Sean Payton’s 2025 Broncos aren’t targeting just the AFC West. ‘I’ve talked about a Super Bowl.’

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Sean Payton was talking about building.

Sitting in the middle of his team cafeteria last week, amid a cacophony of buzzing player conversations and clanking dining utensils, the Denver Broncos head coach was laying out three years of injury data, crunching the team’s free-agent signings, assessing the early training camp performance of the 2025 draft class and meticulously going through the layered advancement of quarterback Bo Nix.

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At one point, he stopped and gestured toward a window. Outside, the viewpoint was overlooking a massive construction project transforming the Broncos’ training headquarters into a palatial, state-of-the-art complex. A gargantuan crane was gliding over a foundation of concrete and steel. Far behind it, decades of earth and rock sat in a mountainous, displaced pile across acres of adjoining land.

“We’re a little bit like that new facility,” Payton said. “It’s coming.”

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There was an underlying message there, of course. And it wasn’t really all that subtle. Payton’s Broncos are coming in his third season. Even if you haven’t witnessed it against a 2025 opponent yet, it’s almost visible in his chest when he talks. He swells with energy and confidence, buoyed by key veteran additions this offseason, a quarterback love affair trending toward his prime years with Drew Brees, a defense built to carry wins, and a young swath of players across a depth chart that have thrived heading into the final year of a Russell Wilson salary cap dump.

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“I like this team,” Payton said. “A lot.”

But how much is a lot?

Well, the coach who has long-embraced the anti-hype Bill Parcells motto of never “eating the cheese,” has privately served up some of his own coming into this training camp.

“I’ve talked about a Super Bowl,” Payton said.

“Since when?” I asked.

“First meeting I had with them,” he said. “First meeting.”

For a team that hasn’t won an AFC West title since the 2015 season — and still has to go through the Kansas City Chiefs to recapture that crown — this is what you call leaning way in to begin a season. Of course, there’s also a difference between leaning into challenging expectations versus getting obnoxiously over your skis. While the outside world might be skeptical that Payton has found the correct distinction between those two this early in training camp, he clearly is not.

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Instead, he looks across a roster that has a layered mix of veteran leaders and young achievers — harnessing internal growth from his first three draft classes, then accentuating it with some imported pillars of experienced free agents from this most recent offseason. Chief among the latest additions? Three players chosen in the first 74 picks in the draft who are already convincing the coaching staff they’ll play key roles this season, including cornerback Jahdae Barron, running back RJ Harvey and wideout Pat Bryant. Alongside them? Three free-agent additions who have already injected concrete into the fundamental foundations of early practices: linebacker Dre Greenlaw, safety Talanoa Hufanga and tight end Evan Engram.

“When you bring in a few of these leaders we’re talking about who have been to the championship games — who have been to that championship game — there’s a confidence here that’s much different than when you and I sat here one year ago,” Payton said of Denver’s free-agent signings. “We were in a comeback a year ago. We were young. But a young team can be very dangerous because they don’t know what they don’t know.”

“We saw a young Seahawks team just tear apart the league [a decade ago],” Payton continued. “We have the confidence in some of these guys that played last year, and we took the major hit of the Russell Wilson deal a year ago and survived and didn’t let that be an excuse.”

Payton paused.

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“This is a good football team.”

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If he’s right about where this is all going — and Payton’s confidence is certainly convincing — it would be a remarkable turnaround since his hiring in January of 2023. Lest anyone forget, he was taking over a roster that fielded 86 different players over the course of the 2022 season and had an opening-day 53-man roster that missed a mind-boggling 130 games for injury. Denver’s offense was atrocious and its defense had been driven into the ground by the end of the season. Pro Football Focus rated the Broncos’ talent level near the bottom of the league and the only way they could escape searing criticism over the Wilson extension was on a chartered rocket to Mars. And the fan base? If they weren’t spewing battery acid from the stands during home games, a large portion left early in protest of what Denver had become.

At times, turning it all around seemed impossible. It was a fact oddsmakers taunted the Broncos with prior to the 2024 season, projecting the team’s over/under win total at 5.5 wins. It was a prediction that rankled Payton to the point that during my visit last offseason, he hissed “The next time I only win five games will be the first [expletive]-ing time I only win five games.”

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And that was when Payton was in a good mood during last year’s camp, insisting that he had the exact quarterback he’d been angling for in Nix, not to mention a defense that was promising, plus a mix of rookie and second-year players whom he thought could make a difference in 2024. Ten regular-season wins later and the team’s first playoff appearance since the 2015 season’s Super Bowl, it was clear Payton’s grasp on Denver’s potential was more of a hammer lock.

Now, when you step on the grounds of the headquarters this summer, the hopeful momentum flowing through the organization feels less like it’s dribbling from a spigot and more like someone has wrenched open a fire hydrant. The team’s defense is loaded to the point of being one of the best in the league, anchored by reigning Defensive Player of the Year Pat Surtain II at cornerback and a secondary that has the potential to materialize as the league’s most elite unit of pass defenders.

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Meanwhile, Denver’s offense has rounded out the skill positions with two players who have Payton bursting in Harvey and Engram. They potentially resolve the running back and tight end spots with the mismatch and flexibility opportunities Payton has been seeking since he landed in Denver. They’re two additions who are a testament, along with the overall revamped state of the roster in only two seasons, that speaks to how well Payton and general manager George Paton have meshed since coming together in 2023.

And Nix? The player who might be the biggest success story at the center of it all by the time 2025 is in the books? Don’t get Payton started, unless you have time to kill. The bottom line — he doesn’t see a sophomore slump coming for his quarterback.

“He’s going to be one of the top four or five quarterbacks in the league the next two years,” Payton said. “That’s what we’re seeing right now. He doesn’t take sacks. He’s got exceptional arm strength. … He threw the longest ball — [67] air yards against Cincinnati. He can run. He can throw in funny body angles.”

Undoubtedly, Payton sees the growth of Nix and the arrival of a potentially elite defense as being the two pillars that will uphold the confidence that he’s asking his team to lean into.

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“The short-term goal is winning the division,” he said. “But this is a team capable of winning the Super Bowl. I’ve coached six teams that I thought could win the Super Bowl. Some went to championship games, some to the playoffs.”

“This is my seventh team that I think has that.”