The Denver Broncos are hosting the San Francisco 49ers for joint practices, and it was apparently the defenses for both teams who won the day.
Denver Broncos offensive coordinator didn’t shy away from a harsh critique of his offense’s first of two practices against the visiting San Francisco 49ers.
“I thought it was very choppy and I thought it felt like they got after us up front a little bit.”
Those were Scangarello’s words in a post-practice press conference against the team he recently spent two years coaching quarterbacks with.
Now, Scangarello is in charge of the entire Denver Broncos offense and that unit struggled with dropped passes, low snaps, and DeForest Buckner among other things. That doesn’t mean there were no positives to take away — Scangarello said there were some good plays made by the offense and that he would go back to look at the tape to find out more, but he didn’t feel like his group matched the intensity of the 49ers.
Joe Flacco, leading the Denver Broncos’ offense in front of a number of former Broncos including ex-head coach Mike Shanahan and MVP Peyton Manning, said he thought the young group of guys on his side of the ball ‘definitely’ could have been better than they were, but also felt like it was a good learning experience.
Scangarello made a good point about the fact that not only are the 49ers playing a completely different defense than his unit is used to seeing, but it’s also not like the offense can game plan and strategize for a practice against that. They are just matching up and adjusting to whatever the defense throws at them.
In a way, the offense is coming out onto the practice field in a deficit already, but that can’t be an excuse — execution must be better.
It also helps both defenses that the offenses they’ve been going up against in practice every day since the start of training camp are pretty much the same.
With that said, the offense needs to find a way to string together some ‘wins’ and not look like they are a complete trainwreck out there. They will get another chance to do that on Saturday.
Defensively, the Broncos were apparently all over the field, and they continued to get strong play from safety Justin Simmons, who has at least six interceptions in camp so far, maybe more.
Vic Fangio, speaking after practice said:
"“I think he can be an interceptor for us. I think the way we play fits him. I think it’s a good marriage, him and us, us and him.”(quotes transcribed from post-practice presser)"
Simmons is primed for a monstrous season with the way he’s been practicing. It’s not literally daily, but it feels like not a day goes by that he’s not making a play on the ball when the Broncos have practice.
And now, it doesn’t seem to matter who they are practicing against.
Simmons is going to be such a key piece for this team going forward.
We’ll see how the two teams respond to the defenses notching ‘wins’ in the first day of joint practices. It’s good to hear the Broncos fared better against Kyle Shanahan’s offense this time around (after getting owned in last year’s regular-season matchup) but the Broncos need some consistency from their offense.