Copyright The Denver Post
The Broncos are either rolling or clunking along, depending on your point of view. They’re either a clear-cut top AFC contender or an obvious fraud. They’re alone atop the West, but getting considerably less love than Kansas City and the Los Angeles Chargers. All of these things can be true at once, and games like Thursday night are why. Sean Payton’s team notched its seventh straight win, 10-7 over Las Vegas at Empower Field, and in the process tied the club’s longest winning streak since the 2015 team started with seven straight wins. They also played yet another ugly offensive game and needed a dominant defensive effort to prevail over a team whose season is already lost. Here are 7 thoughts on the Broncos’ latest win, all the reasons it might not have felt great, and what those involved think are the keys going forward. 1. The Broncos have a Super Bowl-caliber defense. But a shaky Denver offense knows ‘we need to be better.’ Tight end Adam Trautman took a deep breath and pondered the question posed by a reporter in the postgame locker room Thursday night. Is the prevailing, immediate post-game inclination to enjoy a seventh straight win or linger on a mostly regrettable offensive night at the office? “Honestly, it’s kind of tough,” the veteran tight end told The Denver Post. “It doesn’t feel good, necessarily. I mean, it feels good to win. It will never not feel good to win, but it is — from an offensive perspective, it’s like, man, we need to figure it out. Now.’” Denver has won seven straight. They’re 8-2 overall. They’ll be, at worst, a game clear in the division and tied for the best record in the AFC when Kansas City comes to town on Nov. 16. And yet this may have been the offense’s worst outing of the season. They generated just 10 first downs. They went three-and-out eight times and turned the ball over twice. They had a whopping 10 drives that generated one or fewer first downs, and on those possessions, they netted 22 yards. Two days before kickoff, Bo Nix smiled at a reporter’s question about Denver’s propensity to start slow and find its footing in the fourth quarter. He smiled and pointed back to an 11-point fourth quarter in Denver’s 18-15 win Sunday at Houston and said the Broncos might be better off when they aren’t playing the No. 1 defense in the league. “We’ve found ways at times,” he said. “The good thing is we’ve fooled guys like you into believing it’s easy at some point in the game.” Well, the Raiders entered No. 23 in scoring defense and No. 19 in yards per game allowed, and the Broncos not only did next to nothing offensively, they didn’t fool anybody in the fourth quarter, either. “We need to be better, just plain and simple,” right tackle Mike McGlinchey said. “We can’t keep living like this and expect to win ball games, especially as we get closer and closer to later November and December football. We need to take this nice break for the next three or four days and come back Monday ready to greatly improve. Because we can’t keep living like this offensively.” The issue for the Broncos is they have a lot of issues. On this night, penalties plagued the offense. They had eight penalties that came in a seven-drive span in the middle of the game Thursday. One time, Nix and company overcame the negative yardage thanks to a 44-yard pass to rookie Pat Bryant that set up the game’s lone touchdown. Outside of that, they faltered. Nix turned the ball over two more times, and the Broncos now have back-to-back multi-turnover games after a seven-game stretch of committing one or zero. The second-year quarterback completed 57.1% of his passes on the night. Three of his four worst outings by that metric have come since Week 7 against the New York Giants, Houston and now Vegas. “You see some good stretches of offense, and you’re like, ‘Damn, that’s what we are. That’s what we can be,’” Trautman said. “But it’s just not consistent enough yet. You definitely want to chase what you’ve seen that’s good and what you see and think, ‘hey, identity.’ I mean (shoot), as bad as it was, that last drive, we just said (screw) it, lined it up and went right at them.” Indeed, perhaps Denver’s best stretch Thursday was a grind-it-out, 4:26 closing drive. But they again went for long periods of the game with no rhythm in the run game. J.K. Dobbins carried the ball on the first three plays from scrimmage and then just once more the rest of the first half. It’s easy to point to play-calling. It’s easy to point to the quarterback. The Broncos have excelled in moments in both departments this year and underwhelmed in both overall. What’s not as straightforward, though, is putting a finger on what will fix the ailments in a matter of days. “I think it’s very close,” McGlinchey said. “It doesn’t feel like — obviously, we have too many offensive penalties and we had a couple of turnovers. That was tonight. But over the last stretch of games, when we get in lulls offensively, it doesn’t really seem like — it’s not like we’re taking sacks. It’s not like we’re