Monday musings: Aftermath of 0-4 start | Trading vets, forgetting the past & assigning blame
The Denver Broncos are 0-4. For the first time since 1999, the Broncos have finished the first quarter of the regular season with a big old goose egg in the standings.
Only one team in the history of the NFL has ever made the playoffs after starting so poorly — the 1992 San Diego Chargers. Simply put, things are looking bleak in the Mile High City.
As the kids say, “it sucks to suck”. No doubt, the Broncos are fully entrenched in the ‘World of Suck’ as head coach Vic Fangio and wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders have stated this season.
Dropping their eight games in a row as an organization, this game stung especially for two main reasons.
Broncos were in control
First, the Broncos actually had the lead and were in control of the game.
Up 17-3 closing in on the end of the first half, the Broncos possessed the momentum and the football. However, an untimely Joe Flacco interception gave the Jacksonville Jaguars a chance and swung emotion towards the opponent's side. The Broncos had the lead, so finally the defense could be allowed to pin their ears back, rush the passer, and play as they had been built to perform.
Unfortunately, the Broncos failed to impact the other side of things for the Jaguars' offense, allowing Jacksonville’s offensive line and running back Leonard Fournette to run ramshackle out of halftime, with 190 of Fournette’s 225 yards coming in the second half.
Meanwhile, the Broncos' offense sputtered in the second half, but after giving Denver a 17-6 lead at the half, it was on the supposed strength of the team (the defense) to go out there and close out the game.
The defense struggled and is a far cry from being a good unit, perhaps trending towards a below-average unit. Still, despite getting whooped in the second half physically, the Broncos' offense gave them one last chance by taking the lead 24-23 with 1:32 left in the game.
Defense couldn't close
However, much like against the Chicago Bears in Week 2, the game just didn’t feel over, or in-hand, not with how Denver’s defense had been playing.
Sure enough, the Jaguars, helped by a bit of Minshew Mania, were able to march down and get into field goal range and hit the game-winner. Perhaps aided by a somewhat soft roughing the passer which also mimicked the Broncos’ Week 2 debacle against Chicago, the Broncos had no one but themselves to blame allowing a team lead by a sixth-round quarterback in a limited offense to come and win in Denver.
So the Broncos fall to 0-4 in 2019 and the season is essentially over despite another 13 weeks of regular-season action to play. Two questions should follow, given the Broncos’ current predicament; who is to blame and what now? These are both easy and difficult to answer.
Who's to blame?
Honestly, everyone. From GM John Elway, to the coaching staff, to the players, to the organization themselves the blame is so massive there is plenty enough for everyone to get at least two helpings.
The Broncos appear to have been in a soft rebuild for the past two seasons, but the language and decision making coming from the front office has been an issue. Elway deserves as much credit for the Super Bowl years as he does blame for the post-Manning seasons. You can’t have it both ways.
From the horrible drafts dating from 2013 onwards to the recent trend in signing injury-prone players to see them, shockingly, get hurt has been incredibly frustrating. Denver's three big free agency signings have played a grand total of 12 out of 64 quarters so far this season, with Bryce Callahan registering zero action, Ja’Wuan James playing two total series this season, and Kareem Jackson now dealing with a hamstring issue and missing the game against the Jaguars.
Elway keeps betting black while the ball keeps landing on red.
Get off the coaching staff
Many people are already angry at the coaching staff, but given the sample size, this is probably just as much venting as anything else. Through four games, losing two toss-up games, the Broncos' coaching staff has not accumulated enough of a sample size to formulate much of an educated opinion.
Vic Fangio and company were given a poor roster with aging vets and growing youths, switching schemes across the board on offense, the offensive line, and defense, while trying to start a new quarterback. It was always going to take time for the players to get comfortable in their new roles and the schemes to take shape.
The hope was that the Broncos would be able to stay afloat long enough and win games as they ‘figured it out’ and developed chemistry along the way. This has not been the case.
If the locker room orchestrates a mutiny and the season absolutely implodes, don’t hesitate to shake it up again, but given the circumstances, piling on the coaches already seems hasty. They deserve the season to figure it out and, as it stands now, another offseason to set their tea
Of course, this is subject to change as the season progresses or regresses, depending on your perspective.
If you aren't good, you're bad
Really, as it comes down to it, this team just isn’t good. The offense has fun young pieces that are growing, an offensive line that appears to be trending in the right direction under Mike Munchak, the best quarterback they have had in nearly half a decade, and is moving the football.
The defense still has Von Miller, Bradley Chubb, and Chris Harris, Jr. Even still, older players look that much further over the hill, the Broncos' offense hasn’t been able to score or put together drives when they really need to, and the defense appears to have finally regressed to the mean from their elite level in 2015.
The starters are struggling but the depth is just that much worse in 2019, which is no surprise, given how those backups looked in the preseason.
