Mile High Report
The Denver Broncos this week went into hostile territory and came away with a victory. Let’s start by giving some credit. That Houston Texans defense is legitimate and deserves a ton of respect. My focus is normally on our team, but I couldn’t help but be impressed with how good they played all four quarters.
This game was pretty telling for our team from a big picture sense. The offense is young and developing with a top-10 talent at quarterback. The defense is the rock this house is built on. Special teams is a clown fiesta.
I’m grateful for everyone on the team fighting for this win until the end. They pulled it off again when they probably shouldn’t (which is what good football teams do).
This was likely one of the jankiest games we’ve seen from the Broncos offense over the past couple of years. Missed throws, a bad interception, poor 3rd down performance, and way too many 3-and-outs.
The biggest positive I noted in this game was that the run game pretty consistently worked. The team averaged 4.3 yards per carry, but didn’t seem to be willing to stick with it consistently. Some of that is clearly play calling, but sometimes they were forced to because of poor production (run game included) on 1st down. It can be really difficult to effectively run the ball when you are behind schedule. It gets to be darn near impossible against such a talented front as what the Broncos played against on Sunday.
This was very clearly one of Bo Nix’s off days. I give him big credit for the fight. He definitely was one of the biggest reasons the Broncos won the game. That being said, his throwing in this game was pretty darn poor (his QBR of 68.9 and my eyes tell the same story).
The Texans kept a safety deep as they know Nix likes to take shots downfield. It finally worked in the 2nd quarter when Nix threw deep for Sutton, and the safety picked him off from the side. Nix’s deep throws are consistently lobs, which take time to get home. Nix needs to be aware of what the safety is doing before he takes his shots like that, and either look them off to make them go the wrong direction or pick a different option in his progression.
I do think he didn’t get a fair shake when he was flagged for intentional grounding. I’ve seen throws with receivers further away at the same angle that didn’t get flagged for that.
One of the big things that Nix did such a good job in this game was recognizing the blitz (which the Texans really dialed up after Stroud went out). He was constantly rolling, stepping up in the pocket, or getting the ball out early to avoid pressure by and large.
This week, it was the Texans’ turn to learn about who Bo Nix is in the 4th quarter. He dropped...
