Just six games into the season, patience has run out in Broncos Country

DENVER — On a postcard-perfect autumn Sunday at Empower Field at Mile High, it rained.

Boos, that is.

At halftime. After the offense sputtered time and again. After the Las Vegas Raiders gashed the Broncos for one explosive play after another — specifically, seven plays covering at least 25 yards apiece, including four pass plays of 40 or more yards.

A team that endured a chaotic week unlike any other in the history of the game, playing with an interim head coach elevated to the job without any prior head-coaching experience, marched into Empower Field at Mile High and slaughtered the Broncos.

The score said 34-24.

It wasn’t that close.

The Raiders were the more organized, more disciplined, more willful side. Their interim head coach, Rich Bisaccia, was in complete command on the east sideline.

His team reflected his control; Las Vegas never trailed and went on a 24-3 run following an exchange of touchdowns to start the game to pull away.

Meanwhile, the Broncos turned over the ball four times, undermined themselves with costly penalties and spent much of the afternoon flailing and falling as the Raiders dominated at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball.

Their apex came on their first series, when they found the end zone for the first time on their opening possession since Dec. 8, 2019, ending a 24-game streak.

After that, the Broncos once again immolated themselves, starting with the first of Teddy Bridgewater’s three interceptions, an errant pass for Eric Saubert that sailed over the 6-foot-5 tight end’s outstretched arms and into the grasp of Raiders cornerback Brandon Facyson.

Bridgewater also lost a fumble, and while three of the giveaways came when the team was down double digits and in desperation mode, he did the one thing that he cannot do to provide viable quarterbacking: he gave away the ball.

“Teddy hasn’t been a turnover guy, part of that is when you fall behind and you’re throwing it a lot, that’s the risk you run,” Broncos coach Vic Fangio said. “Once you become an unbalanced offense, the chance of throwing interceptions goes up and goes up. They went up in this game.”

Turnovers went up, and production in the first three quarters was down.

Meanwhile, Bridgewater was under siege throughout the day. Las Vegas hit him 17 times Sunday — and did so with no curveballs thrown at the Broncos’ protection scheme.

“They didn’t do anything different,” Bridgewater said. “Those guys played the same game they’ve been playing all year. They stuck to their game plan and the ball is rolling in their favor tonight.”

Bridgewater did acknowledge that he held onto the ball too long “some” of the time, but defended that by saying he was trying to give his pass catchers an opportunity.

“I’m just trying to exhaust my progression, try to give us a chance,” he said, “try to give our guys a chance down field to win on certain routes.”

Meanwhile, Fangio further depressed the Broncos’ chances of a late rally by burning up two timeouts on failed challenges.

The Broncos kept finding new colors on the rainbow of failure.

In the past two games, the Broncos have scored 43 points. The problem is that 27 of them came in the fourth quarter when they were down by double digits.

Denver’s defense, stout in the first three games, is leaking points and yards — particularly in the passing game. Fangio’s well-compensated secondary, which benched free-agent pickup Kyle Fuller in favor of Ronald Darby, was again burned deep.

The offense generates few points when the game is on equal terms.

The defense that was built to rush and cover is doing neither especially well on a consistent basis.

The special teams actually had its best day Sunday, recovering a late on-side kickoff and avoiding penalties, which have been a bugaboo all season.

But with all that going wrong, and the Broncos’ arrow pointing downward after a 5-11 season last year, inevitably the blame turns to the leadership on the sideline.

When Fangio was asked whether he was considering any changes to the coaching staff or the responsibilities of the coaches, he tersely replied, “No.”

And in a short week before a Thursday night trip to Cleveland to face the Browns on the Lake Erie shoreline, any changes would be unwise, considering that the Broncos will barely have a chance to even practice this week.

Losses like Sunday’s have become all too typical in recent years. It was the seventh double-digit home loss since Fangio became the head coach — the most of any Broncos coach since Lou Saban endured 12 such defeats during his 1967-71 stint as head coach.

Consider this: Fangio has more double-digit home losses in 2.35 seasons on the job than Mike Shanahan had in 14 years on the job.

Shanahan joined the Broncos Ring of Fame on Sunday. It was impossible to ignore the contrast between the success of Shanahan and the continued struggles of the present.

And the boos that pelted the Broncos as they went to the locker room at halftime and at other instances throughout the day offer a cold reminder on a warm day that unless the Broncos can reverse their slide in a hurry, patience has run out.