An unforgiving schedule
Timothy Nwachukwu/Getty Images
Injuries have hurt along with new schemes and new players, and so much turnover, but the final nail in the coffin is that 2019 schedule. Coming in predicted as one of the toughest schedules in the NFL in the last five seasons, the Broncos’ slate of games is a reason this team’s season is going to get darker before it gets brighter.
Currently sitting with a .617 strength of schedule, which is formulated by taking each week’s opponent’s win and loss record, no other team has a SOS above .600 at this point in the season. Rounding out the top-five?
The Redskins at .589, the Falcons at .563, and the Vikings and Bears both at .562. Dropping some of their more ‘winnable’ games already this season, Denver could be on a path to another top-five pick in the 2020 NFL Draft.
Where to go from here? Time to pick up the phone
So what now? What are the 0-4 Broncos to do? Perhaps the best thing they can do is to start over. No, a true tank job similar to that of the Miami Dolphins is not likely in the cards, but rather a team with a new coaching staff and emerging young talent needs to turn their eyes towards 2020 and beyond.
This means any players the team doesn’t have plans for beyond this season, start shopping them on the trade market. Elder veterans who were apart of great teams during the Manning years that are likely on their way out, like Emmanuel Sanders and Chris Harris Jr., should be shopped and offers considered if the Broncos think either could bring back more than their respective compensatory selection in 2021.
A round three or four pick for Harris? A round four or five pick for Sanders? Both possible.
Other veterans such as Derek Wolfe, Todd Davis, Jeff Heuerman, with a wide spectrum of potential demand, should at least be made available if the right price is reached.
Furthermore, younger players who do not want to be here or the team doesn’t see being here in 2020 should also be shopped. Shelby Harris does not look like a scheme fit and considering he's poised to hit free agency, should be open for trade.
The same goes for young impending free agents such as Adam Gotsis, Justin Simmons, Will Parks, Andy Janovich, and Connor McGovern. Available, but not quite as motivated to sell as the older veterans with limited immediate upside for this team.
The Broncos aren’t going to hold a firesale, and perhaps it would be wise to even approach guys like McGovern or Simmons sooner than later to retain them going forward, but everyone should be available for the right price. Players who don’t want to be in Denver anymore? Help oblige them if the return is fair.
Past is dead
The moving of the veterans and former leadership structure surrounding the Manning years may hurt the nostalgic crowd, but it is necessary. It's time for a new era of leadership and direction in Denver and the shadow of Peyton Manning and how things were done under him must be put to bed.
Peyton isn’t walking through that door, and how things were are dead and in the past. The sooner that new direction can be established in Denver, the better.
Moving on from veterans isn’t only about continuing to add draft capital, which can turn into young cheap players to help fill out the horrific depth of this team but also be packaged to help be aggressive and go get ‘your guy’ in the draft, but also helps open up roster spots for competition and evaluation going forward.
Players such as Juwann Winfree and DaeSean Hamilton at wide receiver along with De'Vante Bausby, Isaac Yiadom, and Duke Dawson could be future solutions in Denver, but they are relative unknown quantities. The sooner the Broncos can get rookie second-round QB Drew Lock on the field, the better.
Moving on from the likes of Chris Harris, Jr. and Emmanuel Sanders not only can help a rebuilding team accumulate more assets, but also opens up spots for competition between young players already on the roster. Let them sink or swim, deal with adversity, grow from it (or fail), and evaluate where they stand and where the needs stack up with better information to attack the offseason and give it a better shot in 2020.
The Broncos will obviously be worse in 2019 moving on from guys like Harris Jr and Sanders but how much worse can it be than 0-4 and losers of eight straight?
Into darkness
The Broncos are in a dark place starting off the season at 0-4. The offense is flashing but Joe Flacco is, for better or worse, the same Joe Flacco he has been for years and years. If the Denver defense was still good that would be one thing, but they are not what they once were.
Throw in injuries to all the top 2019 free agent acquisitions, a multitude of new schemes that are taking time to adjust to, a horrific gauntlet of a schedule, and being ‘not good’ and here are your 2019 Denver Broncos.
Still, say the Broncos had won those two home games (in which they very easily could have if the ball just bounced another way). They still wouldn't be a playoff team, but they'd be feeling slightly better in the short term. However, the long-term outlook would remain the same; a team that just isn’t good enough right now.
Bottom line
The Broncos are stuck in a world of suck. There is plenty blame to go around, but at least the team isn’t pulling off miraculous wins early in the season as they had been in recent history, only to reveal themselves as pretenders later in the season.
That song and dance allowed Elway and the Broncos to fool themselves into believing they were close to contending and turning things around. No disillusions after starting 0-4, this team is bad.
2019 was always very likely to go sideways given so many factors going against the Broncos. The best thing now is to find out who wants to be here going forward and will ‘buy in’ to this team and staff, which young players can grow up, both on the field in production as well as off the field in leadership, and what moves can the Broncos to do best contend in 2020 and beyond.
The 2019 season may be ‘over’ but this Broncos team still has a long way to go just yet.
Follow Nick on Twitter @NickKendellMHH and @MileHighHuddle.
