What a horrible debut from our rookie HC. He’s still my guy and I’m confident that it’ll get turned around but that was a BAD bad look for Coach Hackett on a nationally televised primetime game.

Penalties, the metric that reflects most directly on coaching, were awful. Crowd noise was a factor but we had false starts, an illegal formation (from the LT???), roughing the passer, taunting, unnecessary roughness, etc. Way too many infractions.

Physicality; those were clearly dudes who have not played a snap of live, full contact football in 9 months. Missed tackles, bad ball security through contact, guys getting pushed around in the trenches, just a sloppy and unpolished physical performance.

Finally, some of the most abysmal situational/clock management I can remember. With a minute left we keep the clock running through some kind of confusion and burn 30 seconds just to call a time out. Then, on 4th and 5 with a red-hot Russell Wilson, two time outs, and 20 seconds on the clock, he elects to kick a 64 yd attempt at the limit of BMac’s range and says postgame he’s confident he’d make the kick if he were to be in the same situation again. The levels of tragedy and irony here given all the talk of letting Russ cook are borderline Shakespearean.

To his credit I thought the offensive play calling and design were great, but fans and media will eat Nathaniel Hackett alive if this continues.

Hi Zac, RK, and Henry! You got me!

As a daily listener from Portland, OR I’m finay a DNVR member. I hope to meet you guys when I’m in town for the SF game, probably at the tailgate.

I was at the game last night and wanted to share a few things I saw from the standa that I didn’t hear emphasized much in the post game pod:

1. Russ was good, not great. He took multiple sacks by evacuating a clean pocket, and had at least one easy pick dropped. Deep ball accuracy was all over the place.

2. I’ll need to watch the all 22, but I had the first two sacks on Risner. He let a free runner come across his face both times, basically untouched.

3. DJ Jones is a beast. His presence transforms our run defense, even in nickel packages.

4. Seahawks fans are A-holes. I watched the Broncos in Vegas last year and the 12s last night made the Raiders fans look like saints.

Thanks for all you do! Glad to be in on the action now as a member.

My boys,

Well that sucked!
Penalties killed us!
The fumble brothers killed us!
Our defence just got schooled by Geno effing Smith!
Interesting stat, the 11 QB’s that played zero pre season games went 3 and 8…..
This loss will prove costly!
Cheers.

1. Someone please explain Melvin Gordon from the coach’s perspective because I don’t get it. On the Manning cast Shannon Sharpe didn’t get it. Peyton Manning didn’t get it. Ugh.

2. Running the ball, out of shotgun, from the one yard line, not once, but twice, to the right, behind Fleming and Glasgow, instead of to the left, behind two actual starters in Bolles and Risner is baffling. All of it was just wrong. Sack up and get a jumbo set out there if you’re going to run it, you kept 4 tight ends for a reason.

3. It’s the number of timeouts that Hackett and Russ apparently didn’t know they had for 29 and a half minutes of the second half. How about calling one before a delay of game inside the ten, or before your td when Sutton had a false start because of mass confusion, or at any point before 21 seconds left on the final drive. Was Russ giving an inspirational speech in every huddle inside the RedZone? Breaking the huddle with 10 seconds or less is unforgivable and also an automatic take a timeout situation. Somehow we managed to do it on every play for 3 series straight in the RedZone. I’m glad we found a coach with worse time management skills than Vic. Watching him scream at the ref with 10 seconds left in the game to bump it up to 15 after Geno took his first knee was icing on the cake. Holy hell.

Great pod after a tense night. I’m disappointed but not panicked. A lot of mistakes that thankfully, are correctable. Something that didn’t get talked about enough was how damn long it took to get lined up and set. Every down felt like it came down to the .5 second mark (or later). Is that Hack not getting the play calls in fast enough? Offensive players not knowing the playbook just right yet?

To me, those issues were the biggest reason for the two fumbles. Russ seemed like he was rushing everything to get the ball off and that just caused sloppy o-line play and boom, backs fumble there.

