It’s time to gaze into your crystal ball. What do you see with the Broncos in the next four games? Do they run the table?
— Ed Helinski, Auburn, N.Y.
Hey Ed, thanks for writing in and getting us going this week.
Run the table?! Have you seen the schedule for the next four weeks?! They’ll be lucky to win a game — OK, that’s a joke. Indiana-fueled hysterics carrying too far.
The setup for the next four weeks changed in a meaningful way Sunday when Cincinnati quarterback Joe Burrow left that game against Jacksonville with a toe injury that’s going to require surgery and will cause him to miss most of the rest of the season. Ja’Marr Chase, Tee Higgins and company are still scary. But it’s a different challenge with Jake Browning running the show rather than Burrow.
That said, the next four weeks go like this: Division game at the Los Angeles Chargers, Monday Night Football at home vs. Cincinnati, short week at Philadelphia and then a trip to London to play the New York Jets. That’s still a rugged stretch. Denver’s an early 2.5-point underdog this weekend and will undoubtedly be a road dog at Philly, too.
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So, no, I don’t think the Broncos are going to sweep the next four games. If you’re looking for reasons to believe, you can draw a parallel to the brutal, field goal-related loss on the road that Denver suffered last year at Kansas City. After Wil Lutz had a 35-yard game-winner blocked, the Broncos reeled off four straight wins against Atlanta, Las Vegas, Cleveland and Indianapolis.
Perhaps after the leverage penalty in Indianapolis, Denver will do the same thing this year. This stretch, though, looks quite a bit tougher.
If you’re the Broncos' players and coaches or if you’re a fan, you’re not looking at the next four and saying, “Hey, splitting these games and coming home from London 3-3 is a fine result.”
Really, though, that’s a workable outcome from 1-1. Denver’s in a stretch where it plays four out of five on the road with three of those roadies against likely postseason contenders in the Colts, Chargers and Eagles.
Denver will get back from London late on Oct. 12 or early Oct. 13. From then, they play only one road game (at Houston) until Nov. 30 and could be favored four times in that five-game stretch.
That doesn’t change Denver’s thinking this week or going into the next couple. The Chargers swept the Broncos last year, and Jim Harbaugh’s squad looks awfully good through two weeks. How often does a team start the season with three straight division games? If the Chargers add a win against Denver to get to 3-0 in the division through three weeks, that’d be a mighty strong opening salvo in what looks like perhaps the strongest division in football.
Parker Gabriel’s 7 thoughts after the Broncos’ Week 2 loss to Colts
Hi Parker. Through the Broncos' seasons, I have appreciated your objective analysis of the team's play. So, with that said, in your opinion, was the leverage penalty called in the Colts game a good, questionable or nitpicky call by the refs?
-- Ted Loehr, Montrose
Hey Ted, thanks for writing in and appreciate the note. You likely have read it by this point in the week, but Payton himself acknowledged Monday that Dondrea Tillman committed a leverage penalty when he put his hand down on the guard and pushed off.
Did he create a massive advantage in doing so? It didn’t look like it. Can that call be made at other points in other games -- or maybe even earlier in Denver’s game against Indy? Yeah, probably. It’s not actually called very often — about three times per season over the past decade — and on those types of calls, there’s usually some truth to the idea that it could be called more frequently.
At the same time, situational awareness matters, and that’s where the Broncos really failed on Sunday. It was a really long field goal attempt, and Denver piled defenders into the interior gaps more than they had on any other kick in the game. That alone is going to draw eyes from the officials. Then the visual of Tillman going up over the top compounds that. Not to mention, Craig Wrolstad’s crew had called 18 penalties in the game leading up to that point.
All of that comes before the simple fact that Payton also outlined: It was needless. The Broncos should have looked at Spencer Shrader, who’d never attempted an NFL field goal longer than 48 yards, and said, “If you make this kick, good for you.”
Parker, what the heck happened in the fourth quarter? It looked like we were going to win, and we had plenty of opportunities to pull away (a field goal on either of those drives would've done it).
-- Mark, Arvada
Hey Mark, yeah, the special teams group was responsible for the final, critical-moment failure, but everybody had a hand in losing that game.
Watching the fourth quarter as Denver was holding a one-score lead, I kept thinking two things: A) They’re playing with fire, and B) If they get out of here with a win, it will look like a really good one by the end of the year. Well, so much for that, though Indy does look like a pretty darn salty group.
A field goal might have done the job — obviously, the Colts would have needed a touchdown to win the game at that point — but the Broncos had chances at more than that if we widen the lens a little.
After they opened the third quarter with a really impressive touchdown drive — an 18-yard, third-down scramble from Bo Nix and a 16-yard completion to RJ Harvey out of the backfield being the big plays — they looked primed to keep it rolling. Particularly so after the Broncos overcame a third-and-15 with a 19-yard screen to Tyler Badie that set them up at midfield.
Denver tried to ramp up the tempo from there and got 3 yards on a Badie run. Then Nix and Harvey had a miscommunication that turned into a broken play, followed by a third-down incompletion to Engram that never looked quite right. Suddenly: Punt.
