Why the Denver Broncos' Thursday Night Football collapse is a bad omen

The Denver Broncos collapsed.

With 41 seconds remaining in the first half against the Los Angeles Chargers Thursday night, Denver held a 21-10 lead and had a first down at their own 18-yard line.

The Broncos threw a screen pass—a risk-free way to potentially kickstart a quick scoring drive before the half—but it failed. The Broncos lost three yards.

Facing a 2nd & 13 from their own 17-yard line, the Broncos had almost no chance of pulling out points before halftime. They tried anyway. The pass fell incomplete, stopping the clock.

After a third-down run, the Chargers called a timeout, which left 8 seconds on the clock.

The Broncos punted. Tremon Smith ran into the returner for a 15-yard fair catch interference penalty. Thanks to a rarely needed rule, the Chargers were allowed an untimed free-kick attempt from the spot of the ball after the penalty. They made the 57-yard kick easily, cutting the Broncos’ lead to eight points.

“Dumb penalty by me,” Smith said after the game. “I’m well aware of it. I’ve been playing a long time. It’s just a dumb penalty.”

Rookie quarterback Bo Nix defended head coach Sean Payton’s decision to play aggressive offense in that situation.

“Every offense in the league is trying to go score,” Nix said.

The sequence was strange. The Chargers may have called a timeout even if the Broncos hadn’t stopped the clock with a second-down incompletion, forcing the Broncos to stay on the field.

The mental error came from the Broncos’ best gunner.

It was a fluke. It was the first free-kick made in an NFL game in nearly 50 years.

But it changed the trajectory.

The Broncos got the points back on a long field goal drive after halftime, but the Chargers already had the spark they needed. They scored touchdowns on their next two drives, taking a lead they would hold until the end of the game.

Los Angeles dominated the second half. They averaged 8.3 yards per play before kneeling out the clock in the final moments. The Broncos managed 3.6 yards per play in the second half.

Denver’s collapse doesn’t doom their playoff hopes. The Broncos only need one more win to clinch a playoff spot. Even if they don’t get that win, the Broncos would still get in if the Cincinnati Bengals, Indianapolis Colts and Miami Dolphins each lose or tie a game in the final three weeks of the season.

“We’ve got to find a way to get our 10th win,” Payton said.

But two trends are pointing toward an early postseason exit even if they get in, with two games to go for the Broncos.

First, the Broncos are 1-6 against teams with a winning record. (The win is against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.)

Second, the Broncos are 1-5 in games decided by one score. (The win is against the New York Jets.)

Those trends are bad news. The NFL Playoffs, of course, are packed with winning teams. The Broncos won’t face a team with a .500 or losing record.

And playoff games are typically close. Two-score wins are especially rare for road teams, which Denver will be in the first round and, most-likely, the rest of the way if they earn a berth.

Of the 44 AFC playoff games since the Broncos won Super Bowl 50, only four have been won by the road team by more than one score. 

These sorts of numbers don’t guarantee anything, though. 

Can we really say the Broncos are “bad” in close games because they iced a game against the Cleveland Browns with a pick-six, which made it a two-score win instead of a one-score win?

Can we really say the Broncos can’t beat the league’s best because a chip-shot, game-winning field goal was blocked by the two-time reigning Super Bowl champs?

Probably not.

But these trends exist, and they don’t mean nothing.

The Broncos are 8-0 against teams with .500 or losing records. In other words, they’ve handled business against mediocre and bad teams. The Broncos are avoiding sub-par performances. They’re playing consistent football. That’s a good thing.

Combine the good record against bad teams with the poor record against good teams, though, and you wonder whether the Broncos are a team that has maximized its talent… and that just isn’t quite enough to compete with the league’s best.

I think there’s something to that hypothesis, but I don’t think it’s perfectly accurate.

The Broncos dominated the Chargers in the early going. Denver scored touchdowns on each of its first three drives. The Chargers didn’t have an answer.

But then the Broncos stopped scoring. They played a quarter-and-a-half of spectacular offensive football, but then it disappeared.

That doesn’t sound like an offense that is maximizing its talent.

The Broncos dominated on the ground. They ran for 89 yards. They averaged 6.8 yards per carry.

Then, a couple of stuffed runs early in the second half caused the Broncos to give up on what carried them in the first half. Denver ran the ball eight times for 21 yards in the second half. 

Denver’s decision to abandon the ground game felt like a scared move. As the Chargers inched closer, the Broncos panicked and tried to amp up their offense with more passing… even though the juice was coming from the running game.

The change in offensive style was bad coaching.

“We got to be smarter,” Payton said. “We got to be smarter as coaches as well.”

And there was bad coaching on the defensive side, too.

The Broncos played plenty of soft zone coverage that allowed the Chargers to get into a rhythm passing the ball. The decision is justified by the absence of starting cornerback Riley Moss, but the results were poor. The Chargers found completion after completion, hitting wide-open crossing routes.

“Five different guys we had free runners,” Payton said. “You can’t have one of their top guys [open].”

Denver’s defense, which tied the Chargers as the best scoring defense entering Week 16, is capable of much more.

And the penalties didn’t help.

Ben Powers was called for two false starts.

Jonathon Cooper was called for a horsecollar.

Smith was called for the fair catch interference.

Justin Strnad was called for a ticky-tack unnecessary roughness when he grazed a sliding quarterback.

“I don’t think it was a penalty,” Strnad said. “I think I barely hit him. He’s a huge quarterback. I’m getting ready to tackle. He slides left. I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.”

The Broncos had some bad penalty luck—like when Marvin Mims was interfered with on an underthrown deep pass, but the referee didn’t throw a flag that would have moved the Broncos into field goal range on a drive in which they punted the ball away—but there’s no doubt Denver deserved to be called for more penalties than their opponent.

And that’s a trend.

“They obviously cost us,” Payton said. “It keeps continuing.”

While the record against good teams and the record against bad teams tells a story—that the Broncos fit right in the middle—they’re clearly capable of more. They led 24-13 halfway through the third quarter but were too boneheaded to hold onto the lead.

“We shot ourselves in the foot,” Pat Surtain II said. “We let that one get away.”

With two games to play, the Broncos still have a chance to change the narrative. While the Bengals don’t have a winning record, they’re a good team. Denver will need to play better football to beat them.

Then, the Broncos get a second crack at the Kansas City Chiefs. A win over the Chiefs a week before the playoffs could be the perfect momentum starter for a postseason run.

Again, the Broncos will need to play good, clean football. They’ll need to play much better football than they did on Thursday.

“We found ways to beat ourselves,” Nix said.