Here’s why the Broncos’ slow starts go deeper than what the scoreboard reveals

Far too often, the Broncos are working out of a hole.

It’s not simply about the poor starts to games, even though these are understandably the flashpoint.

It’s about what they do on first-and-10.

Denver is the NFL’s worst team on first-and-10, gaining 4.9 yards per play so far this season. Just 16.9 percent of the Broncos’ first-and-10 plays move the chains; that is the third-worst figure in the NFL, ahead of only the Los Angeles Chargers and New York Jets. Perhaps not coincidentally, those represent two-thirds of the teams defeated by the Broncos to date in 2020.

The Broncos’ recent struggles in the first three quarters of games are reflected in their first-down numbers. In the last five weeks — starting with Lock’s return to the starting lineup in New England — the Broncos have averaged just 4.0 yards per first-and-10 play. Only the Dallas Cowboys, cycling through a series of backup quarterbacks, have been worse in the last five weeks.

“We can’t start drives with negative plays. That’s first and that’s the biggest thing,” wide receiver Tim Patrick said.

“We got into a lot of third-and-long [situations] and it’s hard for an offensive coordinator to call a play that’s going to work for third-and-long when you know the defense is going to sit back and wait for you to pass the ball. Our first play can’t be a negative play.”

“When we don’t have those negative plays, we’re a very hard offense to stop. We kind of kill ourselves all the time.”

The result of those negative plays early are deficits that are usually too great to overcome.

In the last five games, the Broncos have averaged 7.5 yards per first-and-10 play in the fourth quarter. That is the fourth-best figure in the league.

But the Broncos have trailed by at least 14 points heading into the fourth quarter in four consecutive games. According to research compiled via pro-football-reference.com, this is tied for the longest such streak in franchise history, matching streaks in 1967 (games 7-10) and 1961 (games 2-5).

Yet again, we’re talking about the Broncos enduring something that they haven’t experienced since the 1960s. This is a sad theme of the Broncos’ last four seasons.

And like many things, the degree of the frustration can be illustrated in numbers. In this case, it is by noting that the Broncos have as many starts of 3-6 or worse in the last four seasons as they posted in the previous 34.

Furthermore, from 1973 through 2016, the Broncos averaged one start of 3-6 or worse every 8.8 seasons. Now, the 3-6 mark has become an annual occurrence.

Of course, the last three 3-6 marks were followed by steady improvement in the final seven games of the season. The Broncos went 2-5 after their 3-6 start in 2017, but improved to 3-4 a year later and 4-3 last year.

It might seem impossible to match or surpass last year’s surge. But few could have envisioned that happening. Hope for the Broncos for the rest of 2020 rests on once again seeing the unforeseen.

And hope has to start on first down.