Denver Broncos: Big reactions to the loss against the Raiders

1. Rich Scangarello’s debut as OC/Joe Flacco at QB

The first play of the game set the tone for the first half for Denver’s offense.

Rich Scangarello tried some sort of end-around play to tight end Noah Fant. The Raiders read the play, and Fant was taken down for a five-yard loss.

Imagine the reaction of the Black Hole when the offense goes on a touchdown drive lasting 6:08 on the game clock and follows it up with a five yard TFL.

The Broncos had absolutely no momentum at that point, and they were playing on their heels the rest of the half, seemingly.

On three first-half drives, they punted twice and missed a 64-yard field goal to end the first half.

Scangarello’s game-opening play call was too cute for my liking, even though the end-around plays mostly worked for the Broncos in the preseason. They did not execute the blocking well on that one, and it cost them big-time.

Near the end of the first half, the offense really started to settle in and make some big plays.

Joe Flacco was attacking the middle of the field, particularly to Courtland Sutton. This was easily the most consistently successful piece of Denver’s offense all night long, and it’s unfortunate it didn’t result in more than 16 points.

On one of the Broncos’ field goal drives, Scangarello called a play from a wacky formation where a couple of linemen and receivers lined up to block for a designed screen play. The play resulted in nothing and felt like a wasted red zone rep, but it also appeared the receiver didn’t follow blocks properly.

The Broncos also had an illegal formation in this game where a receiver covered up another, costing them precious yardage in the ‘death by inches’ game.

I think Scangarello’s debut as an offensive coordinator included plenty of bad, but I don’t mind the risk-taking either. I just think the first-time offensive coordinator has to establish something before trying the gimmicky types of plays.

Scangarello had some really nice play designs deeper downfield in this game, and the Broncos executed a brilliant red zone design on third down to DaeSean Hamilton who simply dropped a perfect pass by Joe Flacco.

Which leads me to Flacco’s performance.

It wasn’t a Mahomes-like performance by any means, but Flacco did a lot of really good things in the game, particularly working the middle of the field, hitting his shots deep downfield, and mostly putting the ball where it needed to be.

There were a couple of misfires, but no turnover-worthy throws and not many bad decisions with the ball in general.

I think Flacco looked solid and as he grows in this offense, I think he will help push the offense forward even further.

The red zone opportunities have to be converted at a higher rate, and the Broncos need to figure out the way to accomplish that.

Flacco showed he can still rifle the ball into tight windows, make throws deep downfield, and spread the ball around, but the offense has to be better at converting scoring chances.

The reality is, this team scored its first touchdown with Flacco at the helm in the late fourth quarter of this game and it feels like they are still in the early stages of development.

This is a very unfortunate result of barely playing at all in the preseason. The Broncos are not all on the same page offensively. This game against Oakland functioned as their makeup preseason work and included the unfortunate consequence of a regular-season loss as they worked through some kinks.