Good morning, Broncos Country!
The Broncos’ offense has been streaky through the first quarter of the season - but on Sunday it just seemed stuck.
Denver managed just three points through the first three quarters, and its biggest playmakers were nowhere to be found. Courtland Sutton had one catch for four yards. Evan Engram caught one pass for 6 yards. Jaylen Waddle added a touchdown but still only contributed 35 yards of offense. The run game hit a whopping 82 yards…total.
The offense never got going, and the run game was among the most glaring problem.
“I think at the half we were still at 30-some yards,” head coach Sean Payton noted. “That’s something that obviously has to get better.”
Payton added that a “handful of things aren’t clicking” and that needs to change since it’s now Week 5.
“We’ve got to figure it out fast,” he said.
Tackle Mike McGlinchey admitted much of that falls on the offensive line.
“A lot,” McGlinchey said. “It’s a huge part of our job and we’re not doing it well enough. We’ve got to, as a team, run the ball better. We need to be able to rely on that when games are tight, games are close, and we’ve got to be better.”
Marvin Mims Jr’s fumbled punt return in the third quarter that led to a short touchdown drive for the Niners via a 1-yard Brock Purdy pass to Deebo Samuel was a turning point from the defensive slugfest from which the Broncos could never recover.
“I felt like the time of possession began to affect us,” Payton noted after the game. “We had the big turnover in the kicking game, and that flips the field and all of a sudden you’re back out there on defense.”
For quarterback Bo Nix, getting frustrated is just a waste of time.
“Obviously, we want to have a really explosive offense and that’ll come, but we’ve played really good teams,” Nix said in his and his team’s defense. “We’ve played four really good challenges so far, and we’re sitting here at 2-2. I definitely don’t think we hit the panic button, but at the same time we just have to continue to grind and find ways to get better.”
Wide receiver Jaylen Waddle believes the disconnect is merely execution.
“That’s ultimately what the game comes down to, especially with the offense that we want to have,” Waddle said. “Execution is the formula.”
It is, so Week 5 should have been more than enough time to figure that out.
But Payton is trying to keep perspective for his team as they obviously feel some pressure not to fall behind in Week 6. The offense definitely some figuring out to do. And fast.
“This is what I told the team, obviously it’s not the result that what we wanted. [The Niners] are a good football team. We knew it was going to be a tight game, and I thought we played hard,” Payton said. “There are a couple of plays that can go either direction. Those guys made them, and we didn’t. It’s a tough loss. Now we move on.”
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