Mile High Report
That was an ugly Thursday Night game, but the Broncos once again came out on top and improved to an NFL-best 8-2 record. They have now won 7-straight games, lead the AFC West, and will have a mini-bye week before their big game vs. the Chiefs next weekend.
Like most Thursday Night games, this was a sloppy one. The Broncos held two walk-throughs prior to this game, and it showed. On offense, they looked out of sync, unprepared, and just sloppy. They’re slow starters normally, but it was even worse tonight as they struggled to score at all. The same cannot be said for the Broncos’ defense, which kept them in it all game, but overall, they looked off tonight.
As for winners and losers, it’s hard to come up with much good despite the victory, but here are your winners and losers from the Broncos’ 10-7 victory over the Raiders.
Much like 2015, the Broncos are winning ugly games thanks to their top-ranked defense. They gave up an early touchdown to rookie running back Ashton Jeanty, but bounced back from that and held the Raiders scoreless for the remainder of the game.
The Raiders were held to just 114 yards passing, 74 yards rushing, 7 points, and the Broncos’ defense sacked them 6 times while Dondrea Tillman came down with his second interception of the season (He’s great in open space).
Nik Bonitto had 1.5 sacks, Hufanga had a big 4th down sack, while Zach Allen, Jonathon Cooper, John Franklin-Myers, Malcolm Roach, and Uwazurike all tallied sacks in this one.
The pass rush was relentless; they held Brock Bowers to 1 reception for 31 yards, and survived another game without reigning DPOY Pat Surtain II.
This unit is playing out of their mind, and the reason they sit at 8-2 right now. Vance Joseph and this unit deserve all the flowers as they continue to play like this despite being down their top defensive player.
Woof.
Bo Nix and the Broncos’ offense did not show up for this game. Nix looked flustered and off target. The blocking wasn’t great at times, the receivers dropped passes and struggled to track balls, and the play-calling was iffy at best.
It was their worst overall showing of the season. Not even the 4th quarter could bring them to life. I will say, the short week likely played into this, as they seem to get off to a slow start normally, but it was rough tonight.
Bo Nix threw two interceptions. One ended up being a long arm punt before halftime. He threw a deep ball to Troy Franklin, who was double-covered and it landed in the arms of a Raiders defender. Later in the game, a pass hit Franklin, but he couldn’t come down with it and ended up being a deflection INT. These two turnovers never came back to hurt the Broncos, but something that cannot happen much moving forward....
