The Broncos season has died from self-inflicted wounds

INDIANAPOLIS — At 4:15 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time Sunday, the competitive phase of the Broncos’ 60th season ended.

Four minutes earlier, Adam Vinatieri’s 51-yard field goal knocked them unconscious, putting the Colts in front. Then Ben Banogu stripped the football from Joe Flacco, providing the final voltage that ended it all.

With yet another loss in the final moments, yet another game in which the Broncos squandered myriad opportunities to put their opponent away, yet another game in which the offense failed to generate any consistent production, the season slipped past the point of no return.

The season is dead because history decrees it to be so.

In 1978, the NFL instituted the 16-game schedule and multiple wild-card teams in each conference. From that point through last year, 251 teams failed to win at least three games.

One-hundred and thirty-eight of those teams were exactly 2-6.

None of them made the playoffs.

If this moment does not serve as the siren that screams that it’s time to focus all energies on building for the future, what will?

So remember this: Death can bring life and renewal.

Bring on the 2020 season, eight games early. The chance to maximize new life and new hope in the new decade must begin now.

Players with expiring contracts who are not part of the plans should be traded if their return in trade value exceeds the projected return in compensatory-pick value.

Rookie quarterback Drew Lock should begin practicing as soon as possible and should be fast-tracked into the lineup to begin accumulating repetitions so the Broncos can decide whether he is the quarterback of the future or whether they have to go fishing in the draft again.

But at the same time, any grading of Lock or other players who step into the lineup on offense will have to be on a curve.

This is because in writing the autopsy on the competitive phase of the 2019 season, the inert offense is the primary cause of death.

A SELF-INFLICTED DEMISE

The offense has only shown life in fits and starts, and down the stretch Sunday it faded away in a blizzard of punts — five in succession after the Broncos took a 13-3 lead early in the third quarter.

On that scoring drive, the Broncos found their most reliable path downfield — by throwing at Colts rookie cornerback Rock Ya-Sin. Forced into extensive action against Courtland Sutton because of Pierre Desir’s hamstring injury, Ya-Sin could only grab and yank.

Forty-nine of the 75 yards on the Broncos’ only touchdown drive of the day came on passes to Sutton — 25 through his catch and 24 more through the pass-interference call against Ya-Sin that moved the Broncos into goal-to-go.

“He couldn’t guard me,” Sutton said.

And yet, when the Broncos had three drives that began inside the final 12 minutes — all of which provided the chance for Denver to put the Colts in a hammerlock — Sutton was not targeted.

Those possessions began from the Denver 45-yard line, the Indianapolis 48 and the Denver 38. Good field position. Even one deep shot to Sutton could have resulted in another pass-interference penalty against Ya-Sin, and, at worst, a Brandon McManus field goal to put the Colts down four points and in need of a touchdown to win.

And yet … nothing to Sutton.

“Coach Rich [Scangarello] puts us in position to be successful,” Sutton said. “Whatever play he calls, that’s the best play. Being a receiver, like I said at the press conference, If I was the OC, I’m calling pass plays every time.”

Of course, passing every down is not reasonable. But not one attempt to Sutton in the final 14 minutes? Seems like a smart plan considering the results of the first eight passes to Sutton:

• Three catches for 72 yards
• Three penalties for 51 yards
• Six first downs on eight plays (75 percent)
• An average of 15.4 yards gained per play

Execution matters, but so does decision-making and aggression. The failure to target Sutton down the stretch reveals the timidity with which the offense operated.

Such a philosophy is baffling. When you are 2-5 and the offense is about to complete the least productive opening eight-game stretch in Denver since Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch was on the charts, what are you clinging to by going into a shell?

Passing to Sutton might come with the risk of an incompletion, but the rewards of targeting him throughout the day were what separated the offense from complete failure.

No targets for Sutton in the final 14 minutes — not even on third-and-5 after the two-minute warning, when even another Ya-Sin infraction would have ended the game and kept the Broncos’ hopes alive.

Perhaps that’s why, in the moments following the loss, Scangarello’s face was the picture of defeat. The defense allowed the final Colts drive, but it never should have been in the situation where it had to protect a one-point lead in the dying minutes.

Denver’s defense was good enough to win, making this a defeat that just a scintilla of aggression could have prevented.

So it all rested at the feet of the man responsible for the offense, and that fact appeared to weigh on the beleaguered play-caller.

Ashen and somber, Scangarello’s head drooped, his eyes on the floor, a laptop/tablet bag in his arm. For what seemed like an eternity, he waited for the elevator to whisk him and two other assistant coaches from the press box to the locker room.

Scangarello boarded the elevator and the media piled in with him. His eyes remained focused on the ground. The agony was etched on his face.

And yet the worst part was about to come.

A few minutes after the elevator ride ended in the bowels of Lucas Oil Stadium, his quarterback — Flacco, the man whose even-keeled demeanor, for better or for worse, usually leads to internalizing any frustrations he has — tossed the playcalling and philosophy under the bus.

The Broncos’ hopes for 2019 are dead; this is about new life for 2020 now.

But if Lock’s time comes soon, does he have a viable shot if the offense can’t shake free of the mentality that it must play not to lose — even when it has nothing to lose anymore?

If it cannot, the Broncos will be Kenny on “South Park,” dying every week. The details might change, but the results will be the same — just as they remain the same for an offense that remains powerless to stop the Broncos’ demise.