ENGLEWOOD, Colo – The Denver Broncos lost the turnover battle, were worse on third down, had fewer rushing yards, fewer passing yards, were worse in the red zone and still beat a football team that won 17 games last season.

They played a game that was far from their best in almost every phase and despite the big win over last season’s NFC Champion, the Carolina Panthers, they are not happy about it.

“We played terrible in the first half,” Chris Harris said after the game. “We didn’t play Bronco football. Third down was terrible, the offense was giving the ball away—we just knew we had to come in and play our game… Everyone was just messing up: coaches, players. We weren’t in synch in the first half, and we had to just calm each other down, coaches had to calm down, and we got it rolling.”

“I don’t think we played a game as bad as we played [against the Panthers] all of last year,” added safety T.J. Ward. “We made a bunch of errors; we made a bunch of mistakes and it almost cost us the game.”

That comment from Ward could be cause for a few raised eyebrows. If they didn’t play a game that bad all of last year, well, maybe they just aren’t as good as last year? But here’s the reason to keep a bit of faith. Most if the Broncos issues on the defensive side of the ball were mental errors—missed assignments, too many men on the field, and so on—things that can be fixed.

Even the missed tackles are often a product of the first game of the season. After all, the only time the team has practiced tackling was in the preseason, for about a quarter at a time.

With all that said, despite the disappointment, head coach Gary Kubiak found reason for optimism.

“I haven’t slept much, I couldn’t believe we won the game with some of the things that we did, some of the mistakes that we made,” he said with a head-shaking laugh. “But that’s a credit to them, they believe they can get it done; they can fight through adversity and still win. For me, really, I look at as I’m excited because of what I think we can be if we correct those things, and we’ll go to work on correcting those right now.”

“I will not let up on them,” he added. “We made too many mistakes playing and coaching. We survived tonight, but we have a lot of things to correct.”

The good news for the Broncos is they have 10 days to get all of that corrected before facing the Indianapolis Colts. Oh, and they’re still 1-0.