4 ways the Broncos could talk themselves into keeping Nathaniel Hackett

Members of Broncos Country are fed up with the team in 2022, there’s no question about it. The Broncos are not putting a good product out there this season. They are 3-8 in one-score games, and up to this point, they are 0-4 in AFC West matchups with two losses against the Raiders and one each against the Chiefs and Chargers with one matchup remaining. There’s a lot more to be said of the disaster that the 2022 season has been, and a lot of that reflects on head coach Nathaniel Hackett.

We’ve talked, at length, about a number of major issues with Hackett in the past.

• Has anyone on the offense really gotten better?
• Why would George Paton sign off on Hackett letting Mike Munchak (or even Chris Kuper, for that matter) out the door?
• Things with Russell Wilson have gone extremely poorly
• Hackett has replaced himself as the game manager AND offensive play-caller

Among plenty of other things throughout the course of the season, there’s enough “cause” to make Hackett one-and-done as the Denver Broncos’ head coach. But is that a foregone conclusion? Could the Broncos still consider keeping Hackett beyond this season? There are at least some things to consider.

4 reasons the Broncos might keep Nathaniel Hackett in 2023

1. Injuries have absolutely devastated this Broncos roster

If there’s one thing you simply can’t blame Nathaniel Hackett for this season, it’s been the devastating injuries affecting this Broncos roster. Anytime you go into a season, of course you expect injuries to take their toll as the season progresses. This is such a violent game and these players are putting their bodies on the line every single week. Injuries happen and they are an unfortunate reality of the game.

But the Denver Broncos have had an abnormally high rate of players getting hurt in recent years. As of the moment of this post being written, the Broncos have over $55 million of their 2022 salary cap sitting on injured reserve, over 25 percent of the team’s salary books for this season. To put that into perspective (because a good chunk of that is coming from Garett Bolles’ cap hit), the Broncos have the following starters or key contributors on IR heading into Week 16:

• RB Javonte Williams
• WR Tim Patrick
• WR KJ Hamler
• OT Garett Bolles
• C Lloyd Cushenberry
• DL Dre’Mont Jones
• CB Ronald Darby
• S Caden Sterns
• LB Jonas Griffith
• EDGE/ST Aaron Patrick

And plenty of other role players or key backups. The Broncos have also had to deal with guys who aren’t currently on IR missing substantial time this season like:

• S Justin Simmons
• EDGE Randy Gregory
• WR Courtland Sutton
• WR Jerry Jeudy
• QB Russell Wilson
• OL Quinn Meinerz
• OL Billy Turner
• TE Greg Dulcich

And again, plenty of others.

As far as this being an “excuse” for Hackett, I wouldn’t view this as much of an excuse at all. This is a valid reason why the team has been bad and it’s really out of Hackett’s control. You could kind of tell the war on attrition shocked even Hackett at his December 19 press conference when he was asked a question about rookie guard Luke Wattenberg stepping in the game, and he began to think through all of the offensive line reshufflings in his head on the spot, saying that, “It’s been a lot of moving parts. It’s been exciting…”

Exciting is one way to put it.

At the end of the day, you’re asking Hackett to go out there on a weekly basis and make chicken salad and the team’s most recent victory — a win over the (also very injured) Arizona Cardinals with an absolute shell of the initial 53-man roster — is perhaps one of the biggest notches on Hackett’s belt as an NFL head coach given the player personnel he was working with offensively.

2. Hackett has gotten a bit of a raw deal in one-score games

Put on your tinfoil hats, folks, it’s time for some conspiracy-level thinking here.

Let’s look at one of the most important statistics for the Broncos this season, which is the team’s record in one-score games. The Broncos are 3-8 in one-score games this season, which means that obviously, they have failed in the majority of those glorious opportunities they’ve been given. It also means that they have been in a lot of close games and aren’t getting blown out, per se.

That’s not exactly an endorsement, but let’s look at another very interesting factor that could be leading to the team’s struggles in one-score games.

Officiating.

Again, this may come across as an excuse, but there might be more there than meets the eye when it comes to blaming officiating on the Broncos really struggling badly in one-score games.

In the article shared by Mike Klis, he even concludes at the end by saying that while Hackett deserves his “proportionate” share of the blame for the team’s post-bye week blues, the issue with penalties for Denver this season seems to be more about which officiating crew they have gotten rather than the team simply being undisciplined in every facet.

Specifically, look back at the Broncos’ overtime loss to the Chargers in Los Angeles earlier this season. Referee Ron Torbert and his crew infamously called rookie cornerback Damarri Mathis for a whopping four penalties in that game and the Broncos were called for 10 penalties (for 151 yards) in total. To be fair, the Chargers were called for 9 penalties as well but for only 89 yards by comparison.

Three of Mathis’ pass interference penalties (some legit, some questionable) resulted in six Chargers points that ended up being the difference in the game.

Of course, this is just one game and one example but how many other games can you point to where an infraction cost the Broncos points or momentum on a drive? Is a lot of that on coaching or just simply the luck of the draw on a weekly basis of who is calling Broncos games?

