The day Sean Payton was hired as Denver’s head coach, he previewed what his first several months on the job would look like.
“For the early part of six, seven, eight months, whenever you go to sleep at night, your checklist won’t be complete,” he said Feb. 6. “That’s just part of the deal.”
There’s always still more work to do when trying to overhaul a roster and kickstart a franchise that’s mired in a seven-season playoff drought.
Payton’s roster checklist won’t be complete when he goes home in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, either, despite Tuesday afternoon’s hard deadline for NFL teams to cut down their rosters to 53 players.