Broncos walking line between guarding against overcorrection & not making adjustments in wake of 0-3 start

Vic Fangio is a staunch believer in his defensive philosophy. The Denver Broncos' head coach has so much faith in his scheme that he's been willing to risk losing three consecutive games in order to stick to his core defensive beliefs.

That stubborn approach may have served him well as a career defensive coordinator in the NFL but it's not cutting the mustard as a head coach in Denver. Clearly. The Broncos are 0-3 for a reason.

However, at the same time, Fangio has to guard against deviating from the philosophy he's been preaching since inheriting this Broncos' roster and making wholesale changes that might be ill-advised, or even fly in the face of the message he's been preaching to the locker room since day one.

The 61-year-old coach is walking the proverbial high-wire but if he's going to err, it sounds like he's going to err on the side of trusting the process and fighting through it.

“The easiest thing to do is to just make wholesale changes, whether it’d be personnel, scheme, this, that or the other thing," Fangio said on Monday following the Broncos' 27-16 loss to the Green Bay Packers. "There’s the old saying, keep doing the same thing and expect different results, that’s not very smart. But it’s also saying too, change for just change’s sake isn’t very smart either. We’ve got to operate that fine line as a staff and realize what we’re doing. Are the mistakes we’re making correctable? And then make a good and intelligent decision.”

Much of what the Broncos are doing is working. The ground game has come to life, and the Broncos' offense has found a way to sustain drives over the last two games, while improving their third down and red zone efficiency.

On the other side of the ball, the Broncos' defense buckled down and stopped the run in Green Bay, limiting the Packers to just 77 yards on the ground and just 2-for-9 on third down. In fact, since allowing Oakland to convert a whopping 71% of its third-down tries in Week 1, the Broncos have allowed just five combined conversions on the money down in the ensuing two games (out of 20 attempts).

That's progress. That's encouraging.

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So why does this team continue to lose? Can Fangio stick his heel in the ground to stop this 'world of suck' train and turn it around?

“Yeah, and when you say turn around, I’m just looking to get to this game," Fangio said. "I’m not looking at the entire season. We’ve just got to figure out a way to go out and play our best and cleanest game this week. And yes, I do think we can.”

At the end of the day, the reason the Broncos continue to lose, as I see it, comes down to three crucial issues.

Turnovers
Inability to pressure the QB & thus, take the ball away
Self-inflicted wounds in key situations

The good news is, those are three areas the Broncos can actually control — even the lack of sacks/takeaways.

That aspect of things will require Fangio to make some adjustments to how he calls his defense, though. The return of Todd Davis has afforded the Broncos the ability to stop the run on first and second down, now Fangio needs to help Von Miller and Bradley Chubb manufacture some pressure on third down in order to loosen things up and open the flood gates.

It can be done, but Fangio will have to roll the dice from scheming away the defense's strength-in-numbers in coverage to adding additional rushers to flood the point of attack in passing situations. It might be outside of Fangio's comfort zone but it's not something alien to Chris Harris, Jr., Justin Simmons or any of the Broncos' holdovers in the secondary who've been playing on an island in a press-man coverage scheme for years.

Bottom line for Denver, the only way out of this situation is through. The Broncos have to keep the faith, buckle down and as Fangio alluded, examine the areas the team can 'tweak' slightly in order to garner a more favorable result.

Fangio's keen mind for defensive football is what got him to where he's at now as a first-time head coach. He can't abandon his core philosophy wholesale but if he and his team are going to not only survive, but thrive, Fangio will have to prove that he can roll with the punches and adjust when opponents have keyed into how he's calling the defense and negating the Broncos' strengths.

It's within the realm of the possible that Fangio and company are making this harder than it has to be.

“It doesn’t have to be hard," Fangio said. "In this case, it has been. I don’t think we’ve played terrible, but we haven’t played good enough to win. I know some of our stats may be okay when you look at them. We’ve got to get more stops. Obviously, the takeaways are a big thing that we’re not getting, which would help our offense... We expect more as the players expect more, and we expect more as the coaches.”

As much as the Broncos have to trust the process, they also have to recognize the precariousness of their situation. It's adapt or die.

Follow Chad on Twitter @ChadNJensen and @MileHighHuddle.

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