How Denver Broncos rusher Nik Bonitto is learning from Joey Bosa and Khalil Mack

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Only one NFL team has a better scoring defense than the Denver Broncos this season, and it’s coming to town this weekend.

“The one thing they’ve been really good at is, they haven’t had [to] defend a lot of trips into the red zone, so there’s a start,” Broncos head coach Sean Payton said on Friday.

The Los Angeles Chargers have only allowed two touchdowns in the red zone, which has forced the Broncos to use film from Los Angeles’ preseason games.

“That’s pretty impressive,” Payton said.

The Chargers have allowed 12.5 points per game so far this season, the best mark in the league. The Broncos are tied with the Pittsburgh Steelers for second with 14.6 points per game allowed.

Broncos quarterback Bo Nix says the Chargers are succeeding thanks to their fundamentals.

“They do a good job keeping everything in front of them,” he said. ” They don’t give up explosives. They’ve kept everybody to low scoring. I feel like they do a good job tackling and, like I said, just keeping everything in front of them. They don’t make a whole lot of mistakes. They don’t bust coverage, or be out of alignment or gaps. They do a good job on defense.”

The Chargers are banged up. Sixteen players missed at least a portion of this week’s practice time. A handful of players’ statuses are up in the air for Sunday. That includes four-time Pro Bowl pass rusher Joey Bosa.

“He does everything,” Broncos rusher Nik Bonitto told DNVR.

Bonitto, 25, has watched Bosa and Khalil Mack, Bosa’s eight-time Pro Bowl rush partner, often in an attempt to learn from some of the league’s best.

“Khalil, he’s obviously one of the best power rushers, I think, to play the game,” Bonitto said.

The Chargers’ rushers are both much bigger than Bonitto, but he says there’s still plenty he can learn.

“They’ve just got little stuff as far as get-off,” Bonitto said. “Joey’s really good with his hands, so just watching how he works with that type of stuff and how I can implement it.”

Bonitto is impressed by their longevity but isn’t surprised.

“Joey, when you’re a technician like that, you can last in this league a long time,” Bonitto said. “Obviously, Khalil is a freak. He’s always gonna have freak strength to be able to just bully whoever he wants to.”

With a backup tackle likely to start for the Broncos on Sunday, taking care of the rushers will be priority one.

Nix believes whichever team can protect the ball better will win the battle of top defenses.

“This is going to be one of those turnover games,” Nix said. “Who can win the turnover margin, who can protect the ball and who can cause takeaways. It’s going to be important.”

Every game in the NFL is different. Some are high-scoring. Some are low-scoring.

 “We just have to know what’s important in this game, how to win this game,” Payton said.

Injury Report

The Broncos and Chargers released their final injury reports ahead of their game on Sunday.

Running back Audric Estime and cornerback Damarri Mathis were full participants again on Friday. Both are eligible to return to the active roster from injured reserve as soon as this week but must be activated within the next 21 days or be ineligible for the rest of the season.

However, if either is activated, the Broncos must clear space for him on the active roster. The easiest way to clear space would be to move one of Alex Palczewski, Luke Wattenberg or Josh Reynolds to injured reserve, which would take them out of the Broncos’ next four contests.

Palczewski and Wattenberg are both dealing with ankle injuries. The extent of the injuries is still unknown, but both have been ruled out for Sunday. Reynolds had surgery on his finger and will also be out for at least Sunday’s game.

Tackle Mike McGlinchey and outside linebacker Baron Browning are eligible to return from injured reserve next week, which could create more of a logjam.

Broncos

Chargers

Notes

• The Broncos will have a quick turnaround next week, playing the Saints in New Orleans on Thursday Night Football. Payton: “We did our study on it. Early on when they started, I felt like we had a string of like four or five [games] in a row on the road scheduling-wise. Then, pretty soon, we honed in on a schedule. I think for the most part, we’re walking through Monday. They’re off Monday with some film prep, treatment, and then you have two days of kind of like we—Tuesday would be [a] walkthrough. Wednesday, we might move them around a little bit more [and] travel Wednesday night. Then I think it’s important that it’s the stuff they know by heart. You have to be cautious or limit the amount of new thoughts on a short week. Most importantly, how do we recover physically and mentally? I’ve been on the other end of that where we came in Sunday night, they practiced—it’s tough to do. We’ll get to that when it comes. That seems like a year away from now.”
  
  
• Payton hasn’t put the “joker” label on Jaleel McLaughlin yet. “He has good contact balance for his size. There was a time when we talked about a change of pace type back. He comes to my office and he’s wanting me to call him a ‘Joker’. We haven’t done that yet, but I think that he has good vision. Some [running] backs are just harder to lay your pads on than others. In other words, he gets tackled, but he might just get quartered. So I think he has good vision, he’s got very good feet and I would say there’s some strength in how he runs.”
  
  
• Payton wouldn’t say whether Greg Dulcich or Lucas Krull will play on Sunday. Only Krull received a uniform last week. “I’m not going to talk about Sunday. I’m just going to talk about that decision, and that’s a good question. I kept seeing Lucas with some things during the week and I wanted to change it up. Now he helped us a little bit in the kicking game. They both run well, and yet I wanted to make sure—both of them have similarities. I wanted to make sure Greg knew that, ‘Hey, this is week-to-week.’ We’ll see this week the direction we go. Both of them are similar in their strengths.”