ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Averaging slightly less than 20 points per game, the Denver Broncos’ offense is a bottom-10 scoring unit in the NFL.
On Sunday Night Football, Pat Shurmur’s group didn’t even come close to their disappointing season average as they were only able to drop nine points on the Kansas City Chiefs.
“We have to be able to score more points, no matter who you are playing, especially the Chiefs at home,” Vic Fangio stated after Denver fell 22-9 in Kansas City. “You are not going to beat many teams, especially the Chiefs scoring nine points and turning it over three times.”
After a short nap, following a late night traveling back to Denver, Fangio felt just as disappointed with the lack of offensive points.
“We got to figure out a way to score more points,” the head coach stated on Monday afternoon. “We’re in the bottom-third in the league in that. We’ve got to do better scoring points, no doubt about it.”
Despite the lack of offensive success, specifically following Sunday’s nine-point output, Fangio hasn’t thought about making personnel changes to the team’s play calling or to Denver’s starting lineup.
“Our starters and the guys that are playing are the guys that we have,” Fangio said, after stating no personnel changes will be made. “We’re going to stick with them.”
But that doesn’t mean Fangio and his staff aren’t going to make any changes.
“We need to look at everything, you know,” Fangio stated. “We’ve kind of been on a rollercoaster in the red zone and third down all year. The week before, we were 3-for-3 in the red area and had a great day on third down. Not so much last night, obviously. That’s kind of the way it’s been. But we’ll take a good hard look at everything. Usually it doesn’t need a major overhaul if we just tweak things here and there, it’ll maybe get it fixed.”
Barring a shocking turn of events, Teddy Bridgewater will remain the starting quarterback. Pat Shurmur will remain the offensive coordinator. And the rest of Denver’s starting offense will remain intact, at least for another week.
Not only has the Broncos’ red zone and third-down offense been a rollercoaster all year, their entire offense has been a rollercoaster. In their six wins, Denver’s averaged over 25 points per game. However, in their six losses, the Broncos have averaged slightly over 14 points per game. That’s as up and down as the Mind Eraser at Elitch Gardens.
A main reason for Sunday’s offense struggles were due to Denver’s nearly non-existent passing attack.
“We didn’t get any rhythm in our passing game,” Fangio said. “It says that we had 250 yards passing, I believe, but 34 of it came at the end of the last play of the first half. And then a bunch came in the last two drives. We just never got into a good rhythm in the passing game last night.”
Entering the fourth quarter, when the game was still in reach, Bridgewater was 11-for-22 for 130 passing yards to go along with an interception. After padding his stats in the fourth quarter, he still finished with a dismal 62.2 passer rating and a 25 QBR.
Fangio explained the way to successfully get the passing game going is to “marry the run” with it a “little bit more.”
“Call it on our terms, not get into the obvious situations, which I don’t think we did last night too many times until a couple of those two penalties we had in a row there,” Fangio said. “Just have a better mix.”
While Fangio also pointed to positives on the offensive side of the ball, such as the 20-play drive in the first half, the final output of nine total points was not nearly enough to even give the Broncos a chance at beating the Chiefs for the first time in 12 games.
But don’t expect a major overhaul to Denver’s offense this week.
