The Denver Broncos have lost their eighth straight game, this one against the Miami Dolphins and a host of former Broncos players and coaches…
The Denver Broncos are laughable.
There’s really not much else to say.
We are watching the games because we bring you the news about the Broncos, but it’s almost to the point of being too painful to actually watch. It would be understandable for many fans to just stop watching the games altogether at this point, because the team has just dropped its eighth straight.
The latest loss in this embarrassing stretch was at the hands of the hapless Miami Dolphins, who had lost five straight games themselves, and were apparently unified by the arrival of the Broncos this week.
Miami actually looked pretty good in this game, but it’s more just because the Broncos are that bad.
Denver’s erroneous ways continued, and their turnover ratio dropped below the worst of the worst in the NFL — the Cleveland Browns.
There are a great deal of reasons this game was lost (35-9, by the way) but let’s dive into some of the more prominent ones…
1. Trevor Siemian
I hate to say it to all of the Siemian supporters out there, but this guy is unbelievably bad right now. I’m talking below replacement level bad.
Look, I’m not a hater of Siemian the human being, but we’ve got to be serious about the direction of this team right now and the common denominator in these games:
The quarterback is terrible.
This was Siemian’s eighth start of the season, so he hasn’t been fully to blame for all of the poor play offensively, but this was one of his worst games in a season full of really, really bad ones.
Siemian threw a pick-six early on when the Broncos trailed 9-3, and the reason for that interception (which was already his second of the game at that point) was nothing other than the fact that he simply just made a terrible throw.
Siemian’s woes continued throughout the game, mostly with inaccuracy and really poor pocket work. It was some of his most lackluster throwing to date. Siemian was constantly missing open receivers to the point that Mark Schlereth on the broadcast said it was hard to tell if he were actually right-handed or not.
Schlereth wasn’t shy about calling out Siemian for putting the ball in bad spots, and there’s even some grace in the NFL for inaccuracy if it’s not a consistent pattern. What Siemian has shown this season is that he is consistently and mind-numbingly inaccurate.
This game, he was sailing the ball over the heads of his receivers throughout, and just generally not looking like he had any sort of comfortability at all.
He took a number of unnecessary hits, held the ball far too long, and didn’t get the Broncos’ two best offensive players involved yet again.
2. Turnovers
What else can even be said here that hasn’t already in the past two-plus months?
The Broncos just can’t take care of the football.
Trevor Siemian threw two interceptions, Isaiah McKenzie fumbled on a punt return (after he caught the punt, so, progress?), and Riley Dixon had a punt blocked.
The Broncos also had a bad snap that went so far to the back of the end zone, Trevor Siemian just swatted it out of bounds for a safety, and McKenzie’s fumbled punt was recovered in the end zone and he was tagged down for a safety.
You can’t pin turnovers on anyone really except for the players, who have proven to be the worst in the NFL in this regard all season long.
3. Coaching
The Broncos, as we’ve previously written, are the worst-coached team in the NFL right now. They lack discipline when it comes to basic technique and even getting lined up for plays correctly.
They are disorganized in so many different ways, but there were a few specific examples in this game that had me scratching my head, wondering if the coaching staff knew what was going on at all.
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In the first quarter, the Broncos put out an unbalanced line where Virgil Green and Austin Traylor played right tackle. You didn’t read that wrong. They put Donald Stephenson in the left tackle spot, and then actually on one of the plays, ran away from the heavy side of the line.
It was an unbelievable display of incompetence in my opinion to put players in a position where they were destined to fail.
The Broncos also attempted an onside kick after Justin Simmons intercepted a pass and took it back for a touchdown (yay!), but not before they got a delay of game penalty.
On a kickoff.
How does that even happen?
Vance Joseph admitted after the game in his post-game press conference that he didn’t know they took a delay of game penalty on that play.
Apparently, the head coach doesn’t feel the need to pay attention to a critical special teams moment.
Many things need to change in Denver.