ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — The Broncos’ beleaguered special teams haven’t cost them a game this season.
Yet.
But in what has become an all-too-familiar refrain, Broncos special-teams coordinator Tom McMahon spent his weekly press conference answering pointed questions about mistakes and letdowns.
Some are in the run of play and a matter of execution, like the 102-yard kickoff return conceded to Jacksonville’s Jamal Agnew in the fourth quarter last week. Others are completely avoidable, like two false-start penalties on punts last Sunday.
In both cases, McMahon pointed to preparation issues.
“What it comes down to is, I’ve got to do a better job of making sure they see every single thing during the week,” McMahon said of the kickoff return.
Specifically on Agnew’s runback the Broncos briefly appeared to have proper containment, but then lapsed quickly.
“At the 15-yard line, there’s four guys there,” McMahon said. “It’s one of those things where you’ve got to execute the whole play. You can’t execute (just) the first four-and-a-half seconds — and that comes to coaching, it comes to tackling, and we’ve got to get guys on the ground, and it’s execution on my part.”
It was the second touchdown allowed by the Broncos on a kickoff return in their last 13 games. Just eight touchdowns have been permitted on kickoff returns around the NFL in the past two seasons; Denver is responsible for 25 percent of them.
Penalties are also a concern; the Broncos had three infractions last week, with the two false starts being particularly galling.
“Give [the Jaguars] some credit. They’re jumping into the line of scrimmage and then our guys jump. From that standpoint, that should never happen,” McMahon said.
“Again, they’ve got to see that more in practice. If that’s happening in a game, in practice — our look squad needs to be jumping at us because if we’re jumping offsides in the game we didn’t get enough of it in practice. That comes back again on me. We’ve got to execute.”
McMahon said the team worked on it in practice this week to fix the glitch. But the fact that he said the team “didn’t get enough” work on it in practice prior to last week is also troubling.
The Broncos now have four special-teams penalties for 40 yards so far this season — including two against Mike Ford, both 15-yard infractions.
Only the Texans and Cowboys have more special-teams penalties than the Broncos, and only the Cowboys have more yardage in special-teams penalties than the Broncos.
Pro Football Focus ranks the Broncos’ special-teams units 32nd through two games. This follows three seasons under McMahon in which the Broncos finished 24th, 21st and 21st in 2018, 2019 and 2020, respectively, in longtime NFL reporter Rick Gosselin’s special-teams rankings, which encompass 22 different categories in kickoffs, punts, returns and placekicks.
Losing linebacker Josey Jewell for the season because of a torn pectoral muscle suffered on punt coverage doesn’t help, either.
“It’s a huge loss,” McMahon said. “Josey is a great player, a great teammate. We’ve been together for three years, so when it happens on a special-teams play, naturally as a coach, you kind of take it to heart. I feel terrible for him, but as a player and as a teammate, he’s the best.”
It’s not all bad on special teams. Diontae Spencer’s 25-yard punt return Sunday vaulted him to second in the league in punt-return average. Brandon McManus hasn’t missed a placekick so far this season, going a perfect 5-of-5 on field goals and 5-of-5 on extra points to date.
But despite a personnel overhaul and a stated emphasis on special-teams ability on Day 3 of the draft and then in constructing the back end of the 53-man roster last month, special-teams mistakes remain a flummoxing issue.
And McMahon continues to shoulder the blame.
“When the execution breaks down, whether it’s leverage, whether it’s a missed tackle, whether it’s any part of that play, that’s 100 percent on me,” he said.
