3 Disheartening Takeaways from Broncos' 12-9 OT Loss to Colts
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The Denver Broncos are at a fork in the road.
Fans may have thought that Week 4's loss in Las Vegas created a gut-check moment, and maybe it did, but the short-week turn-around of hosting the Indianapolis Colts on Thursday Night Football didn't afford the Broncos enough time for any intestinal exploration.
There's a fell wind blowing through the Mile High City. Can the Broncos withstand it?
I'm not sure. Before we can even think about how the Broncos can overcome Thursday night's debilitating 12-9 overtime loss to the Colts, we must complete the post-mortem and see what lessons are there to be learned.
Injuries Rapidly Becoming Insurmountable
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There are plenty of knots to untangle football-wise, but the Broncos cannot keep losing one-to-two key players per game to injuries. At this pace, even the best-coached and most expertly-quarterbacked teams wouldn't be able to overcome this avalanche of injuries.
Three key players went down on Thursday night, two for the season. Left tackle Garett Bolles broke his leg and will require season-ending surgery, starting cornerback Ronald Darby tore his ACL, and in-the-process-of-breaking-out rush linebacker Baron Browning exited early with a wrist injury.
Fortunately, in the case of Browning, tests came back negative on his wrist. The 10 days off should do him wonders.
On the heels of losing S Justin Simmons to open the season, which was followed by OG Quinn Meinerz, OLB Randy Gregory, and RB Javonte Williams being removed from the board, seeing Bolles and Darby go down for good was a massive blow. Not to mention WR Tim Patrick's training camp injury (out for the year) and the curious case of OT Billy Turner and OL Tom Compton.
Even the best teams in the NFL would have a hard time overcoming that many of their best players being lost to injury. Where does that leave a reeling team like the Broncos?
Unacceptable Coaching Gaffes Continue
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Wrap your brain around this. The Broncos interviewed 10 head-coaching candidates this past January, and ultimately landed on Hackett as the guy.
Broncos GM George Paton could have hired Kevin O'Connell (currently doing good things in Minnesota), or Dan Quinn. Denver didn't even talk to Brian Daboll, who's killing it in New York, or Doug Pederson — a head-coaching retread who has already lifted Jacksonville.
No, Paton went with Hackett. Perhaps it was motivated, in part, by the recruiting asset Hackett could be in the Aaron Rodgers sweepstakes. Whatever the true impetus for hiring Hackett was, it seems the Broncos swung and missed yet again.
Hackett has failed now five times to have his team properly prepared to compete in the NFL, and his offense, quarterbacked by a nine-time Pro Bowler in his 11th year, has been dead on arrival. You can't even call it a failure to launch. It's been a non-entity from the drop.
Hackett's game management has improved somewhat from the first two weeks, but he's still making questionable decisions (although his overtime call on 4th-&-1 was the right one). Hackett's defensive coordinator, Ejiro Evero, deserves a lot of credit for the hay he's making and how his unit is propping up this floundering team.
But even Evero isn't blameless in Thursday night's debacle. The Broncos gifted the Colts a field goal to end the second quarter by running a prevent defense on 3rd-&-38 from their own 43-yard line, allowing Matt Ryan to quickly complete a pass and put his squad within a very makable 52-yard attempt.
Then, as the Broncos offense torpedoed itself again and again, eventually, Evero's defense gave up the ghost, too, laying down on Indy's final drive of the fourth quarter, and allowing the Colts to send the game into overtime. In the extra period, again, Ryan cut through the Broncos' defense like a hot knife through butter on his way to a field goal that would prove to be the difference in the game.
I get it. The Broncos offense shares the bulk of the complicity in Thursday night's loss, but the defense, despite its successes, caved in the critical moments. You want to blame that on the quarterback?
Hackett's play calling is predictable, and while it's modestly more inspired than Pat Shurmur's, it's not by much. On the two plays before that pivotal 4th-&-1 in overtime, the Broncos ran consecutive rushes out of the shotgun.
From the shotgun, the give went to Melvin Gordon both times, who, for his part, picked up five yards and one yard, respectively, bringing up the for-all-the-marbles 4th-&-1. Ask any football coach, and they'll tell you that running the ball from the shotgun puts a given play at a disadvantage. The Broncos did it twice in a row in the red zone with the game on the line.
Hackett probably felt that it served him to go shotgun again on 4th-&-1, believing that the Colts would surely think it would be another run. Nope, it was obvious that Denver was going to pass there, and doing so out of the gun minimized Hackett's options.
I'm not saying that Hackett was wrong to put the ball in Russell Wilson's hands on fourth down. The sequencing of the last three plays was obvious and lacking vision.
The call on 4th-&-1, though? It was actually a good play design, but I wish Hackett would have run it from under center, at least presenting the plausible threat of a run.
Every week, it's woulda coulda shoulda with Hackett and company. You know what they say, if 'ifs and buts' were candy and nuts, we all would have a Merry Christmas.
No More Excuses for Wilson
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Wilson was the primary reason the Broncos lost to the Colts. He played horribly throughout, tossed two interceptions, one of which was absolutely unacceptable in the end zone, and he missed a wide-open KJ Hamler on that final 4th-&-1 play that would have won the game.
Instead, Wilson forced it inside to his security blanket, Courtland Sutton, who was covered by the opponent's best guy, Stephon Gilmore. One can point to Wilson's throwing-shoulder injury, or the knock he took to the noggin in-game, but at this point, that would be a useless exercise in excuse-making.
Wilson is a $245 million quarterback. He's a nine-time Pro Bowler in his 11th season, and his teams have missed the playoffs just twice. So why is he not only failing to thrive, but, even more concerning, regressing far below the mean?
It's possible that he's washed. But I don't think so. The soon-to-be 34-year-old Wilson isn't the same player he was 10 years ago — nobody is.
I don't see a lack of ability in Wilson. He appears to be a quarterback who's pressing hard and not seeing the field well at all. No doubt, he's still acclimating to this new offense, but as an 11th-year guy with his resume, these terrible struggles are as unexplainable as they are unacceptable.
We can only grasp at straws in trying to point the finger. My hunch? It all starts with the coaching.
Wilson either isn't a fit for Hackett's scheme, or Hackett, offensive coordinator Justin Outten, and QBs coach Klint Kubiak are failing their signal-caller. It's a chicken-or-the-egg proposition.
I don't have the answers. All I know is that Hackett and Wilson have so grossly underperformed that the Broncos are now worse off than they ever were with the Vic Fangio/Drew Lock ticket, or the Vance Joseph/Trevor Siemian regime.
Because when a team fails to meet expectations on the scale the Broncos have, with a not-that-old QB many say is a future Hall-of-Famer, people feel deceived. Not just fans, but even the media.
Out come the wolves, and it's open season now on Wilson and Hackett. The Broncos get 10 days to lick their wounds and put their heads together to figure out a solution.
As much as I'd love to instill a thread of optimism in my readers, I can't be complicit in this team's continued deception. I know Wilson is better than what he's shown. But he's out of excuses, and Hackett has already blown through what goodwill he garnered as a head coach in his honeymoon period.
Wilson has to be the tide that raises this ship. If it's possible even to lift this dilapidated detritus barely treading water. The Broncos are lost at sea, once again, in the World of Suck.
And there's no Football Coast Guard coming to the rescue.
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