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ENGLEWOOD, Colo. – The day after the Denver Broncos beat the San Diego Chargers 27-19 to take over the AFC West, the mood was anything but positive from head coach Gary Kubiak when it came to the offense.
“It’s a long way to go. Obviously, we’re not even close to what we need to be,” Kubiak said at his Monday afternoon press conference.
The only bright spot on the offense, according to Kubiak, was their two highly-paid receivers, Emmanuel Sanders and Demaryius Thomas.
“Obviously, we didn’t run the ball at all, but we did make some big plays in the passing game. ‘10’ and ‘88’ keep making big plays for us,” Kubiak stated.
However, the Broncos cannot continue to rely on this offensive approach. If the team continues to struggle running the ball, it will only get more difficult to get the ball to their star receivers.
“Offensively, if you are sitting there running the ball like we did [against the Chargers] then ‘DT’ and Emmanuel are going to get doubled,” Kubiak explained. “Coverage wise, it’s going to be tough. We’ve got to find a way [to run the ball]. When we run the ball well we can get people to play us in single coverage. It gets us a lot better chance to get them the ball.”
The answers to these struggles don’t lie solely in running the ball, but finding a balance between the pass and run game that keeps the chains moving.
“The key to being balanced in football is staying on the field,” the Broncos head coach intimated. “Getting first downs and staying on the football field… balance, to me, comes through ball movement, and we need to find it,”
After losing running back C.J. Anderson to a knee injury and placing him on injured reserve last week, the Broncos seemed to escape another injury to the running game. Devontae Booker, in his first career start, left the field with a shoulder injury after the Broncos first offensive drive. A day after the injury, Kubiak was optimistic the injury was nothing serious.
“Everything sounds good,” he disclosed. “He’s sore but the fact that he was able to come back and play through it I think is a good sign… He’s day-to-day.”
While the offense as a whole certainly won’t grade out well in Kubiak’s eyes, the Broncos still walked away from Sunday’s game with a victory, which is the most important takeaway to the head coach.
“The team still found a way to win,” Kubiak said. “So, that’s a good sign for the football team.”
At the halfway point of the season, the Broncos (6-2) sit tied atop the AFC West with the Oakland Raiders, even with an offense that has been wildly inconsistent.
