What comes next for the Broncos without Bradley Chubb?

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — And you thought last week the Broncos were in a “world of suck.”

Just as the Broncos thought they had their pass rush figured out, one of its two primary components is gone for the year.

And in a way, Bradley Chubb’s season-ending partial tear of his anterior cruciate ligament encapsulates the Broncos’ disastrous start to the season and to Vic Fangio’s tenure as head coach. Around every corner lurks a wet floor, a banana peel, a random stranger to punch them in the gut.

All the battered Broncos can do is try to pick themselves up and stagger ahead. Chubb will be back for the 2020 season, which right now seems a million miles away.

“There’s no pity parties in the NFL; we’ve just got to keep going,” Fangio said.

There is no replacing Chubb, at least not with one player. But the task starts with undrafted rookie Malik Reed, who notched his first regular-season sack Sunday and has demonstrated potential as an edge rusher. He has also added moves to his arsenal this year, thanks to the tutelage of Miller and Chubb.

Can Reed become a viable starter?

“Well, we’ll find out,” Fangio said. “He played a lot of his preseason snaps against other teams’ backups, so it’s not a great sample. He had some plays in there yesterday, one that he missed, so we’ll find out.”

Reed has a quick twitch off the snap that allows him to compensate for the lack of timed speed, which was measured at 4.80 seconds during his Pro Day workout earlier this year.

At the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl last January, Reed measured at 6-foot-1 and 237 pounds with 31 1/4-inch arms. Chubb, based on his NFL Combine data from 2018, is three inches taller, 32 pounds heavier and has 34-inch arms.

The bulk reveals the biggest difference between Chubb and Reed, which bears itself out in strength at the point of attack. With 4.65 speed on a 269-pound frame, Chubb is one of the NFL’s most freakish athletes off the edge. Replicating that with one single player is nearly impossible.

That is key to understanding why Fangio said he would rely on a “more of a committee” to replace Chubb, rather than just inserting Reed for all of the snaps. At least one part of the committee to recreate Chubb in the aggregate may not be on the roster.

The only other potential outside linebacker on the 53-man roster is Justin Hollins, who worked at inside linebacker in sub packages Sunday after Josey Jewell aggravated his hamstring injury. But Hollins is still learning that position, and was trailing in coverage on James O’Shaughnessy’s third-quarter touchdown catch that put the Jaguars in front, 20-17.

When asked whether re-signing Dekoda Watson could be a part of the solution for replacing Chubb, Fangio said, “He might be.”

“We’ve got the rest of today and tomorrow to look at who might be available,” Fangio continued.

But there are no good answers.

Exacerbating the situation is the impact on Von Miller.

Miller, like the team itself, broke out of his sackless start to the season Sunday with two takedowns of Jaguars quarterback Gardner Minshew, giving him his first 2-sack performance in his last 13 games, since he sacked Josh Rosen twice in a 45-10 win at Arizona last October 18.

The nine-year veteran has always operated better with a bookend edge rusher on the other side to take the pressure off. In 94 career games that he played with Elvis Dumervil, DeMarcus Ware and Chubb working opposite of him, Miller has amassed 81 sacks.

That’s a rate of 0.86 sacks per game, and 13.8 sacks per 16 games. In other words, it’s elite production.

In the 37 games Miller played without one of those productive pass rushers on the opposite side, he tallied 25.5 sacks. That’s not bad; it’s an average of .69 sacks per game. But that also works out to an average of 11.0 sacks per 16 games. Good, but not quite elite.

Miller’s two lowest single-season sack totals — 5 in 2013 and 10 in 2017 — came in the years without Dumervil, Ware or Chubb altogether. Miller played just nine games in 2013 because of a six-game suspension and a season-ending torn ACL, but was on pace for just 9 sacks over 16 games, which would have been his career low for a year in which he played 15 or more games.

The Broncos have had enough trouble generating a pass rush with Miller and Chubb.

Without Chubb, the outlook rests on hope — hope that Reed and Hollins can grow up fast, that Kareem Jackson and Bryce Callahan can get back to full health, that the spate of missed tackles on the rest of the defense ends, that the defensive line can generate more of a push in the interior pass rush …

Hope. Dim as it is, it’s all the Broncos have with an 0-4 record, an eight-game losing streak and one of the core pieces of their foundation out until 2020.