Disgusting. Embarrassing. Unacceptable. Deplorable. Humiliating. Unbelievable. Astonishing. Befuddling. Mind numbing. Hopeless. Spineless. Humbling. Disappointing. Flabbergasting.

That’s all I’ve got.

Clock management & rb’s failed us smh ‍♂️ & what’s up with social media saying geno won this game ? He got shut out in 2nd half and disappeared

I’ve been thinking about the way the end of the game played out. It may not be as bad as it seemed in the heat of the moment.

If Hackett made the decision to kick a field goal as soon as he knew it was 4th and 5, he has to deal with the time left on the clock. If he sends out the field goal unit, the Seahawks immediately use their last timeout to save time. That would give Seattle about a minute to drive the field if the Broncos score.

It is better in that scenario to line up and act as though you’re going for it. Let the play clock run and maybe if you get a good look from Seattle’s defense, you go for it. That’s what they did.

Don’t get me wrong. The decision to kick the field goal was wrong, but maybe the clock management was better than it seemed. I hope? Maybe?

Dearest Brethren,

I was jostled from a
Many-month slumber last night to the sound of a man sobbing. Upon extracting myself from my sleeping tomb I encountered that someone had been squatting in my castle. They were watching a replay of a McManus missed field goal try on repeat and wiping their own tears away with aged copies of Henry Chisolm written newspaper articles from the Montana Kaimin. After comforting the lad for a moment i released the hellhounds on him and sent him on his merry way back to whence he came. I’m pretty sure this fellow hacked my DNVR account too. Please disregard anything suspect written under my name. In the mean time I’ll be tearing down a Hank Chisholm (whoever that is) fat head off the wall of the great hall and then I’ll attempt to catch up on 6 months of pods. What have I missed? Mase I asume you’ll read this one.

Love
The Count

Well this is a rough morning-after from that game last night.

Blame game: 1) Melvin and Javonte 2) Defensive penalties 3) offensive penalties

I’m definitely not trying to be the weird contrarian with my take on the Broncos’ last play. At the end of a normal game I would 100% say give it to Russ and the offense, no questions asked. But the offense had not proven themselves trustworthy enough to get those 5 yards without having a pre-snap penalty or a holding call during the play or something like that. I think the field goal was a tough look, but I think Hack was justified in not completely trusting the offense after what he’d seen all second half (and kind of all game).

It also seems from an outsiders perspective that if Russ truly disagreed with Hack that he could’ve gone rogue to some degree. If Russ disagreed he seems to have the freedom to call the timeout or run a play or do something different than what Hackett wanted to do. Hackett’s given him that responsibility and freedom, hasn’t he? So I think while Hackett is obviously the coach and the game management falls on him, it doesn’t in reality fall squarely on his shoulders. That decision is on Russ too, I think.

I loved seeing some of the halftime adjustments. Okay started with the good. That was as bad of a coaching debut as one could have. They talked about tempo before the game. Hackett was late with almost every play call. That resulted in delay of game penalties and blown blocking assignments. Discipline? How about 12 penalties. I cant do this again y’all. Tell me this will get better. Please!

Give the damn ball to Russ you coward! Maybe Mike McDaniel can borrow one of his huevos to Hackett who clearly lost his.

Been about a year since I’ve commented. Just renewed the subscription for a 5th year now. Been riding since BSN and love the Broncos content. I even see Zacs name quoted a lot nowadays. Keep up the good work.

Now for the game.
I’m getting really annoyed of McManus’ unreal expectations of his leg.
He always keeps saying his range is 64 or he can hit 66 in Denver.
Dude is 1/8 over 60yards. Can’t even hit 62. We’ve lost numerous games over the past 4 years by coaches trusting McManus’ opinion of his leg. I get that athletes over-state their own abilities. That’s why your job as a coach is to keep them in check. Hackett should have know McManus is 1/7 over 60yds going into that kick (if he didn’t that’s a MAJOR RED FLAG).
McManus’ range is NOT 64, give me a break. It’s more like 59yds.

