The Broncos defense has suddenly become the opposite of "bend, don't break"

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — At the end of October, the Denver Broncos’ defense looked no different than it had the last two years as one of the league’s top defenses. Through the first seven games of the season, the team allowed only 21 points per game and 261 yards per game—tops in the league—even with an offense that often put them in difficult scenarios due to turning the ball over.

Oh, what a difference two games can make.

If you tuned into the NFL season at the start of November—just when the Broncos faced the Philadelphia Eagles—you wouldn’t have believed your eyes. One of the league’s best defenses, not only in the first seven games of 2017, but for the past few years, had seemingly vanished into thin air.

In back-to-back weeks, against the Eagles and the New England Patriots, the Broncos gave up an average of 407.5 yards per game and 46 points per game, including allowing the Eagles to drop 51-spot on the scoreboard.

Despite this, Cincinnati Bengals’ head coach Marvin Lewis, the Broncos’ opponent on Sunday, is treating them more like the league’s best defense, not one of the worst. When asked on Wednesday by the Denver media if he’s getting gray hair preparing for Denver’s defense, Lewis jokingly said “I don’t have much hair left,” quickly followed by a serious “But let’s tell you we were here late last night and Monday night.”

With names such as Von Miller, Aqib Talib and Chris Harris Jr., it’s understandable why coaches would sweat this matchup, even though they’ve struggled the past two weeks. But Lewis doesn’t see a defense that has lost it. In fact, when asked what the differences have been in the Broncos’ defense from the first seven weeks to the previous two, he said, “I don’t know that there has been a whole lot different.”

“Even in the game on Sunday, New England made a couple plays, but they had a hard way most of the game. Philly made a couple of plays, and that’s the difference is right now teams are getting some different type plays on them,” he expounded. “But the consistent down-to-down, they are very ferocious—third down things and the things they are doing are excellent.”

In the last two games, the Eagles and Patriots have scorched Denver’s defense, not necessarily play after play, but in big plays as Lewis pointed to. In both games combined, the Broncos allowed 11 plays of over 20 yards, an average of 5.5 per game. Keep in mind the Eagles and Patriots both put in their backups, including quarterbacks, to end the game, limiting even more big-play opportunities.

In the team’s seven games before, they only gave up a total of 20 plays that went for 20 or more yards, an average of 2.9 per game—nearly half as many as the previous two weeks.

Through the first seven games, the Broncos were on pace to finish the season giving up the third-fewest 20-plus yard plays. However, the pace they were on the last two games would have put them at second-to-last in the league, only behind the Indianapolis Colts.

Outside of the 11 big plays in both games combined, Denver’s defense was actually impressive, as hard as it may be to believe. In the team’s other 122 plays in both games, they gave up an average of only 4.05 yards per game. To put that in perspective, the Jacksonville Jaguars lead the league in yards allowed per game at 4.6.

Instead of a bend, not break approach, the Broncos’ defense has been doing the opposite: break for a few plays, but not even bend in the rest.

The past two weeks, this approach hasn’t paid off. However, if they’re able to limit the big plays they allow, they’ll be right back to the dangerous defense that has caused Marvin Lewis to lose sleep over.