That could certainly be an interesting factor when it comes to the team’s decision after the season about whether or not to keep Nathaniel Hackett in the head coach’s chair. When your team is called for 101 penalties totaling 856 yards in 14 games, of course that’s going to impact your ability to win close games.

Among those penalties, the Broncos have been called for:

• 9 defensive pass interference (tied for 3rd most in the league)
• 7 unnecessary roughness (tied for 4th most in the league)
• 23 false starts (2nd-most in the league)

Compare that to 2021 when the Broncos were called for just 6 DPI, 3 unnecessary roughness, and 18 false starts. Is that all on coaching? Again, we’ll see after the season what the front office and ownership determine.

3. Firing a HC after one year is certainly not preferable

Whether you’re talking about the financial impact or the message it sends to future head coaches, firing a head coach after one season is certainly not a preferable outcome no matter what way you slice it.

There are two sides to that argument, of course.

In the NFL, winning is all that matters and you’ve got to make sure you get things right. As a franchise, the Denver Broncos have one of the richest and proudest traditions of winning and there is also plenty of loyalty dating back to the entire Pat Bowlen era.

It wasn’t until recently that the Broncos started having a quicker trigger on letting coaches go, which is certainly now something the fan base has grown accustomed to. At this point, everyone is looking not just for the quickest fix but for someone — anyone — to get this team back to winning.

Back in 2011, John Fox came in and helped stabilize the team from one of the worst in the NFL to 8-8 and somehow division champions. After the luster of Fox and his staff had worn off, Gary Kubiak came in and took one of the best teams in the NFL and helped make them a Super Bowl champion.

The Broncos’ greatest success in recent years has seemingly come from retread head coaching options, so Broncos fans are tired of the first-time head coach thing and are ready for someone proven to come into the building.

But if you only give a guy one season, what kind of shot does he really have? If the Broncos brought in Nathaniel Hackett with the idea that he was the best leader for the team, you’d have to think that they still — to some degree — feel that way.

Again, there is a lot of “bad” that falls on Hackett’s plate this year, but he’s been dealt a tough hand in many respects as well from Russell Wilson not playing as well as many had hoped to the fact that this roster is one of the most injured and battered in the league.

If you’re George Paton, you’re looking at the guy you picked to lead the franchise and you can’t help but ask yourself if you made the wrong call. Do the Broncos need a fresh start or does Hackett need more time to gel with Russell Wilson? Are the primary issues plaguing this Broncos team solvable with Hackett still at the helm of it all?

These are tough but valid questions at this point in the year and the more breadcrumbs you find, the more it seems to lead back to Hackett potentially getting a second season in Denver.

4. Broncos may be stuck between a rock and a hard place

Let’s look at the Denver Broncos’ situation for what it is at the moment. The team is in last place in the AFC West. Russell Wilson had such a down year that it could scare off potential candidates. The team could have a GM on a short leash in 2023, which could potentially also complicate things for a prospective head coach.

If the Broncos are considered a mess right now, and many would (rightfully) consider them to be exactly that, then George Paton has a mess to clean up this offseason. Does that start with removing Hackett?

Hackett was given full authority to pick his coaching staff, which has been hit and miss. As much blame as he deserves for bringing in the “coach to coach the coaches” which could have been a turn-off for veteran coaches on the previous staff, as much blame as he deserves for letting Mike Munchak and even Curtis Modkins out the door, he deserves credit for the Ejiro Evero hire and how fantastic that has turned out to be. The Broncos have had an elite-level defense all year long.

We’ve been talking about the offense changing and being better for seven years now, and Hackett’s offensive staff has been an abject disaster. Nobody knows what “offensive coordinator” Justin Outten contributes. Klint Kubiak, the quarterbacks coach, was promoted to offensive play-caller after Hackett came under so much fire for that aspect of his job.

In recent weeks, things have been better. Does that mean the winning formula is already in place for 2023 and beyond? Not necessarily, but it does mean that the Broncos’ coaching staff may just be a couple of tweaks away.

Let’s say Hackett is able to finish the year strong, perhaps even beating Kansas City or — let’s get crazy — the Broncos win out and beat the Rams, Chiefs, and Chargers. Does that change the discussion? What if they don’t win out, but what if they are consistently scoring 24 or more points per game?

Is it already too little, too late? Or does Hackett have a shot to still impress the higher-ups in Denver?

I think changes to the coaching staff are coming regardless, but I don’t know at this point if firing Nathaniel Hackett is a foregone conclusion. Some have already staked their mortgage on it happening, and I’m just not 100 percent sold yet. George Paton and the Broncos’ hiring committee fell in love with Hackett for his personality, his promises of innovation, and I think it’s going to be hard for them to fall out of love with the guy.

Hackett also hasn’t lost the Broncos’ locker room, contrary to what some would have you believe. He is well-liked personally by the players and that was to be expected when he came in. He’s a player’s coach and perhaps even to a fault.

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Hard decisions will be coming for the Broncos in the coming weeks, but Hackett will be on the books in 2023 regardless if he’s fired or still in the head coach’s chair. Perhaps the Broncos will decide that what they need, more than anything, is a “bad cop” to Hackett’s good cop on that offensive staff.