Even 53 weeks later, Sean Payton’s disgust with his first season as the Broncos head coach is palpable. Even after a 10-7 regular season and return to the playoffs — albeit a brief one after Sunday’s wild-card loss to Buffalo — established a new benchmark for success, the sins of the past lingered in the coach’s mind. Even as Payton said Wednesday that he was adamant about only looking forward, the extent of his optimism about the future is measured perhaps most colorfully by considering just how cloudy January of 2024 was. “We’re a lot closer than we were a year ago,” Payton said Wednesday in Denver’s season wrap-up news conference.