Familiarity favors Broncos defense over former quarterback

DENVER – It’s not often a team gets to face their former quarterback and because of that it wasn’t necessarily known who would benefit more from the familiarity between the quarterback and former defense. On Monday night, the Denver Broncos gave a resounding answer in the 27-9 victory over the Houston Texans.

Brock Osweiler, the Broncos starting quarterback for seven games last season and the current Texans quarterback, had a historically bad game against his former team. Osweiler was only able to manage 131 yards passing despite having 41 attempts. The Broncos said the success against their former signal caller started far before they even took the field.

“We knew what they wanted to do and knew their tendencies,” starting inside linebacker Todd Davis said.

Even though Osweiler had arguably the worst statistical game of his career throwing the ball, the worst play of the game for him wasn’t counted as a pass.

On the opening play of the fourth quarter, Osweiler dropped back to pass, cocked his arm to throw the ball then before moving his arm forward the ball slipped out of his hand and was recovered by the Broncos’ Chris Harris Jr. on the Texans 25-yard line. Osweiler blamed it on a fluke mistake that every quarterback will encounter.

“They say every quarterback is going to experience it at some point where the ball just flies out of your hands and, unfortunately, I got to experience it tonight,” he said.

However, the recipient of the fumble said it was no accident why the ball slipped out of Osweiler’s hand.

“I had a pick right their, that’s why he let the ball go,” Harris said. “It was a route I was studying all week and they finally ran it, I undercut it and shoot that’s why I think he lost the ball because I was breaking on it so hard and he ended up losing the ball. That was definitely a play I was studying all week and they finally ran it.”

Not only did the Broncos defense know specific tendencies of the Texans quarterback, but they also had a game plan they knew would continuously make him uncomfortable.

“We knew against Brock that if we take away his first option he gets jittery and we did that today and we made him throw the tough throws outside,” Harris said. “If we had him outside, we had a good chance of winning.”

While the Broncos put themselves in a position to win by shutting down the Texans passing game, there was one area where Osweiler may have “won,” according to safety Darien Stewart.

“The only thing that we weren’t able to get was interceptions,” he said. “We were counting on them. I thought Brock did a good job in trying to avoid as many as he could.”

However, even though the Broncos didn’t pick off the Arizona State product, they were still able to create enough turnovers, two, to allow the offense to put points on the board — the most important thing in Stewart’s eyes.

“At the end of the day it is about getting the ball back for our offense and getting us points,” he said.

The Broncos had more points off of turnovers, 10, than the Texans had in total, 9. In the eyes of Stewart, the defense did their job with that alone.

Although Osweiler was greeted with plenty of “boos” from Broncos Country, the Broncos defense proved to be the worst hosts for their former quarterback.