A Broncos season that started with so much hope and expectations.
A draft class and offseason designed to keep pace with the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs has seen more bumps in the road than we ever would have imagined. Most recently a team missing Von Miller, Courtland Sutton, Jurrell Casey, and Shelby Harris among others was tasked to play without a quarterback.
The Broncos have played without Drew Lock under center, Philip Lindsay in the backfield, without two starting corners. Ed Donatell and Mike Munchak have been absent from their posts. The list goes on and on. All of that said to negate my negative comments to come this team has five weeks to form an identity of what this football team is about.
The defense has been good enough to compete in nearly every game while the offense has been up and down (mainly down) absent a few quarters of excitement. Some of that is expected from a second year quarterback learning a new playbook with a shortened offseason along with injuries to Lock and several key weapons, but this team hasn’t been “run of the mill. It has been so awful at times it makes the defense appear to be at fault.
So Denver has to group together what weapons they have left and become an offensive system that can help win. Whether that’s the offense that can put up points and big plays that we dreamed of in the offseason or an offense that moves the chains and controls the clock to help the defense limit their opponents.
So far this offense hasn’t done either. Opposing defensive coordinators could mail their gameplan out and check on Monday to see how it went.
When the opponent is able to stack the box to eliminate the run and force Denver to the air the Broncos have had no answer. It’s hard to determine if that’s because they don’t have good enough QB play to take advantage or if Pat Shurmur isn’t calling plays to exploit the defense.
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In any case this team needs to use these next five weeks to figure that out and make it work. Shurmur must work to Lock’s strengths and Lock must make the right reads and put throws on target.
I see plays where the routes don’t supply a check down for Lock to revert to and I see plays where Lock has an open man and goes elsewhere. Continuity and relationships is something the good offenses have and the Broncos do not.
Firing Shurmur and/or moving on from Lock doesn’t get Denver any closer to an identity on offense so let’s make this thing work Broncos. A coordinator and QB sticking together to better themselves moving forward is the path back to contender status for the Broncos.
The only ones that can stop the carousel are the players and coaches on this Denver offense. The league has become more and more results driven and if we want to see how this thing can grow as we hoped it would then results will have to be seen in the closing weeks.