Good morning, No. 1 seed Broncos Country!
What a start to the new year — 14 wins, the No. 1 seed, an upcoming bye week because of it, a defense with the most sacks in the NFL and a QB that keeps getting it done however it has to be done.
No doubt
the victory against the Chargers was a “boring win” with no offensive touchdowns, but the Broncos are taking W all the way to the divisional round so who really cares?
Probably Sean Payton, actually.
“Absolutely,” he said about getting over his team’s red zone issues because of the 1 seed. “Look, am I ever happy? No, but we shouldn’t be as coaches. There are some things when we watch that film that we’ll be like, ‘Ah.’ When people ask, ‘What’s the benefit of the [No.] 1 seed?’ Many will say it’s the rest. I personally think it’s the elimination of a game that you don’t have to play. Our fans were fantastic, and I’m proud of our team.”
But where the offense struggled, the defense finally found some footing — in scoring.
The one knock on the Denver defense has been it’s lack of takeaways, and Sunday the defense showed it can do more than just pressure the quarterback.
Ja’Quan McMillian started things off with a pick-six, and Nik Bonitto added to the bounty with a strip sack later in the game.
Payton said takeaways were a point of emphasis with the defense all week as the coaches reminded players that the analytics show teams that score on defense win the games 88% of the time.
“At some point I said, ‘We keep talking about the takeaways, some of these elite defenses score.’ So we kind of gave them the information,” Payton said.
That “information” came via a video of all the defense’s takeaways the last three years and a reminder that they need to do it.
“Coach has been harping on it all year. All week, he’s been mad at the defense, so we’ve been hearing from him about the takeaways,” laughed Nik Bonitto. “[It] kind of paid off today. We were due for a couple.”
McMillian added that it hasn’t been like the defense hasn’t been trying, but it certainly needed to be an emphasis for improvement.
“It was a point of emphasis for us. We’ve been talking about it, something that we’ve been working on for some time,” he said. “You know, we haven’t been doing a great job. I mean we’ve been trying. I’m not saying we haven’t been trying, but the ball just hasn’t been falling our way. So it was good to get a few turnovers today.”
Payton reminded the defense before the game that in the last 25 years only one Super Bowl winner has been “minus” in takeaways versus turnovers.
“It has to be intentional relative to punching the ball out,” Payton said. “That has to be intentional.”
In fact, Payton believes one of the key plays of the game was McMillian’s touchdown, and defensive tackle Zach Allen certainly agrees.
“Turnovers are huge, definitely,” he said. “Any time you can give the offense extra possessions is great, and that’s kind of the one thing that we really needed to improve on.”
The timing for some improvement was much needed as the offense struggled to get into the end zone, so quarterback Bo Nix was grateful for a little scoring help from the D.
“We’ve been talking about turnovers, turnovers, turnovers,” Nix said. “We got one early in the game and really sparked us. Got a good lead. Bonitto got his sacks, got after the quarterback and got a good fumble off of one. …Today, we won [the turnover battle], and it just does a number on the opponent. It’s obviously better for us when we win the turnover battle.”
That doesn’t mean Nix is resting on the defense, though. He knows he needs to help the offense get into the end zone, and he doesn’t mind a few reminders from the Mile High crowd.
“They want more. I hope that we’re never the fan base that just sits back there and just, ‘No, we’re going to win the game,’ and doesn’t get up on their feet, doesn’t cheer because that’s when you take for granted winning,” Nix said. “I think it’s going to be good to have that same passion, that same energy flipped and go against the opponent in a few weeks.”
In the meantime, Nix will take the boos the way he takes the mistakes — in stride with a mindset for just getting better.
“Every time I get this question, I feel like I’ll say it. I’ve been booed before and I’ll be booed again. Nothing’s going to change out of me. They’re going to get the same effort and [we’re] trying to do our best out there,” Nix said. “We have a good team and have a team that we’re all trying to find ways to grow and learn. We’re not complacent right now as a team which is good going into the playoffs. We still feel like we have some hunger about us.”
Asked whether being the No. 1 seed made the Broncos the underdog or “overdog” in the playoffs, and Nix guessed “overdog.”
“But they’ll still give you all the reasons why we’re going to lose the game.”
Good. I like it when the Broncos play with something to prove.