turning the ball over at alarming rates. We’re just not doing enough and not capitalizing on what we need to do.” The challenge for Payton and company coming back off the long weekend now will be trying to find the line between shaking up what the Broncos try to do offensively and just simply doing those things better. This much is clear: Denver cannot play the way it has early in games and expect to keep winning at this rate. “This is probably the best team I’ve been on, right?” running back J.K. Dobbins said. “And we owe it to the fanbase, we owe it to ourselves, to stop playing like how we’re playing. We gotta do better. Like, we just have to do better. “Because eventually, it’s going to bite us in the butt.” The Broncos have scored first once in 10 games. They scored on their opening possession each of the first two games of the season — a field goal against Tennessee in Week 1 and a touchdown at Indianapolis Week 2 — and on those drives had seven total first downs. In the eight games since, the Broncos’ opening drives have yielded no points and three total first downs. They’ve gone three-and-out five times, fumbled against the Giants, thrown an interception against Dallas and had a field goal blocked against the Texans. That’s one legitimate scoring opportunity on an opening drive the past eight weeks. That’s how you head into a break in the schedule feeling down despite the club’s longest winning streak in a decade. “Our defense is so good,” Trautman said. “It’s crazy. Every week they dig us out of a hole, it’s kind of like, man, no matter how great any defense is — it doesn’t matter what defense it is — at some point it’s going to be tiring on them. There might be a couple, I don’t want to say breaks, but a team might score a touchdown here and there. We need to figure it out because we can’t keep leaning on them like this for the rest of the year.” Offensive players mostly say versions of the same thing: This needs to be a run-first offense that builds out from there. “It should be that, there’s nothing we should change from that perspective,” Trautman said. “It’s just figuring out the mix of everything to make it consistent. … It’s so hard because the (stuff) looks so good when we’re game-planning and sometimes it just hasn’t translated.” 2. Vance Joseph should put these past two games at the top of his resume for head coaching jobs in a couple of months. The Broncos haven’t faced highly ranked offenses over the past five games, but they’ve played without Pat Surtain II, the reigning defensive player of the year and a player Joseph builds his entire defensive system around. This group, though, has adjusted on the fly and put clamps on Houston and the Raiders without much issue. The Texans didn’t score a touchdown. The Raiders found paydirt once, but only when set up at the Denver 41-yard line. Those teams combined to go 7 of 32 on third down. The Broncos have 10 sacks in that span. After the Raiders generated five first downs and a touchdown in their first two drives Thursday, the Broncos allowed just five more first downs and no points the rest of the night. Las Vegas got the ball at its own 49 or better three times and on those drives totaled 11 yards. Vegas’ final 11 drives went punt, punt, turnover on downs, punt, end of half, punt, interception, blocked punt, punt, punt, missed field goal. It remains to be seen whether Surtain will be healed from a pectoral strain in time to play Nov. 16 against Kansas City in what will be the biggest game of the Payton era to date. Joseph, remember, has done as good a job as anybody at making life difficult on Patrick Mahomes and company. Even taking away a 38-0 shutout against the Chiefs’ JV team in Week 18 last year, Joseph’s faced the Chiefs three other times since returning to Denver as Payton’s defensive coordinator and his groups have allowed two touchdowns. Mahomes, in those three games, has thrown two touchdown passes, three interceptions and been sacked nine times. 3. Among the Broncos’ offensive questions to answer: How exactly should Bo Nix be used in the run game? The Broncos’ second-year quarterback dropped to a knee twice to bleed the final seconds off the clock Thursday night, and in doing so dropped his official rushing total on the night to minus-2 yards on five carries. Really, then, he logged 0 on three. Regardless of the final count, it’s among the smallest impacts he’s had on the ground in a game. That’s not to say his legs didn’t factor in the contest. In fact, he did a good job of keeping his eyes down the field on a 44-yard strike to Bryant that set up Denver’s lone touchdown. He also trusted his legs a beat too long, resulting in a sack or a late throw-away when perhaps he could have been more decisive in taking off and running. After Denver’s win at Houston on Sunday, Payton said he’s not about to talk with Nix about what to do and not do in that decision-making moment. “We don’t talk about that,” Payton said then. “In other words, his eyes are within the progression. But you’ve got to be careful