Adam Trautman really couldn’t have picked a better two days to miss practice.
The Broncos veteran tight end wasn’t present Aug. 31 and then didn’t do much Sept. 1, which, all things considered, will likely go down as an eminently forgettable absence.
Denver was just setting out on an in-between week of work. The club’s 53-man roster and practice squads were set, but the season opener against Kansas City still sat a distant two weeks in the future.
Trautman, though, would not make it through even a minor ailment unscathed.
After Denver’s Sept. 1 practice, Trautman and others settled into offensive coordinator Davis Webb’s skill position meeting.
First item on the agenda: A mini-roast.
“Davis started off with a funny little video of ‘Traut,’” second-year wide receiver Pat Bryant told The Post recently. “When (Trautman) was at the Saints, I think he caught a cramp and he fell. He did the same thing in practice the other day.
“They put, like, memes on it, bro.”
In years past, perhaps just the tight ends would have seen such a gag. Not these days, though. When Broncos coach Sean Payton promoted Webb to offensive coordinator and gave him play-calling duties, Webb reorganized the way Denver’s offensive players meet daily. Instead of gathering primarily by position, Broncos quarterbacks, running backs, tight ends and receivers all meet together in sessions run by Webb. The offensive line meets separately.
This isn’t reinventing the wheel, necessarily, but it is a change in Denver. It is also a signal about the latitude that Payton has given Webb to run things the way he feels comfortable with. Itap a peek inside how Webb’s football mind works and itap yet another marker of all the myriad ways Webb prepared for this very moment.
Itap his show now, in many ways. Itap his voice — in Bo Nix’s helmet and at the front of the Broncos’ skill group every day.
Itap his vision imparted his way.
“Itap been good because we’re all hearing the same voice,” Nix told The Post this week. “We’re all on the same page, we can understand what he wants — the play-caller’s intent — and then how we can sort of put our skillset into that play and make it work.”
Payton has given Webb latitude to run things the way he’s comfortable with
NFL teams are like so many regular corporations in at least one way: There are a ton of meetings.
Team meetings. Position meetings. Unit meetings. Special teams meetings. Staff meetings. Game-planning meetings. Production meetings. On and on.
Broncos backup quarterback Jarrett Stidham started his career in New England with offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, where offensive skill groups met together rather than by position. Webb, too, had that experience under Brian Daboll as a player in Buffalo and with the New York Giants. Daboll, not coincidentally, spent 11 total seasons in New England, nearly all of them with McDaniels.
Payton structured his offensive player meetings differently over the years, with the unit meeting sometimes, but the nuts and bolts of practice film review and installs done by position.
“I’ve done it both ways and itap just the coach’s preference,” Nix said. “Both have their strengths and you can get a lot done both ways.
“But I do think hearing it from one source, what he wants and why he’s calling something, it goes a long way. Itap really important that we’re all speaking the same language.”
Throughout his career, Payton has encouraged his quarterbacks to mold their schedules in a way that works for them over the course of game weeks. He’s rarely had an offensive coordinator in a play-calling role, but he appears to have given Webb that same kind of control.
There are suggestions and insights, to be sure, but Payton said how player meetings are run is Webb’s “discretion.”
“If there’s something I think is going to be a crash, then we’re not going to drive the car (that way),” Payton said earlier this summer. Outside of that, though, Webb can mostly set things up as he sees fit.
There is natural curiosity about what Payton will do on game days when Webb is handling the play-calling. Payton smiled when he said he’d have “some suggestions, some mandates,” but he’s also repeatedly said he knows what it was like to have Bill Parcells breathing down his neck while calling plays and he doesn’t want Webb to have the same experience. Or at least not all the time.
So far, that does seem to be the approach he’s taken in how the daily offensive operations unfold.
“I just knew what it was like, and what has to happen and the confidence he has to have in me that, ‘Hey, I’m good with it,’” Payton said earlier in camp. “We’ll meet. There are a couple things we’ll tweak. There’s some collaboration on it. And yet he’s done a great job of coming up with new ideas maybe that will help us and I’m all for it.”
‘Itap kind of a large discussion’
This style of meeting is one of those ideas.
Webb runs them every day, though Nix and the quarterbacks do plenty of talking, too.
“Itap good because the receivers are hearing how the quarterbacks are getting taught and how to read a certain play and vice versa,” Stidham said this week. “We’re talking to the receivers, Davis is talking to the receivers. We’re hearing everything that the receivers and the tight ends and the running backs are getting told about what to do and how to do it. Coverage adjustments. We’re all hearing the same thing.
“Itap been really good just to kind of have that unity among the skill guys.”
