be experts at this one play, but really create some explosives off that one play?
And Sean's history is Sean Payton's history as a play callers. I've talked to Drew Brees about it. I've talked to Chase Dane, like all these guys, like he wants to be multiple. He wants to run a lot of different things, right? A lot of different motions, a lot of different personnel groupings. I think what you'll see is a little bit of a simplification of this offense. It's the same exact offense, but let's hang our hat on a few core concepts and all those core concepts. How can we make them look identical, but have a bunch of different things for the defense to wear? I think, isn't that, isn't that one of the challenges of when you have a veteran coach like a Sean Payton at all that time and all that success with the Drew Brees, you get to the point where you're like, listen, I'm, I'm, I'm working with a,
This is a 400-level quarterbacking class that I'm teaching right now. And now all of a sudden you've got to go back to football physics, physics 101 type thing, with a younger quarterback with the understanding that, okay, all that stuff that I wanted to do, that I had a quarterback that could handle it. Maybe Sean's kind of, as much as he loves Bo Nix, maybe he struggled a little bit in these first two years with the idea that, okay, I just can't have my quarterback process and handle as much. And maybe he's had some difficulty downshifting. And he recognizes that, hey, maybe Davis Webb is the perfect coach at this time.
for my young quarterback to help him get to that next level i know sean can like sean's a players coach but he can also grind on you like you can grind on the coaches and grind on the players and things of that nature i think there's part of that too and this goes for any organization like this conversation is is not just a bronco-centric conversation this is for everybody with a new head coach this is everybody who's looking at their offense go what's wrong with our offense how can we make our offense better all these different things um and i think all that part of it is part of it i think the other thing is man i get to step back a little bit right and have davis webb be the filter between myself and bo and so that I can have a little bit different relationship with my quarterback than as the play caller. And Bo referenced this. Bo Nix references. He goes, a little bit more of my own individual quarterback coach on the football field during game day with Sean, who's done it, who's called it, who knows it, who's seen it, done it at the highest level with Drew Brees. There's a lot of multiple kind of layers to this thing. And I think this is a great almost case study on what to expect. And just shifting to Bo, because I think Bo is big news, right? Yeah. I think one of the things that Sean impressed upon me, because I talked to him about, hey, you know,
early in games and early in the season, the pace felt like it was a little frenetic and all these things, right? And part of that is, he was talking about Drew Brees and just how Drew Brees was so methodical in the way he prepared every week, so methodical in how he attacked, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and how he was so dialed by game day. It was like, you'd look up and Drew Brees would be 30 or 31, you know, and four touchdowns is like easy, right? And how it was so methodical that it was, it was, the pace was just... You just like a standard just hum all the way through the week, right? And where Bo, from the competitive standpoint and itching to go and do all those things, that he gets a little phonetic in his pace early in games and early in the season. And Sean was like, you're 100% right. And that's why he played much better. If you look at splits in the second half or fourth quarter, how good he was in those situations versus the beginning of games. But he goes, here's the thing I love. He's early through progressions because he gets a little sped up. He's early through progressions. It's easy to coach early.
We've got to slow you down. We've got to calm you down. He goes, that's easy. Because it tells me he knows what he's seeing. He knows what he's looking at. He goes, what you can't coach, what you really can never get out of a guy who's late.
Because when you're late, it just says, I don't process quickly enough. And the processing factor for me, at any position, and we talked about this, it's why those guys that not quite as fast as you'd like, not quite as, just always around the ball, because they see it and they instantly react in all positions throughout my career. The dudes who can process it right now can play. I don't care how athletic you are. If you can't process it quickly like that, you cannot, you hit a, there's a ceiling to your game and you will never get beyond that ceiling. I love this conversation because it sounds like it's a Bronco-centric.
But yet, you think about all the young quarterbacks out there, right? Those that have made it, those who haven't. And there are far more young quarterbacks who just haven't materialized. Why? You know, why does one young quarterback make it? Why does another young quarterback not make it? As he said, listen, I can slow down a guy who sees it, who understands it, who processes it quickly. We can slow him down. We can coach that. I go, I can't speed a dude up. A guy who can't process, you can't speed him up. You can't make him process faster. And I think it goes, you know, you think about all the great quarterbacks, whether it's...
You know, Peyton Manning, whether it's Tom Brady, whether it's Drew Brees, you look at the Hall of Famers and what do they have? None of those guys I just mentioned had elite level athleticism. None of them. They had elite level processors. Man, I can see it and instantly know where to go with the football. Instantly know who I'm putting in conflict. Instantly. I love that term you brought up earlier, the undress part. Yeah. Don't you think that when you look at these great quarterbacks who didn't have huge arms, weren't able to run around, they just operated from the pocket, but they were so dominant from the pocket. Don't you think that what it really boiled down to was their ability to process and undress the defense? Right. Know where the holes were, know where the mismatches are, and then go exploit it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I've talked to Tom Brady about it. Like Tom wanted all those motions. He wanted those shifts because he wanted to see.
the guy's movement where Peyton Manning wanted everything stagnant. And he wanted to look at your body language and where you were and pre and post snap and see your movement keys and then throw off the movement keys. And so two different ways of doing it, but certainly the same thing. Those guys were just above board when it came to undressing what the defense was doing. Well, and it's the classic line from Brady when he kept playing. What was his answer? I know all the answers to the test. Why would I stop? I got all the answers to the test. And I think that that's what's fascinating about a lot of these young quarterbacks is are they able to get to that point and get on that path where eventually they're like, okay.
I've seen this before. I know what I'm looking for. I know what to do with it. A lot of them can't. Exactly. But the ones that can? The ones that can at any position. The guys who are, you want to be a really good player, all you have to do is be able to process. Do you want to be, like, you want to be a great player? If you can process, you can be a starter. You can even be a great player. Now, if you have elite level athleticism and you can process, then you have the potential to be a Hall of Famer. Exactly. Right? And that's the differentiator. If you're an elite level athlete but you can't process, you can't play. You just can't. Yeah. Because I don't care if you run a 4-3-40.
When you get on the football field and you process slow, that 4-3 becomes 4-7, and you become average or below average. And that's the difference. Yeah, and you think about the conversation you're having with Sean Payton about Bo Nix and Davis Webb. I mean, you're having the same conversations in Chicago, Ben Johnson, Caleb Williams, Mike McDaniel now working with Justin Herbert, Joe Brady now working full-time as the head coach with Josh Allen. And you just look at all around the NFL, all these unique relationships that revolve around the quarterback.
And you just kind of get a glimpse as to just all the important things that go in to this thing working or, in most cases, failing. Yeah. And so, yeah, you're 100% right on all that. So all these things are, this is endemic of the league in general. And they all, you know, they're all transferable to every team right now and what they're trying to accomplish.