The Broncos won a mess of a home opener Sunday, a ballgame that featured baffling coaching decisions and ill-advised penalties and shaky offensive execution galore. Still, a win’s a win. Here are a few stock risers and fallers from the day.
Stock up
Nik Bonitto: I mean, literally, the guy’s up right now. Thursday: Bonitto signed a $106 million extension with $70 million guaranteed. Saturday: Bonitto announced a multi-year partnership with Nike. Sunday: Bonitto recorded a career-high nine QB pressures and blew up several run plays all by himself against the Titans. The 25-year-old is rounding into a true all-around star in Denver.
“As long as I know Nik is on the field, I’m very confident,” Pat Surtain II said. “His ability to disrupt games, his ability to affect the quarterback and change the whole situation of the game, I think it’s pretty special and rare.”
The world without Dre Greenlaw: It’s not actually too bad! Surtain’s island is still thriving — the DPOY didn’t allow a single catch as the closest defender on 34 coverage snaps, according to Next Gen Stats. Riley Moss’s island is growing, too. Talanoa Hufanga lights up the sky with fireworks.
The Broncos managed just fine against the Titans without Greenlaw patrolling the middle in coverage, and won’t face another robust passing team next week in Indianapolis, either. Even if the free-agent linebacker addition isn’t back from a quad injury for Week 3 AFC against the Chargers, Justin Strnad filled in more than capably in Week 1, recording five tackles and a sack against Tennessee.
“All the guys we have in this room, I figured we can do something special this year,” said Strnad, who re-signed with the Broncos on a one-year deal in March. “So I figured, come back and run it back.”
Jeremy Crawshaw: He nailed the first punt. And the second. And the third. Evidently, special teams coordinator Darren Rizzi’s idea to interrupt practice for micro one-punt periods has paid off. Crawshaw looked every bit the punter the Broncos saw when they picked him in the sixth round of the NFL draft in April, averaging 48 yards on his three punts in the first game of his pro career. After a shaky preseason, Crawshaw’s performance was a sigh of relief for Denver.
Two-headed run game: This blurb leapt up from “Stock Down” in the second half. After Payton didn’t commit much to the run before the half, Denver’s outside-zone revamp finally broke through in the second, as rookie RJ Harvey broke a tackle and popped one for 50 yards. In other words, Harvey — on the fifth carry of his NFL career — busted a longer run than any Broncos running back had the entirety of last season.
J.K. Dobbins, too, had several chunk runs in the second half and popped a 19-yard touchdown. The steady veteran ended up logging 16 carries for 63 yards, with Harvey providing some supplementary juice. Expect that distribution to gradually shift over the course of the year. But for now, Payton’s revamped run game looks solid. If he’s committing to it, of course.
Stock down
Bo Nix throwing on the run: The stock was already down here, and it’s worse after Sunday. Nix operated well on the move on a few plays, but threw two interceptions while flushing himself from the pocket. The majority of his picks in camp also came when he was rolling left or right and firing into tight windows. Tennessee DT Jeffery Simmons said this week that the Titans defense was preparing for Nix to tuck it and run after his first read. It looked like he actually should’ve done more of that after all.
Offensive organization: Let’s leave this photo right here. If you don’t feel like clicking, Nix and Dobbins had an extremely visible mix-up on a fake handoff in which Dobbins ran to the wrong side of Nix. Or Nix turned to the wrong side of Dobbins. Either way, seconds later, the Broncos’ pocket collapsed, and Nix ran directly into a sack-fumble.
Payton largely pushed back on the notion that Denver had offensive operational issues in the first half, simply pointing to a lone delay-of-game penalty in the first quarter. But the Broncos’ pre-snap motion looked messy at times, and Nix spent much of his time Sunday throwing off-platform. This was far from a well-oiled machine.
Tyler Badie’s Joker status: Know who Nix’s most frequent target was in the first half? Badie, who beat out Jaleel McLaughlin to earn an active designation against the Titans. And boy, was he active. Badie caught a bunch of passes in the preseason and throughout camp, and served as Denver’s most prominent third-down option in the backfield in the first half.
It’s clear Badie went to Payton’s beloved Joker school this offseason. He failed a couple of tests on Sunday, though. The back caught just two of his six targets, earned Nix’s slight ire after not turning back for the ball on a third down, and was relegated mostly to the bench in the second half. It still marked an incredible comeback for Badie after last year’s scary injury at the Meadowlands, but he’ll have work to do to hold off McLaughlin.
Marvin Mims Jr.: Mims’ role, realistically, could vary by the week. He knows it. Some days, he might get a bunch of targets. Others, he might touch the ball often as a returner. Still, he didn’t quite pop in either realm Sunday, notching a couple of nice runbacks but muffing a key fourth-quarter punt. He finished with just three catches for 12 yards on four targets, too, and didn’t look like the gadget weapon he was down the stretch of last season.
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