Former NFL star rips Broncos head coach Sean Payton

During an interview with Jarrett Bell of USA Today Sports, Payton called the work Nathaniel Hackett and his staff did with the 2022 Broncos “one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the NFL” and said there were “20 dirty hands” around Russell Wilson’s career-worst season that included 16 touchdown passes and a league-high 55 sacks.

Ultimately, Payton summed it up by saying, “Everything I heard about last season, we’re doing the opposite.”

Payton also took aim at the Jets, who acquired Aaron Rodgers from the Green Bay Packers in a blockbuster trade this offseason. New York will also be on HBO’s "Hard Knocks" this year.

“It doesn’t happen often where an NFL team or organization gets embarrassed,” Payton told USA Today. “And that happened here. Part of it was their own fault, relative to spending so much [expletive] time trying to win the offseason — the PR, the pomp and circumstance, marching people around and all this stuff.

“We’re not doing any of that. The Jets did that this year. You watch. ‘Hard Knocks,’ all of it. I can see it coming. Remember when [former Washington owner] Dan Snyder put that Dream Team together? I was at the Giants [in 2000]. I was a young coach. I thought, ‘How are we going to compete with them? Deion [Sanders is] there now.’ That team won eight games or whatever. So, listen … just put the work in.”

Payton and the Broncos will play the Jets in Week 5. Salah told reporters on Thursday that Payton “can say whatever the hell he wants.”

“I’m not going acknowledge Sean. He’s been in the league for a while, he can say whatever the hell he wants,” Saleh said about Payton. “As far as what we have going on here, I kind of live by the saying, ‘If you ain’t got no haters, you ain’t popping.’ So hate away.”