you don’t tell that player too much when it comes to something like that, you know what I mean? Do you inhale or exhale on your backswing in golf? I don’t want anyone to ask me that question. “There are certainly designed runs that you saw. We’ve got to keep working with his clock because it gets quick.” The eye test and the data suggest the Broncos design more for Nix in the run game in the second halves of games. Entering Thursday, Nix had 12 carries for 49 yards in the first half and then 30 carries for 158 in the second half. That included 12 for 98 in the fourth quarter. It paid off Sunday in Houston when Nix took off for 25 yards late in the game and put Denver into field goal range. He logged another solid run from there and set up Wil Lutz’s walk-off field goal. One person who’s not afraid to talk to Nix about his work in the run game: The newest Bronco, 20-year veteran TE Marcedes Lewis. He had a positive first impression of Nix in Houston and an interesting thought along the way. “He has that, like, that ‘it’ factor. It was good to see,” Lewis told The Post earlier this week. “There were a couple of times where I thought he could have ran some more. Just to keep the chains moving and possess the ball a little more. We talked about that on the plane on the way back.” Nix on Tuesday said Lewis had, “already been able to help me in some things, talk through some things and change my mindset. A guy that’s been doing it for that long, you should listen to.” It didn’t change the way Nix prioritized trying to make plays down the field when he broke from the pocket. In fact, Nix attempted a career-high 39.3% of his passes on the run Thursday night, according to Next Gen Stats. But perhaps that will be a wrinkle Denver explores more as it hits the back half of the season. 4. The past few games haven’t been pretty, but this team should be commended for navigating a brutal stretch of the schedule and coming out with nothing but Ws. Denver’s winning streak started with a 28-3 Monday night home win against Cincinnati. That was just 39 days ago. Every schedule crescendos and relaxes in terms of travel difficulty, but the Broncos have been on a particularly brutal run recently. They transitioned from that Monday night game into a short week of preparation that included Friday travel to Philadelphia. Then from Philly to London. Then from London back home to prepare for the Giants and become the first team to play in the Mountain or Pacific time zone the week after an international game. “We’ve played a lot of football the last six or seven weeks,” McGlinchey said. “It’ll be good to get away from it and clear our heads. Sometimes, when you’re looking at it so much for so long, you start seeing ghosts a little bit. “We’ve got to clear our heads and make sure we come back with a great game plan against Kansas City.” Trautman said, not surprisingly, the Philly/London/no bye stretch represented the most physically demanding run of the season so far. That is also where the winning streak first got into gear. “That’s crazy. It shows it doesn’t matter how we’re feeling,” he said. “The team shows up when we need it.” Now the challenge turns 180 degrees. The Broncos not only have a mini bye over the weekend, but then their actual bye comes after the Nov. 16 home game against the Chiefs. They played seven games in 5.5 weeks and now have just one in the next 23 days. Players, Payton said, will have the weekend off and return to the facility Monday. “It’s going to be good for us mentally to get away from it for a little bit,” McGlinchey said. “I’m going to go watch the William-Penn Charter Quakers in Philadelphia, watch my brother Tom for his last high school game this weekend before he goes off to Northwestern next year. Pumped to do that. “That’s where my head’s going to be at for the next three days, and then come back Monday and hit the ground running as a better offensive football team.” 5. Marcedes Lewis hadn’t put full pads on until Sunday. Now the 41-year-old has two games under his belt in four days. Lewis had a pretty smooth debut against the Texans on Sunday. Thursday night, he committed a pair of penalties. Overall, though, the veteran tight end is doing something remarkable. He’s not only playing his 20th season, but he’s now played in two games over the past four days without having had any semblance of a real ramp-up into full-speed football. Mind you, his workload has been limited. He played six snaps in Houston and something similar Thursday night. Still, the first time he put full pads on since last year was Sunday against the Texans. “It was hilarious,” he said. Lewis has a unique mentality and is a fascinating study. He can’t believe he went from waiting for a call — and wondering if it would ever come or if the NFL was done with him — to playing in a matter of days. But he also intentionally doesn’t want to think about it, either. “It’s one of those things, like, I was made for this,” he told The Post on Tuesday. “If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here. It’s