Denver Broncos: Help needed in the replay booth

The Denver Broncos desperately need some help in the replay booth, apparently. Vance Joseph is missing challenges and costing the team.

The Denver Broncos clearly need some help determining what plays to challenge, and whether or not to challenge them in the first place.

Vance Joseph has been horrible with challenges over the past two seasons, only winning one challenge in eight attempts.

Joseph doesn’t seem to have clarity when it comes to whether or not he should challenge something. His track record for winning challenges dictates that he can’t really call a timeout so the replay booth can look things over, not when the timeouts are going to be needed in a comeback attempt.

Against the 49ers, a couple of plays where challenges were involved (or should have been involved) ended up altering the outcome of the game, to some degree.

On a critical second down pass play for the 49ers’ offense, wide receiver Marquise Goodwin caught a pass and immediately had the ball jarred loose by Bradley Roby. The play was ruled a fumble on the field by officials, though in real time it looked like it might have been an incomplete pass.

The incomplete pass would have set the Broncos’ defense up nicely with a 3rd-and-9 situation and a chance to get the ball back to the offense as opposed to a much easier to convert 3rd-and-2.

Joseph lost the challenge, costing the Broncos a timeout. They didn’t end up getting the stop they needed defensively, either.

The challenge wasn’t a huge deal because the Broncos would have probably called a timeout anyway there, and you can’t take those challenges home with you or carry them over to the next game, so that one doesn’t bother me.

This, however, does bother me.

The least Joseph could do the day after a loss is admit he should have challenged this play. This catch by Tim Patrick was ruled incomplete on the field, and even though this is All-22 footage of the catch (which the Broncos have access to during games, presumably) the play should have been challenged based on the way the catch looked just on the television broadcast.

It was a close enough play and one of the Broncos’ only big chunk plays downfield all game, and Joseph thought about challenging it but said the guys upstairs didn’t have a clear shot of it. At least, not enough for Joseph to be confident about challenging it.

That isn’t the first time Joseph has not gotten a straight answer from the people in charge of replays ‘upstairs’ during games. They have one job, which is to determine whether or not a close play is worth challenging.

Either Joseph doesn’t trust them, or they are bad at their job, because this is a clear catch by Tim Patrick and a play that could have very easily cost the Broncos points were it not for some fourth-down conversions on the remainder of that drive.

Something’s got to give with this because the Broncos need every advantage they can get. Not having any sort of advantage whatsoever challenging plays (1-of-8, remember) is something that the Broncos need to address.