Sean Payton calls out Denver Gazette columnist Credit: Denver Broncos on YouTube
By Sam Neumann on

Sean Payton didn’t wait long to settle a score Sunday.

Fresh off a 19–3 win over the Chargers that clinched the AFC’s No. 1 seed, the Broncos head coach used his postgame press conference — in which he was asked whether a win like Sunday’s made it easier to look past Denver’s ongoing red-zone issues — to call out longtime Denver Gazette columnist Mark Kiszla.

“Absolutely,” Payton said. “Look, am I ever happy? No…but we shouldn’t be as coaches.”

From somewhere in the media room, Kiszla muttered what sounded like “Truer words have never been spoken.” Payton heard it — or at least heard something close enough to it — and decided this was the moment to address the columnist who’s spent the season questioning whether this Broncos team is actually good enough to win anything meaningful.

“Speak up because you’re always here, but you never make eye contact, never ask many questions, but you have a lot to write,” Payton said.

“Truer words have never been spoken,” Kiszla clarified.

“Thank you. You’re exactly right,” Payton replied.

Days before Sunday’s game, Kiszla published a column titled “Frauds? That’s the wrong F word,” where he wrote that the Broncos “aren’t good enough to win the Super Bowl” despite their 13-3 record. Then, in his postgame column Sunday, he doubled down with the line that Denver has “rope-a-doped” its way to 14-3 and that “only a fool believes they can win the Super Bowl this way.

In the regular-season finale, Denver didn’t score an offensive touchdown against a Chargers team resting Derwin James, Khalil Mack, and Tuli Tuipulotu. The Broncos went 0-for-2 in the red zone despite entering the game ranked second in the NFL at 61.1% efficiency. Their only touchdown came on a 45-yard interception return by Ja’Quan McMillian in the first quarter.

For a team that just clinched home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, it wasn’t exactly an awe-inspiring performance. Which brings us back to Kiszla’s argument. And it also brings us to his disdain for the Denver Broncos head coach, which he flatly laid out on social media.

In his postgame column, Kiszla doubled down on his bigger point. “What the Broncos have put on tape the past six weeks won’t win them the Super Bowl,” he wrote, while acknowledging that winning the division for the first time in a decade is a meaningful achievement for a franchise that’s mostly been treading water since Peyton Manning retired.

The Broncos have two weeks to prepare for their divisional playoff opponent. The games will either prove Kiszla right or give Payton the last word. Based on Sunday’s exchange and Monday’s social media posts, neither one seems particularly interested in finding middle ground.

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.

View all posts by Sam Neumann