Mile High Report
What a start to the new year — 14 wins, the No. 1 seed, an upcoming bye week because of it, a defense with the most sacks in the NFL and a QB that keeps getting it done however it has to be done.
No doubt the victory against the Chargers was a “boring win” with no offensive touchdowns, but the Broncos are taking W all the way to the divisional round so who really cares?
Probably Sean Payton, actually.
“Absolutely,” he said about getting over his team’s red zone issues because of the 1 seed. “Look, am I ever happy? No, but we shouldn’t be as coaches. There are some things when we watch that film that we’ll be like, ‘Ah.’ When people ask, ‘What’s the benefit of the [No.] 1 seed?’ Many will say it’s the rest. I personally think it’s the elimination of a game that you don’t have to play. Our fans were fantastic, and I’m proud of our team.”
But where the offense struggled, the defense finally found some footing — in scoring.
The one knock on the Denver defense has been it’s lack of takeaways, and Sunday the defense showed it can do more than just pressure the quarterback.
Ja’Quan McMillian started things off with a pick-six, and Nik Bonitto added to the bounty with a strip sack later in the game.
Payton said takeaways were a point of emphasis with the defense all week as the coaches reminded players that the analytics show teams that score on defense win the games 88% of the time.
“At some point I said, ‘We keep talking about the takeaways, some of these elite defenses score.’ So we kind of gave them the information,” Payton said.
That “information” came via a video of all the defense’s takeaways the last three years and a reminder that they need to do it.
“Coach has been harping on it all year. All week, he’s been mad at the defense, so we’ve been hearing from him about the takeaways,” laughed Nik Bonitto. “[It] kind of paid off today. We were due for a couple.”
McMillian added that it hasn’t been like the defense hasn’t been trying, but it certainly needed to be an emphasis for improvement.
“It was a point of emphasis for us. We’ve been talking about it, something that we’ve been working on for some time,” he said. “You know, we haven’t been doing a great job. I mean we’ve been trying. I’m not saying we haven’t been trying, but the ball just hasn’t been falling our way. So it was good to get a few turnovers today.”
Payton reminded the defense before the game that in the last 25 years only one Super Bowl winner has been “minus” in takeaways versus turnovers.
“It has to be intentional relative to punching the ball out,” Payton said. “That has to be intentional.”
In fact, Payton believes one of the key plays of...
