Broncos HC Sean Payton reveals he underwent eye surgery after calling wrong play last season

Denver Broncos head coach Sean Payton is easily recognizable on the sidelines by his signature visor. Even in training camp during Louisiana's suffocating summers, the visor was enough to keep the sun out his eyes.

Yet Payton was spotted wearing sunglasses during the Broncos minicamp practice on Tuesday.

It was his first day wearing sunglasses while coaching, and he seemed reluctant to do it, according to Mike Klis of 9News. Payton could hear his mentor, legendary head coach Bill Parcells, calling him to tell him how much of a wimp he was for wearing sunglasses to a practice.

As reluctant as Payton may have been to wear the sunglasses, they were a necessity after he underwent cataract surgery on his left eye last Thursday and his right eye on Wednesday. Payton is no longer the spry, young coach that took legacy-defining gambles to lead the New Orleans Saints to a Super Bowl championship.

Denver HC Sean Payton underwent surgery to fix eyesight

The 60-year-old may be wiser than he was when he first became a head coach, but he is also more weathered. His eye sight was so poor last season that he accidentally called the wrong play after erroneously reading his call sheet during a game.

"I want to get my eyes fixed, so I call the right play and I don't mess up and call the wrong play on a play that happened one time this year," Payton confessed in January. "That was embarrassing."

With sharper eyes, Payton will hope to rebuild a Denver franchise that has been mired by locker room issues and poor offensive play since Peyton Manning led them to a championship in 2015. Even with his poor eyesight, it didn't the new Broncos head coach the entire 2023 season to realize that Russell Wilson was not Drew Brees.

After an 8-9 campaign in his first year in Denver, Payton made the drastic decision to release Wilson and take on his dead money charge on the salary cap. To replace him, the Broncos selected Oregon quarterback Bo Nix with the No. 12 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.

Nix will be challenged by an underwhelming quarterback room that features Zach Wilson and Jarrett Stidham, but Payton has not yet named a starting quarterback for 2024.