Mile High Report
The Denver Broncos capped off an undefeated preseason with another comfortable win.
I for one am glad we’re on to real games.
That being said, I think all of us in Broncos Country appreciated getting to see our starters get more action with the back end of the roster getting most of the work.
Overall, I’m concerned about this team a bit. The offensive line starters left much to be desired. The defensive had more bend to it even when they were playing backups.
But I think it is important for us all to be reminded that this is the preseason and it largely means nothing.
There was no serious game planning happening. Both starting units were playing very vanilla play calls.
The only serious consideration from these preseason games has been seeing individual capability from a player to player standpoint.
Let’s keep it real: the play calling for this game had me pining to have Davis Webb back on the headset (no offense to Sean Payton). Last week we saw a lot more dynamic play calling from Webb. That was all according to plan, though. Payton was running vanilla stuff with two goals in mind: quality reps for the starters before the seasons’ start and evaluation opportunities for the depth guys on the roster.
One play call that stood out to me was a run on 3rd and 6 which was a handoff that looked like a bad call at first glance. The offense was going for it on 4th down no matter what at that area of the field which made the short yardage it gained more valuable.
Payton worked in plenty of his short passes around the line of scrimmage with mostly poor success. A lot of the troubles with them had to do with the ball not getting there quickly enough for the players to have space to work with.
Bo Nix honestly looked like he needed the reps in this game. He was guilty of a slow pass on a WR screen to Franklin. He was also off on his accuracy a bit early. As the game wore on, he got quite deadly, though and was really starting to look like a quarterback who was fully comfortable letting the game come to him from play to play. His last drive was immaculate and I can’t wait to see what he’s going to do this season.
Sam Ehrlinger played one hell of a game for a 3rd string quarterback. I don’t expect perfection from a quarterback, especially when he’s having to play with so many different sets of receivers that he likely doesn’t have superb rapport with. His touchdown throw showed some ability to create under pressure, which is a great thing to have in the NFL. There’s a higher than 0 chance that the Broncos could trade Jarrett Stidham in the near future. If that happens, I think Ehrlinger could handle the backup duties.
Luke Wattenburg had a lot...
