After a thrilling one-point victory over the Tennessee Titans in Week 1, the Denver Broncos lost a heartbreaker to the Indianapolis Colts by the same margin on Sunday. Emblematic of how quickly things can change over the course of a week. That’s life in the National Football League.
Against the Titans, it was the defense that saved the day. A dominant effort on their behalf propelled the Broncos to victory. On the road in Indianapolis this past Sunday, the offense (despite some issues) was able to score
28 points. Alas, the defense imploded and allowed Daniel Jones and the Colts’ offense to have one of their most productive games in quite some time.
The results sport a 1-1 record. That’s a better start than their 2024 campaign where they were 0-2, but not where most of Broncos Country envisioned the team two weeks into the season. Truth be told, Denver can’t afford to let Sunday’s loss stick around and rattle their confidence. They need to look inward, focus, and move forward in the best manner possible.
“It’s a long season, and today’s the day though that we really have to not miss out on the opportunity to correct and not miss out on the opportunity to recognize maybe why. Then later in the week, the refocus on an important division game,” Head Coach Sean Payton stated.
Over the next several weeks, four of the Broncos’ next four games are on the road. First up is their AFC West battle against the Los Angeles Chargers. Then they host the Cincinnati Bengals at home Week 4, before back-to-back road trips against the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Jets in Week 5 and 6.
That’s a tough slate of games—especially the Chargers and Eagles who once again appear to be formidable foes that have a great shot at making the playoffs. In ’24, the Broncos were able to rebound after a slow start and win five of their next six games. It wasn’t always pretty but winning the turnover battle and playing efficiently on both sides of the ball were two major reasons they were able to do so.
The Broncos’ effort against the Colts was anything but efficient. Despite the offense scoring four touchdowns, they had several mishaps and miscues that proved costly. In order for the Broncos to get back to their winning ways, those will have to be corrected, and they will have to play more disciplined—a key theme of Payton’s press conference yesterday.
“Let’s just go to the obvious, we’re unable to hit the field goal. It comes down to the red zone drive where we shot ourselves in the foot. We had a delay of game penalty, a 15-yard facemask penalty and then we also had an interception. So that’s easy to look at and say, ‘All right, here’s what happened,’ relative to the drives that we didn’t score on,” Payton said in his critique of the offense having issues in the second half versus the Colts.
As mentioned earlier, the biggest mistakes came on the defensive side of the ball. It was a tale of Murphy’s Law for Denver’s defense. Anything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. They couldn’t find a way to stop Daniel Jones and the Colts’ aerial attack. No matter who they seemed to target, they found a way to succeed, especially on first downs where they averaged around 10 yards per play.
Even more troublesome, they couldn’t find a way to stop Jonathan Taylor. The star running back had over 200 all-purpose yards and had multiple plays of 40 yards as a runner and receiver. The Broncos will be facing some quality running backs during their next four game stretch and can’t afford to let them run lose. Bad games happen, but Denver needs to hit the reset button quickly and get back to playing winning football. Payton is confident that will happen and knows how important the stakes are.
“We have to start with ourselves as teachers, as coaches, and look very closely at, ‘How can we improve in these areas?’ And then B, ‘How can we apply it and make sure there’s that urgency here in Week 3, Week 4 to clean things up?’ It’s hard to sustain success in our league as a yo-yo team, up and down. So that’s the race we’re in right now.”
