If the Broncos don't find a way to answer the bell on time, their season is doomed

ATLANTA — Kickoff at Mercedes-Benz Stadium was at 1 p.m. EST on Sunday.

One team was ready and awake. The other mashed the snooze button.

For a third consecutive week, it was the Broncos who failed to answer the call at kickoff. As they did last week against the Los Angeles Chargers, they eventually awoke, storming back as though fueled by nitro-fueled coffee.

This week, it wasn’t enough, and when a Lloyd Cushenberry fourth-down snap bounced off Tim Patrick as he came in motion in front of Drew Lock.

In a 34-27 loss to the Atlanta Falcons, the Broncos played until the final whistle. The problem remains that when the first whistle sounds, the Broncos remain sluggish.

“We definitely have to get it remedied, that’s for sure,” Broncos coach Vic Fangio said.

In front of 7,665 socially-distanced onlookers, the Broncos allowed the Falcons to score on each of their first four possessions. The Falcons offense didn’t leave the field without scoring until a kneeldown to end the first half and didn’t punt until just two minutes, 18 seconds remained in the third quarter.

Sunday, the cause of the defense’s struggles was obvious: personnel losses that left the unit playing without six intended starters — including their top two cornerbacks, A.J. Bouye and Bryce Callahan. With their absence and a starting defensive line comprised entirely of backups, Matt Ryan and Atlanta’s offense had time and space to operate.

The Broncos didn’t slow down the Falcons with any consistency until the fourth quarter, when it forced four punts in five non-kneeldown possessions, including a trio of three-and-outs.

First-half outbursts have become the norm against the Broncos, who have surrendered at least 14 points in the first half of five of their last seven games, including the last three in a row.

Atlanta became the third team this season to accumulate at least 20 first-half points at Denver’s expense; only Washington, Dallas and the New York Jets have allowed more opponents to hit 20 by halftime.

Sure, the formula worked last week, when the Broncos sprinted back from a 24-3 deficit against the Los Angeles Chargers. But to rely on that method would be madness.

“We can’t expect to always have a game like we did against the Chargers. That’s unrealistic expectations,” said safety Justin Simmons. “You’ve got to be able to come in, execute as a defense, get takeaways, set our offense up on a short field, and have some momentum-changing plays to set us up to be able to win football games.”

So what is the remedy? And why is it that this defense, no matter its personnel composition, seems to take so long to find its stride in most games?

That topic was the query that led to the answer Simmons provided two paragraphs earlier. But he had more to say.

“I know I’m kind of prolonging this answer, but long story short is that I’m not sure; we’ve just got to be able to be more competitive,” he said. “Like I said, if it’s a start-of-the-game thing then the leaders on the defense need to address that and we need to find ways to get going so we can sustain that the rest of the game.”

The answer isn’t clear. But one thing that has become painfully familiar to the Broncos in recent weeks is opponents piling up points to a degree rarely seen in the team’s recent history.

Sunday, Atlanta became the third consecutive foe to score at least 30 points against the Broncos. That gives the Broncos as many 30-plus games allowed in the last three games as they had in their previous 41, dating back to Week 14 of the 2017 season.

It gets worse when you move the line of demarcation back to 28 points: four touchdowns and four extra points, if traditionally accumulated. The Broncos have now given up at least 28 points in five of their last six games.

The last time the Broncos gave up 28 points five times in a full 16-game season was in 2013. That year, they had Peyton Manning at quarterback to pick up the slack. This year’s Broncos are on pace to allow 28 or more points a whopping 10 times, which would match a dubious franchise record set in 1964.

With the defense leaking points, the onus falls to quarterback Drew Lock and the offense to pick up the slack.

“When one side of the ball is struggling, the other side has to pick it up and we weren’t able to do that this week,” Fangio said. “We definitely have to start better on offense, start better on defense.

“When you’re on the road — although the road is not the same this year — you’re struggling on offense to score and the score is 10-0 at halftime, 9-0, 13-3 — it got way out of whack the way it was today.”

