Justin Simmons: It's 'Crucial' Broncos' Maintain Defensive Standards Post-Fangio

Call it a rebuild, a remix, a shuffling of the deck, or any other creative bit of terminology, but the Denver Broncos are changing. A year ago at this time, George Paton was introduced as the new general manager in the Broncos front office.

Fast forward to the 2022 offseason and Paton has hired a completely new coaching staff led by head coach Nathaniel Hackett, which features various consultants including the legendary Dom Capers and multi-regime holdover Bill Kollar.

While Broncos Country remains vigilant on 'Aaron Rodgers Watch', the expectations to win couldn’t be any higher for Paton and company. The fan base has grown increasingly bitter with losing and the ugly optics of the Pat Bowlen Trust, led by Broncos CEO Joe Ellis, and the impending sale of the franchise. Hackett was brought to Denver to score lots of points and win football games, come hell or high water.

Last week, All-Pro safety Justin Simmons made the rounds on Radio Row ahead of Super Bowl LVI and talked about the significance of the Broncos' standards moving forward.

"It's going to be extremely crucial. If anything, when the offense gets going, we're just going to have to be better," Simmons said via the team website. "Once we're able to score more points, whatever that looks like, we're going to have to be able to go out there and stop teams giving their best shot. We're going to get their best plays; we're going to get their best drives. We're going to have to go out there and get those stops."

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The 28-year-old team captain is entering his sixth season with the Broncos after being selected in the third round of the 2016 NFL draft. Simmons was franchise-tagged in 2019 and 2020 before Paton arrived in Denver and rewarded him with a four-year, $61 million contract extension that included a $15M signing bonus in addition to $35M in guaranteed money.

With 81 career starts under his belt, Simmons has been an ironman for the Broncos as a former Pro Bowler (2020) and two-time second-team All-Pro (2019, 2021). Last season, the former Boston College standout logged 80 tackles (60 solo), four tackles for a loss, two QB hits, 1.5 sacks, 12 pass deflections, and picked off a team-high five passes.

Despite his production and success at the individual level, Simmons revealed his emotions of frustration, and excitement, with his defensive unit.

"Definitely optimism, because we knew how good of a team we were," Simmons said. "It's just, you have those games where it's a one-score game and you just couldn't find a way to close it out. Those five, six, seven plays throughout a game that really make a difference, those are the plays we're going to have to find a way to win those when it comes down to it."

I can imagine that it's very frustrating for Simmons to have watched the Super Bowl from home after limiting the Cincinnati Bengals to just 15 points in Denver's Week 15 home loss. The Broncos' defense got after Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow all game, including Simmons getting home on a safety blitz in the second quarter.

Simmons' teammates — Shelby Harris and Jonathan Cooper — were also credited with sacking Burrow. The Broncos almost had Cincy but couldn’t get out of their own way and went on to lose that game 15-10.

"You look back and you think about when you played Cincinnati and we played them at home and how close we were," Simmons said. "That's definitely something to build off of and can't take steps backwards, so that's a big goal."

With Ejiro Evero taking over as defensive coordinator in Denver, Simmons hopes to lead his unit to improvement in those critical game situations but at bottom, he also recognizes that if/when the Broncos finally get something cooking offensively, it'll not only take pressure off of the defense, but it'll open things up for them to becoming more active and aggressive.

Follow Luke on Twitter @LukePattersonLP.

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