Seeing the Denver Broncos suffer back-to-back losses to significantly tougher competition has confirmed what fans feared the most: that 3-0 start was a mirage.
It was painful to watch as the Broncos through three quarters on Sunday as the team got out-coached, out-played, and out-fought in all three phases by the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Quarterback Teddy Bridgewater’s stat line tells the tale of how the afternoon went. Of his 288 total yards passing, a whopping 177 of them came in the fourth quarter as he mounted a furious comeback. While the clutch-time theatrics provided some real excitement, the issues that haunt the Broncos are serious.
For a team trying to bounce back and make a statement on the road against a listing 1-3 Steelers team, and its badly hobbled 39-year-old QB Ben Roethlisberger, Denver's lack of energy and preparation points squarely at the deficiencies of the current coaching staff.
Particular stark is the inability to start games with high energy levels, and on offense, the buck stops with veteran coordinator Pat Shurmur.
Post-game, Bridgewater addressed the elephant in the room and admitted just how damaging it is to come out of the traps so slowly week after week.
“We’ve got to come in with the mindset to get better,” Bridgewater said via the team website. “We can’t wait till the game is out of hand to have a sense of urgency. We can’t wait till we’re down. We’ve just got to come out shooting the way we played in that fourth quarter. We’ll give ourselves a chance to win a lot of games.”
Bridgewater deserves credit for willing the Broncos back into the game, but moving forward, the attitude his team is displaying through body language and performance is leaving them in the dust compared to the fast, aggressive offensive powerhouses that populate the league and the AFC West.
Missed opportunities littered the entire Week 5 loss for the Broncos, with costly penalties and two dropped interceptions by linebacker Alexander Johnson proving vital. But it’s a top-down malaise that is setting a very dull and uninspiring tone.
Even during his post-game reaction from the podium, head coach Vic Fangio looked and sounded like a guy badly lacking in energy, ideas, and most crucially answers.
“There were some missed opportunities, but overall we just didn’t play well enough,” Fangio said.
If Fangio and his coaching staff continue to sleepwalk through the next few weeks, it will inevitably lead to similar defeats and it will also see increased calls for Broncos GM George Paton to make some radical changes.
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