You cannot honestly say in any other area of life you would take chances in something if you have 14% chance(Now 12.5% chance) of being successful. Makes absolutely 0 sense. That’s abysmal and horrible critical thinking and logic skills.

I’m really hoping it’s first game jitters for Hackett and that we didn’t have another offseason of hype and all this positive new vibes just to be losing the same fuckin way we’ve been losing the last 5 years.
Praying for the Football Gods to give Hackett some common sense.

My peoples..

I buy that Russ was not effected by the hostile crowd, the rest of the team was however.

Oh and hey, why invest in linebackers who can cover TEs.

Heres to next week.. hopefully an improvement

Well. This sucks. I had a bad feeling about this game for the last few days and was just hoping it was the negative residual effects of the last few seasons, but I should’ve trusted my gut.

A few takeaways

1. We looked like a team that didn’t play in the preseason. In the second half, the Hawks couldn’t touch us, but we could certainly shoot ourselves in the foot with untimely penalties and turnovers.

2. Everyone on the Hawks sideline has been hearing for 6 months how they weren’t good enough for Russ. We should’ve known we were going to get the Hawks best and we weren’t prepared.

3. Coaching has alot to prove; Specifically Hackett. It’s one game, and regardless of expectations, we should anticipate some “rookie mistakes”…but some of those 4th quarter decisions…ooof.

This is probably the most painful loss endured as a fan in years. Mainly because, for this week at least, we’re a bit of a laughing stock around the leauge. Silver lining, this was anything but a normal game. Extenuating circumstances made this a considerably more challanging opponent than they appear on paper. Tip your cap to the Hawks, they proved why this is the greatest game in the world and why nothing is given in this league…But know my petty ass will be reveling in every Seahawks defeat from here to eternity.

How much do you all think the pressure to beat Russ’s former team impacted the game? Do you feel like it impacted the coach’s decision to kick it at the end because they thought maybe Russes emotions were too high to complete the forth down or do you think the team as a whole felt pressure and that’s why there were penalties and other mistakes by the team?

Hi boys,

I was SUPER frustrated last night after the loss. Like throw your hat, rub your eyes, don’t even go on Twitter pissed.

I don’t need to repeat the comments above and the excellent takes you guys have presented, I just need to say that things will be ok! One question we had about Hackett is how he might react with some struggles, well, we’re gonna get an answer to that. I still feel great about this team, and I hope the Texans game is a nice palate cleanser for Broncos Country. Positives I’m choosing to focus on until then:

PS2 is as good as advertised. Might be the best CB in the league.

Javonte is that dude. I put that fumble on Glasgow more than him, dude thought it was a pass play so he got into a pass set.

Russ is amazing and the things that went wrong (late play calls, late audibles, clock management) can absolutely be improved on.

The offense looked so much better than years past. They will work on the mistakes and show how great they can be on Sunday. Hackett and the Broncos will be just fine!

DNVR Fam…. Let’s Ride!

Hey guys! Not our night but there is so many positive things to take away from the game. Obviously the penalties, fumbles, and lack of preseason games were absolute killers. A few negative things that I caught that weren’t so obvious is that while Russ looked good throughout the night he had multiple passes that were under thrown. The td to Jerry and the deep ball to Court. Also there were like three times where he had a clean pocket and got nervous so he tried to abandon the pocket. The play calling was alright but most of the receivers routes seem like they were going 15+ yards. I would like for them to add some slants and crossing routes especially with jerry and Hamler. In goal line they should bunch the receivers on one side and allow for a one-one with Sutton or even Jerry. Like the Bucs did with Mike Evans on Sunday. Give your guys a chance to make a play. This team is still a playoff team but they need to clean up the mistakes.