Mile High Report
Denver’s seven-game winning streak faces its next challenge this Sunday at home as they take on the most annoying team in the league; the Kansas City Chiefs. But recent history has been good to the Denver Broncos as they’ve won two of the last three matchups and were mere inches away from winning in their first matchup from last season. Let’s just not talk about what happened outside of the last three games.
These two teams seem to be in different spots on their respective seasons, and they’re both strange to see. The Broncos are trying to prove to themselves and the league that they belong at the top of the standings, and there’s a ton they can gain from a win this weekend, one thing being a 91% chance to win the division. And on the other hand, you have the Chiefs trying to stave off accusations of it finally being a down year for them and they now have some work to do if they want to win the AFC West.
This is a massive game for either team. Here are three things the Broncos likely need to do if they want to end Week 11 still on top of the division.
At the time of writing this, JK Dobbins has not officially been scratched from this game, but it does appear very likely that he will not be active come Sunday. While it does certainly hurt not having the league’s fifth-best running back this year, it’s not doom for the offense. There is still plenty they can achieve with RJ Harvey toting most of the carries, whether it be in their traditional offense, or if they want to mix things up in the backfield.
The Broncos aren’t strangers to putting two guys in the backfield. That can be just pairing up Harvey with Adam Prentice, or that could also include pairing Harvey up with someone like Marvin Mims. There are tons of times where the Broncos ran Split Gun last year with Mims and Jaleel McLaughlin and those plays usually came with a good bit of success.
The exotic looks will give the Chiefs another thing to have to pay attention to. The mix of being able to run orbit motions with Mims, either giving it to him or having Harvey run Inside Zone underneath it, or turning that look into a Spinner Counter, or a myriad of other looks will open up new lanes for this rushing attack. And then there’s what these rushing looks can also open up for the passing game, especially Mims and Harvey running wheel routes out of the backfield.
I’m sure Sean Payton has some tricks up his sleeve. We might just want to avoid him pulling out said tricks on third and short situations.
The Chiefs don’t give up many sacks. They’ve only allowed 17 sacks so far...
