OH NO! BRONCOS IN PRIME TIME AGAIN
Team that took part in 11-10, 12-9 snoozers returns to the spotlight on Monday night
Six weeks into the NFL season the Denver Broncos, after Monday night, will have played at night four times.
Given that the Broncos defence is really good but its offence is downright dreadful, most fans would say that's a bad thing. After all, a person can watch only so many 11-10 and 12-9 games before reaching for the clicker.
This time the 2-3 Broncos visit the 3-2 Los Angeles Chargers, in what amounts to a battle for second place in the AFC West division.
Broncos head coach Nathaniel Hackett isn't exactly apologizing for his team's virtual omnipresence in marquee prime-time games so far in the 2022 season.
“We embrace it. We love it,” Hackett, Denver's first-year head coach, said. “We love being on prime time, we love having the ability to showcase our talents, and we need to get better in those prime-time games.”
Right. Denver has lost two of three at night, and very nearly all three; the Broncos beat San Francisco 11-10 in Week 3's Sunday-nighter. Denver lost on Monday night in Week 1 at Seattle, 17-16, and a week ago Thursday night, Week 5, 12-9 in overtime to Indianapolis.
So at night, then, Denver has scored 16, 11 and nine points. Indeed, its offence has stunk so far — when, with the addition of both Hackett (Green Bay's offensive co-ordinator the past couple of years) and the supposed saviour quarterback Russell Wilson, this year's offence was supposed to be a sudden new strength.
It has been anything but. Arguably no unit in the NFL has been as disappointing as the limp Broncos offence.
One reason, perhaps, is the (right) throwing-shoulder injury Wilson has been battling, which leaked following Denver's massively disappointing (and boring) loss to the Colts.
Hackett said he likes the progress Wilson made over the first eight days following the Indy game.
“I do. His work ethic is unbelievable. When it comes to anything — if he feels a tweak (is needed) here or there, he's nonstop trying to get everything right.
“In the case of the shoulder, he's been working on it non-stop. And I mean 24/7. He's making sure that it's good, and that's how he has (improved back to 100 per cent) so fast.”
This will be Denver's first game without all-pro left tackle Garett Bolles, who broke his right leg against Indianapolis and is done for the season. That ought to make Wilson's life even more hectic on drop-backs than it has been thus far, and that's saying something.
Wilson is on pace to be sacked at the highest rate of his career (3.25 per game), and he traditionally has taken more sacks than his top-tier counterparts (2.72 per game since he joined the NFL in 2012, when most elite passers over the long haul average under two per game).
It doesn't help Denver's cause that on Monday it faces one of the league's premier pass rushers in recent years, in Khalil Mack. Hackett lamented this past week that he thought he was done having to game-plan twice a season for Mack, who was with the Chicago Bears when Hackett was with the Packers, both NFC North teams.
But Mack signed with the Chargers as a free agent only weeks after Hackett became Denver's new head coach, both in the AFC West.
Back to twice a season. “Khalil is a dynamic player,” Hackett said. “He's been that way for a long time. (It's) a challenge because we have to be able to work as a team to be able to block him.”