If Nix points something out that he liked or didn’t like or how he wants something run, itap not a side conversation with one receiver or tight end between drills on the field or in the locker room. Everybody receives the note at the same time, directly from the source.
“It helps Bo talk to not just one person — he talks to one person, but he’s talking to the whole group,” Bryant said. “In this offense, shoot, you can be a receiver playing running back or a receiver playing tight end. So, just being all ears and listening, nobody’s selfish on this team. We all want to learn. Everybody’s in there asking questions.”
Sometimes, Stidham said, there ends up being what are essentially breakouts. The quarterbacks talk through something specific with Webb and quarterbacks coach Logan Kilgore, while receivers coach Ronald Curry gets notes to his guys.
“Itap all happening kind of simultaneously,” Stidham said. … “Obviously Davis is running it and itap his show, but itap kind of a large discussion.”
That format, players and coaches say, has led to discussions that don’t end when the meeting does.
“What I love about it is the dialogue starts in the room between the receivers and the tight ends and the backs – ‘Hey, if I get this look, I’m going to pin him here so you can get outside,’” running backs coach Lou Ayeni said. “It creates more dialogue for these guys and that translates to more dialogue on the field.
“Then hopefully that means more explosive plays when we get out there.”
Now that the regular season has arrived, there will be some uptick in the number of by-position meetings offensively.
“But post-practice here in an hour-and-a-half, or whatever it is, we’re all going in there as a skill group together and watching the film of practice,” he said Wednesday. “We’re all watching it together.”
‘Itap a lot on Davis’
For as much as Webb’s star has risen in the coaching ranks since he retired from playing and joined Payton’s first Broncos staff in 2023, he’d only run the quarterback meetings his first three years in the building.
“Itap so interesting because he never talked to the whole offense once until this year,” Ayeni said.
In the skill meetings, though, Webb is leading the discussion that includes the most intricate details for four different position groups. To do that, he also has to know the ins and outs of offensive line play, too, since that group isn’t typically in the room but serves as the engine that powers the unit overall.
“Itap a lot on Davis,” Stidham said. “But itap awesome. You get to see his mastery of the offense.”
“All the other coaches are watching him and they’re going to respond the same way,” Nix added. “He’s got to be direct, he’s got to say it right, he’s got to say it with conviction. But it goes back to him studying and preparing for this role over time. He’s ready for it.
“He’s a really smart coach in many different areas. He could be a position coach for a lot of different positions, which is impressive.”
Thatap part of the plan for Webb. Itap his first year in this role, so itap important to him that players and coaches alike know what he’s about and what he wants Denver’s offense to look like. He raves about Curry, offensive line coach Zach Strief and other assistants and says he leans on them heavily. But itap also clear he sees the most efficient way of developing an offensive identity as coming from one voice.
“What I think is cool for the players and is cool for us as coaches is they all get to see his vision for the way he wants this offense to be,” Ayeni said. “He knows what he wants and he knows how to get what he wants.”
Webb is ‘the leader of this offense,’ Nix says
Webb has been labeled as a future coach since he first started playing football.
He’s drawn raves from teammates and coaches for years and is widely considered one of the bright young offensive minds in the NFL.
He also, though, has a unique approach to keeping a room light.
The Trautman gag is one example among many. Nix said he’ll make a joke occasionally over the headset after radioing in a play.
Webb tells players he wants them to show their personalities on the field and he shows his on a daily basis.
”As long as you don’t do no stupid (stuff) to get a flag, he’s all for it,” Bryant said.
“Davis really puts a lot into it and he really wants to get a lot out of it,” Nix said. “Guys have responded really well to him. The main thing is he’s been in our shoes. He was a player and went through a lot of systems. He’s been a coach on the field for a long time. And so now with this opportunity, itap exciting and we don’t want to let him down as a team.
“So, him being authentic and being his true self, it just allows us to know he’s not being fake. You’re going to get the real Davis and you’re going to get everything he’s got.”
Thatap the connective tissue. Payton identified Webb as the guy to help Denver’s offense find a new gear this fall, then gave him the platform to lead the way he knows how to.
Webb, in turn, has not only run installations in offensive skill meetings and outlined his vision, but he’s also modeled the hallmarks he’s seeking from his players: Confidence, competitiveness and fire, but also an understanding that being too uptight won’t get them where they want to go.
Now comes the hard part: Actually navigating an 18-week season as a first-timer for a team that has Super Bowl aspirations.
“I’m really excited to go into the season with him,” Nix said. “I know we’re going to have ups and downs. I know he’s going to have ups and downs. Itap not going to be easy what he’s doing, but I know he’s got a great supporting cast around him and he’s going to bust his tail and get the job done and do his best.
“He’s put himself in a great spot and he’s the leader of the offense right now.”
