Mile High Report
After beating the Los Angeles Chargers three consecutive times, the Denver Broncos have now dropped the last two to their divisional rivals. And with a top spot in the AFC West on the line come Sunday, we now take a look at what Denver needs to do to leave Los Angeles with a win.
Heading into the season we knew what the weakest position group was: the linebackers. Right now the Broncos have a 32-year old Alex Singleton, who is coming off of that ACL injury, and Justin Strnad, a solid backup. They’re not getting the job done, and that might be just a bit of an understatement following their game against the Colts. And while we were (and still might be) excited about the Dre Greenlaw signing, he’s still not practicing. Greenlaw is undoubtedly one of the best linebackers in the league and will provide a massive boost to this defense, he just can’t get healthy at the moment. The Broncos could really use him right now.
Singleton and Strnad have comparable ability in the run game, but Strnad is clearly better in coverage. Will they give him the green dot?
JK Dobbins has brought a huge improvement to this Denver rushing attack this season, and some of his best runs have come out of the I formation with two tight ends. Particularly it has been Power out of this look, or Inside Zone Lead has been great as well. But you can’t expect teams to not catch on to what you’re trying to do, so it’s time to get creative.
The Broncos must find different ways to get into this formation. That will include a handful of different shifts they can use to keep the defense guessing. We already know that Sean Payton has a deep playbook when it comes to this sort of stuff, just look at that Adam Trautman touchdown play. It’s time to keep this up. A simple but effective way to do this is to line up wide, get the defense spread out, and then you bring your personnel in tight and snap the ball quickly to get the defense off balance.
The Broncos seemingly tried to lose their Week 1 game, they we’re successful in blowing their Week 2 game, and they were particularly poor in close games last year as well. This identity is the one that haunts them the most, and this week is a great week to change the narrative.
The last time they played the Chargers they suffered from this same inability to finish out halves or games. I know we all remember that free kick that swung the momentum at the end of the first half in that game and it was over from that moment. Payton and the team leaders have to find a way to close out what should be a tightly contested...