The offense was not the three-and-out machine that it was early against the Chargers. Denver’s first two drives saw advancements into Atlanta territory, as Lock spread the ball around well. In the first quarter, Noah Fant, K.J. Hamler and Jerry Jeudy each had receptions of at least 14 yards that moved the chains.

But the Falcons gradually cranked up the pressure, and the Broncos crumbled. They hit Lock once on each of the Broncos’ first four possessions, with one of the collisions resulting in a sack. Meanwhile, the running game did nothing to ease the pressure on Lock; running backs Phillip Lindsay and Melvin Gordon combined for just 10 yards on 6 carries in the first half.

The Broncos’ two longest runs belonged to Lock and Hamler. The team’s 103-yard performance on the ground doesn’t sound bad on the surface, but it included just 41 yards on 14 carries for Lindsay and Gordon, a meager 2.9-yard average for the Broncos’ prized running-back duo.

Lock came alive in the fourth quarter, as he did last week. Five of his 6 touchdown passes this season have come in the last two fourth quarters. He’s piled up yardage and explosive plays against defenses with prevent-type looks, although the Falcons’ coverages were generally tighter than the ones offered by the Chargers last week in the Broncos’ furious comeback.

“Everybody wants to be known for something,” Lock said, “and we need to stop being known for coming back, down three scores in the fourth quarter and almost winning a game.”

Lock’s best play came in the fourth quarter. So did his worst decision: an off-balance, under-pressure, errant downfield heave to Jeudy that Ricardo Allen easily intercepted, returning it to the Denver 12-yard line. Atlanta scored two plays later to increase its lead to 34-13.

The offense kept pushing, and thanks to a defense that forced three consecutive three-and-outs and a clock-stopping Falcons penalty, the offense somehow had the football with 40 seconds left and a chance to tie the game if it could pull off a miraculous 80-yard drive.

But it failed. In reality, the Broncos’ hopes of repeating their rally against the Chargers realistically soared away with Lock’s interception.

And it’s a throw Lock said he would make over and over.

“I promise, if anyone wants to discredit this, but I will throw that ball 10 times out of 10 to Jerry on that pick,” he said. “I saw it and knew it was coming. The only guy that was going to be able to look Jerry up on that route was either the safety, if I over threw it or the guy underneath, and there’s no chance that he had the chance to guard Jerry on that one—zero, none.”

It’s the kind of pass that Lock said he practices on his own.

“I don’t go out in the front yard and work on straight-ahead throws,” he said. “I’ll go out in the front yard and work the acrobatic throws that [reflects] what playing quarterback is like in the league. You’re going to have guys get beat in front of you. You’re going to have seven guys come when you only have six blockers. You have to decide to get it away or you’re going to throw the ball and I’m going to lean on throwing the ball because most of the time it’s when our athletes are one-on-one and Jerry was up open.

“It’s a throw I can make and it’s a throw I should make. It’s embarrassing I didn’t.”

Lock is a gambler; we know this. This trait was evident at Mizzou; it reveals itself in the NFL, too But to take these types of chances, you need to have a margin for error — whether it is provided by Lock himself or his teammates.

Against the Patriots last month, the Denver defense was so dominant that a pair of fourth-quarter interceptions didn’t cost the Broncos a win. But when the buffer evaporates, as it did in the last two games, the cost of such throws is a potential comeback win.

Sure, it’s on Lock. But it’s on the entire team, as well.

“We’ve got to start to move faster with these things,” linebacker Alexander Johnson said. “I feel like if we come together in all three phases in the first quarter and second quarter, we can just carry over to the second half and have the upper-hand instead of trying to fight back.”

The Broncos know what to do.

But if they don’t figure out how to do it in the next two weeks, they will face a fourth consecutive December of playing out the string.

Coming back in a season is far tougher than rallying in a single game. As the second quarter of the season ends, they know they can’t wait for the fourth quarter of the 2020 season to wake up.