a battle between my consciousness and subconsciousness about where I am in this moment. I just want to be present, learn as much as I can as quick as I can, and be accountable when my number is called.” For as much certainty as Lewis has, he is also clear-eyed about the race he’s now attempting to run. “Listen, these guys have been here since the offseason,” he said. “Put in the work in camp with the pads on. Played eight games together. So naturally, there’s in the back of my mind, like, I’ve got some catching up to do. But that’s when I just lean on my experience, my preparation and my mental fortitude. What’s got me here in the first place. “You mash those up in the pot and you can go out there and play in a game. I’m just excited about the opportunity, taking it one day at a time and not thinking about it too much. Keeping the main thing the main thing. Sometimes, if I think about everything, it just gets in the way. I’m just streamlining it, learning as much as I can and we’ll see how far we can do this thing.” 6. The Broncos’ next test is a massive one: Facing Andy Reid and the Chiefs coming off a bye week. Reid is notoriously good after his team’s been off for a week. In fact, Payton has said in the past that he once asked his now division rival about how he structures the off week. “I called Andy up and I said, ‘What are you doing?’” Payton recalled back in 2023. “Andy was like 9-0 after the bye. Andy said, ‘Look, I get them out of here after Monday. And if they win the game, sometimes I don’t even have them come in Monday.’ I said, ‘What about the coaches?’ He said, ‘I do the same thing.’ “We started doing that in New Orleans and started having some success.” Reid is 22-4 after a bye week as a head coach. That includes 13-1 in Philadelphia and 9-3 in Kansas City. Since Patrick Mahomes became the starter, the Chiefs are 6-1. That includes a 22-9 win over the Broncos in 2021. In Reid’s Kansas City tenure, he’s faced Denver off the bye week three times and won twice. The lone loss to the Broncos came in 2013, his first year in the division. Since Mahomes has been the starter, Kansas City’s average scoring differential in post-bye games is plus-9.1. That’s better than any full-season mark for the team in that span. The Chiefs, of course, won’t have a full week’s rest advantage on Denver since the Broncos now have an extra three days off. Still, this isn’t just a heavyweight bout with the nine-time defending AFC West champions coming up in 10 days. It’s also a spot on the calendar where the Chiefs have always thrived. 7a. The Broncos put to bed one of the last long losing streaks on their current ledger against the Raiders. Entering Thursday night, the club had lost 10 straight division games in prime time. Much of that losing streak, of course, is thanks to Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs. Denver hadn’t won a game in prime time against an AFC West team since beating the Los Angeles Chargers 24-21 on Monday Night Football to open the 2017 regular season. That game, of course, was the first game of Vance Joseph’s tenure as the head coach in Denver. The Broncos entered Thursday night 0-2 in prime-time divisional games under head coach Sean Payton, having lost a Week 17 Thursday night game at the Chargers last year and another at Kansas City early in the 2023 season. 7b. The Nix-to-Franklin deep ball connection continues to be often-tried and rarely successful Try as they might, Broncos quarterback Bo Nix and second-year receiver Troy Franklin have struggled to connect on deep passes so far this season. The teammates entered Thursday night with just two completions on 13 targets traveling 20 or more yards in the air for the season, according to Next Gen Stats. Those two catches earlier in the season went for 67 yards and a touchdown. Against Las Vegas, Nix threw deep for Franklin three more times, resulting in two incompletions and an interception. So, the totals for the season through 10 games: 2 of 16 for 67 yards, a TD and an INT. Franklin was 3 of 19 on such targets during his rookie season, as well, so through 27 career games, Nix has tried him deep down the field 35 times and come away with five completions. 7c. Since the beginning of the 2024 season, Denver’s defense now has 109 sacks That’s 37 more than any other team in football. Ridiculous. The Broncos are also up to 16 different players in the books with at least a partial sack this season. On Thursday, according to Next Gen Stats, they generated 22 pressures in 33 Las Vegas drop-backs. Nik Bonitto alone had eight pressures and 1.5 sacks and now is up to 9.5 on the season. 7d. One more stat to finish this off that shows just how ugly Thursday night was. According to Next Gen Stats, the game was the first in which both teams had more penalties than first downs — Denver and Las Vegas each had 11 penalties and 10 first downs. It was just the second time since 1950 that’s happened in a game, and the other was a matchup of winless expansion franchises in Seattle and Tampa in 1976.
