Josey Jewell Outlines Broncos' Plan to Stop Raiders' RB Josh Jacobs
Many Denver Broncos fans raised their eyebrows — and their voices — when veteran off-ball linebacker Todd Davis was cut on the doorstep of the season-opener. After all, the Broncos had moved on from a quality run defender and a good influence on the locker room.
Davis' departure led to the third-year Josey Jewell taking a starting role. This was somewhat of a surprise because Jewell hadn't shown a lot as a run defender in his first two seasons with the Broncos.
But after a shaky start, Jewell has settled in as a good run defender. He was a bright spot against the Atlanta Falcons in Week 9, getting multiple tackles for a loss.
Jewell now ranks second on the team in tackles with 58, behind only fellow off-ball linebacker Alexander Johnson. Jewell has three tackles for a loss on the season and has been better than you would think as pass rusher, getting four quarterback hits and two sacks.
But while Jewell is happy for the chance to start, he's more interested in getting wins than padding his stats.
"Yeah, it’s good to have a lot of tackles, but honestly, I’d like to have the wins over all the tackles at this point," Jewell said during Tuesday's press conference.
"As a team, we’re trying to jell together and get everybody together. We just want to win. All that stuff is awesome. You want to individually better yourself every game, but right now, I think everybody is focused on a team win.”
The Broncos' defense had plenty of issues this past Sunday, stemming both from missing key players while those who replaced them didn't always get it done. Jewell said the biggest concern, after the past three games, is for the defense to be more consistent with its play.
"Sometimes people try to do too much, or sometimes people try to do somebody else’s job before their own," he said. "I think it’s just consistency and being able to do what we did in the second half of the Falcons game and do it in the first half and play a full 60 minutes of that."
The Broncos will have their hands full against the Las Vegas Raiders, a team with a quality running back in Josh Jacobs and an offensive line that does a good job opening holes for him. Jewell noted that the Broncos' defensive linemen and linebackers will be key to containing the run game.
"It’s going to be fitting our gaps right and being able to stay in them and using our hands a lot with these guys," he said. "There are big O-linemen in front of us and we’re going to have to be able to shed using our hands."
And even though Jewell is focused on getting wins over getting stats, he admitted that he and Johnson plan to wager on who gets the most tackles at some point this season.
"Yeah, we’re definitely going to have to throw that in there again," he said. "At the beginning of season, we were unsure of what was going to happen. I thought Todd [Davis] was going to be here, so I didn’t put anything down. We’ve been talking about it week-to-week, and we’ll have to get it set once we get back to the same amount of tackles.”
As Jewell alluded to, the biggest thing the Broncos want is to win. The defense has been the strongest unit of the team this season, but after a shaky first half against the Falcons, Jewell and company will be looking for four quarters of strong play against the Raiders.
Follow Bob on Twitter @BobMorrisSports and @MileHighHuddle.