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Next drive started at midfield after a fourth-down stop by the defense and went right into field goal range thanks to a roughing-the-passer penalty. The Broncos were sitting pretty at second-and-1 from the Indy 26.
It brought to mind something Payton said during the prep week when talking about first-down efficiency.
“I want to play quarterback on second-and-2,” he said, discussing the Colts’ first-down efficiency in Week 1. “You talk about advantage. Your headset, as a play caller, everyone has a call for you. With third-and-11, it’s quiet. Crickets.”
The Broncos went with a run call on second-and-1 that got stuffed for minus-2, then Nix threw the interception on third-and-3. That not only took three likely points off the board, but three plays later, Jonathan Taylor flipped the field with a 69-yard run. The next Broncos drive was marred by the two penalties before Lutz missed a 42-yard field goal.
All of that is a long way of saying that everything you can do to lose a close game, the Broncos did. They turned it over. Committed penalties. Failed on third down. Gave up a field-tilting play defensively and missed a field goal. And yet, they had the game won if not for a penalty on the last play that gave the Colts one last mulligan. Ouch.
When will we see Dre Greenlaw make his debut? It's painfully obvious we need him in the lineup.
-- Mike, Denver
Hey Mike, thanks for writing, and good question. We’ll know more after Wednesday’s practice, but the table’s set for him to ramp up this week, barring any setbacks. His participation, even in a limited manner, in practice last Friday might be a signal that they’re going to try to get him up to speed quickly this week with eyes on a role Sunday vs. the Chargers. No guarantee there, but that’s what it looked like to me.
If not, you’d have to think Week 4 against Cincinnati. The Broncos clearly expected him to play some time in the first four weeks; otherwise, he’d have been put on injured reserve to start the season.
Whenever Greenlaw does make his debut, it’s probably worth cautioning that there’s no guarantee he’ll jump right to a full workload. Most likely, he’ll need some time to work from a more limited role into Denver’s full vision for him. Greenlaw, after all, has really only had a couple of days in pads since the beginning of camp. He’s played 34 defensive snaps in games since tearing his Achilles in the Super Bowl in February 2024. That's more than 18 months ago.
Payton made it clear at the start of the regular season that the goal was to get Greenlaw healthy now but also to have him healthy for the long haul. That approach isn’t going to change because of one rough outing by Denver’s inside linebackers.
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Hello Parker! I saw that you posted an article about Sean Payton saying he needs to be better at committing to the run, and I thought, "Is it an article from last year?" You wouldn't do that, would you? I kid because I care.
In more seriousness, it was also talked about last season, but again, the offense lacked any kind of rhythm, and I wondered if the many line changes were at fault. Lots of players in and out. We take a lot of time to get set. Do you think this is something that would need to be looked at? Or is it no more unusual than elsewhere?
-- Yoann, Beine-Nauroy, France
Hey Yoann, thanks for writing in as always. It does feel that way sometimes from afar, and Payton got asked about it recently. Here’s what he said after starting by saying he’s had a lot of conversations over the years with coaches he respects about what makes subbing like he does difficult on defenses.
“What can be fairly efficient and easy for us can be very difficult for the defense,” Payton said. “And oftentimes it can be unsettling to where you get just a certain look, not a certain defense, but maybe they decide just to stay just in nickel. … Relative to the personnel groupings, we always kind of go into a game — and it changes sometimes — but it’s something that we’ll be smart with and yet the benefits of it we feel are worth it.”
The Athletic did a ranking of playcallers recently by surveying defensive coaches, and one AFC coach noted that exact challenge when talking about Payton, saying the first 15 plays are particularly difficult to figure out how to defend. “It’s big (personnel), little (personnel) every play, and they try to just create chaos with the subs and play games with all that (stuff), and then they mix modes with the no-huddle and all that. … That makes you just say, ‘(Forget) it, we just got to be simple.’ There’s so much noise where you can’t really pin them down.”
That’s the idea from Payton. If you get that result and it doesn’t bog your operation down, great. If it does cause you to be late in and out of the huddle or otherwise inefficient, then problems crop up. That seemed to be far less of an issue Week 2 compared to Week 1.
What would it take for Sean Payton to hire a top-flight offensive coordinator?
-- Dick Amman, Beulah
Hey Dick, thanks for writing in. No offense meant, I’m sure, to Joe Lombardi.
I’m not sure people quite grasp just how much shared history these guys in the offensive meeting room have. This is Lombardi’s 15th year working with Payton. Senior offensive assistant Pete Carmichael is at 18. Offensive line coach and run game coordinator Zach Strief played for Payton for 12 years and is now in his third year coaching, so he’s got 15 years total as well. Davis Webb, who is the passing game coordinator as well as QB coach, is the only newcomer with a coordinator title.
Payton’s worked with several up-and-comers on offensive staffs, from Webb and Strief this year to now Buffalo offensive coordinator Joe Brady and QB coach Ronald Curry. He’s just never had one in the offensive coordinator role. But Payton’s also the play-caller, so being in the room seems to really be what counts.
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