Denver Broncos: 5 takeaways from ugly loss to Tom Brady’s Bucs

5. Another huge special teams error

Another week, another major special teams error.

The Denver Broncos’ special teams unit has been mostly bad under the instruction of coordinator Tom McMahon. In this game against the Buccaneers, on an opening-drive punt, the Broncos allowed a rusher to bull his way through the center and easily block Sam Martin’s punt attempt.

This is not 100 percent on the coach, but it’s yet another critical error which led to seven points for the other team in a long line of critical errors for McMahon’s group.

McMahon himself characterized the special teams against Pittsburgh as, “Terrible, with a capital ‘T’.”

It wasn’t really any better against the Bucs, although Brandon McManus made a long field goal and Joe Jones blocked an extra point.

Unfortunately, the blocked punt resulting in prime field position turned out to be a massive momentum shift in the game that gave the Bucs an early lead and didn’t allow the Broncos to establish any sort of multi-dimensional offensive attack.