There were a lot of questions entering Week 6 for the Denver Broncos. Trevor Siemian was coming back but nobody knew how healthy he really was. What about the offensive line that was a disaster in Week 5? Would the return of Donald Stevenson and Virgil Green change that?
As big as those questions were, none were bigger than what the team would look like under a new head coach.
Gary Kubiak left last week’s game in an ambulance and named special teams coordinator Joe DeCamillis the interim head coach for Thursday night while he rested. The idea was that the offense would remain the same under Rick Dennison, the defense would remain the same under Wade Phillips, and “Joe D” would manage the team until Kubiak gets back.
It sounded easy enough, but nothing was easy for the Broncos on Thursday night as they fell to the Chargers by a score of 21-13.
Despite a litany of penalties, including two from the offensive line that cost the team nine points, when the press caught up with Bennie Fowler after the game, he wasn’t ready to hand out blame.
“Joe D. had us ready,” said the receiver. “We were ready to go. We’re not a team that makes excuses so we can’t use that as an excuse at all. We just started out slow and beat ourselves.”
Similar to the sentiment of many players last week, Fowler does not believe this game will hold them down for long.
“We’re gonna learn from this, come back and get ready for Houston. I can’t wait to get back to work on Monday. We’re gonna get back on track and get back to the team that we know we can be.”
Fowler went as far as to say that he was pleased with quarterback Trevor Siemian.
“He looked good, you know,” he explained. “Trevor was his normal self but like I said before, we can’t beat ourselves. ‘Trev’ was ready to play.”
If DeCamillis had them ready and Siemian looked good, the blame in, “beat ourselves,” has to be placed somewhere. You can connect the dots.
The Broncos now have eleven days to think about this loss before a Monday-night meeting with the Houston Texans on Oct. 24.
