PITTSBURGH — Peanut butter and Jelly, bread and butter and the Denver Broncos and slow starts. Those are all classic pairings.
Unfortunately, the Broncos have been tied at the hip with slow starts for the past half decade. The issue transcends starting quarterbacks and coaching staffs. For whatever reason, the Broncos have been plagued with starting games slow year after year.
Sunday in Pittsburgh was no different.
Denver’s three-and-out to start the game extended an unfortunate streak of 24 games in which they haven’t had a touchdown on their opening drive. Heck, they didn’t even pick up a first down.
In the first quarter, the Broncos had 19 total yards of offense and not a single first downs. In an entire quarter.
“Obviously it’s a concern,” Vic Fangio stated about Denver’s offense after the 27-19 loss on Sunday. “Our whole offense was in no rhythm… We didn’t move the ball very well at all until late.”
On the defensive side of the ball, it wasn’t much better, if it was better at all.
While Denver couldn’t move the ball in the first quarter, Ben Roethlisberger, Najee Harris and the Steelers’ offense had no issue marching right down the field on their first possession. On their way to an 85-yard touchdown drive, Roethlisberger picked on Kyle Fuller, completing a whopping 73 yards and a touchdown on the former All-Pro cornerback.
“He got beat. He had a bad day,” Fangio simply stated about Fuller.
The Steelers’ finished the first quarter with seven first downs, 136 yards and seven points.
In the second quarter, Pittsburgh added another 100 yards of offense along with 10 points. That’s when Najee Harris broke out. By halftime, the Steelers’ first-round running back already had a career-high 89 rushing yards. He would go on to have his first 100-yard rushing game too.
“We didn’t play well enough on defense,” Fangio stated frankly. “You go on the road and give up 27 points, you’re not going to win many games.”
After the break, the Broncos played a significantly closer third quarter, statistically speaking, but still gave up a touchdown and didn’t score a single point.
“A lot to learn from today. Just got to be better. Start faster. And we’ve been preaching that the past couple of weeks of getting out to a fast start and it finally caught up to us today,” Bridgewater stated. “I think we were like 2-for-12 on third downs, we only had one or two first downs in the first half. And it’s hard to win a game like that.”
Denver waited until the fourth quarter to turn it on offensively and defensively. After racking up 169 offensive yards in the first three quarters, the Broncos’ offense exploded for 202 total yards in the final quarter.
“We started throwing it outside more and just got into a rhythm there when it became the fourth quarter game there,” Fangio said, explaining why Denver’s offense picked up in the fourth quarter. “Much too late though.”
In fact, in the fourth quarter, the Broncos had more yards, first downs and points than they did in the first three quarters combined. But the Broncos came up three yards and eight points short.
“We can’t wait until the game is out of hand to have a sense of urgency,” Denver’s starting quarterback said. “We can’t wait until we’re down. We got to just come out shooting the way we played in that fourth quarter. And we’ll give ourselves a chance to win a lot of games… The fight that we saw in this team in the fourth quarter, it was impressive.”
After digging themselves into a 24-6 hole early in the fourth quarter, the Broncos’ did show impressive fight as they marched back to make it a one-possession game. With 11 seconds left, on 4th-and-goal from the three, Bridgewater’s first interception of the season sealed Denver’s loss. Too little too late.
“We’ve got to obviously start better,” Fangio stated. “We can’t try and catch up being down as much as we were and wait to make some first downs on offense, stop some passes on defense, play the run better, etc.”
Bridgewater pointed to mindset and energy as two components to how the Broncos can get off to better starts. Then the starting quarterback threw out a suggestion on how Denver can start games faster.
“We just got to have some energy,” Bridgewater said. “We might need to do like colleges and do goal line in pre-game or something and just bash heads or something just to get the blood flowing, the juices going.”
All too often, the Broncos take a quarter or two—or on Sunday three—to get their juices going. While an Oklahoma drill certainly isn’t in the pre-game cards moving forward, thinking creatively and doing something different before the game, as Teddy suggested, seems appropriate.
“We’ll figure it out this week, man. We got no choice,” Bridgewater stated, vowing to improve the slow starts. “We’re sitting here with an opportunity to go back home at 3-2—wish we could have been 4-1, but we still have so much more in front of us.”
Teddy’s right, the Broncos don’t have a choice. Next Sunday, the 3-2 Broncos welcome in the 3-2 Las Vegas Raiders to the Mile High City. Both teams are riding a two-game losing streak after starting 3-0.
It’s quite possible the loser of that game will be in the basement of the AFC West with their season drastically heading in the wrong direction.
It’s crucial for the Broncos’ to get their blood flowing at the opening kickoff, instead of 45 minutes into the game.
