COACH KUBIAK: TEAM FRUSTRATED BUT NOT DIVIDED
Locker room not divided, team says, after flare-up that followed latest loss.
Patience had run out and frustrations boiled over. But the Broncos insist what transpired Sunday night after their 16-3 loss to New England is not a sign of division in the locker room.
After the game, Broncos coach Gary Kubiak asked his players if any of them wanted to address the team. Offensive tackle Russell Okung stepped forward but immediately faced pushback from cornerback Aqib Talib, and the tension escalated into a war of words.
“It’s just an instance where you have two guys who are very emotional and very competitive who really want what’s best for this team,” Okung said Monday, refusing to divulge what he had planned to say to his teammates. “It’s not a big issue. At the end of the day we all want the same thing: We want to win games.”
Okung said he and Talib met after the incident to clear the air and move on. But it wasn’t the first flare-up between position groups (Talib shoved Jordan Norwood during the Broncos’ loss to Kansas City on Nov. 27), and it probably won’t be the last if losses continue to stack up.
Tensions rise when teams lose, and lose when one side of the ball is doing well and other unit is struggling, such as is happening with Denver (8-6). Since the start of the 2015 season, the Broncos’ defense has often been relied upon to both contain opponents and score points when the offense
struggled. The Broncos held New England quarterback Tom Brady to a season-low 188 yards passing Sunday.
“Anytime you lose a game to the Patriots or a rival game, everybody is frustrated,” Denver cornerback Chris Harris said after the game. “We feel like we played almost good enough defense to win that game.”
Brady is 7-9 against the Broncos, and never before had he won against them with as few points.
“They played really good,” Kubiak said of his defense Monday, “and offensively, we didn’t score enough points to win.”
Referring to the OkungTalib postgame incident, the coach said: “It was not a big deal. I’ve been in an NFL locker room 400-plus times. Let me tell you something: That was nothing. That was frustration because we lost a game. I would never let something be divisive. I wouldn’t let that happen.”
But the frustration had been building, and the Broncos have lost four of their past six games largely because of an offense that has floundered. The running game that has long been a staple of Kubiak’s system has produced in spurts but is averaging only 3.59 yards per play, ranking 29th in the 32-team NFL. And pass protection has often been poor.
Denver’s Trevor Siemian has averaged 300.2 yards passing per game over the last six games, but he also has taken the fourth-most sacks (21) in the league.
His second-quarter interception Sunday was a glaring and game-changing mistake. On third down in the red zone, Siemian targeted wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders along the left sideline, but the ball trailed Sanders and landed in the arms of cornerback Logan Ryan, who undercut the route and sprinted 46 yards to help set up New England’s only touchdown.
Coupled with Norwood’s botched punt return in the first quarter — his third fumbled punt in his past two starts — the Patriots scored 10 points off two Denver turnovers in the first 19 minutes.
“When you kill yourself with two early turnovers (and) you’re not putting points up, it’s hard to win games. Point-blank, period,” said safety T.J. Ward. “That’s what we’ve been doing the last few weeks, and you see we’ve got two (losses) on that side of the column.”
The Broncos have embraced a style of winning late and ugly, behind an offense that starts slowly and a defense that has a knack for creating turnovers. Denver leads the NFL this season with 103 points scored off turnovers — accounting for 34.4 percent of the team’s total points, hardly a sustainable model of success.
Despite the continued imbalance, Kubiak and his players insist the shouting match Sunday night didn’t create a rift.
“One thing Kubiak also says to us is to make sure we’re holding each other accountable,” Sanders said Monday. “We understand that the defense has played extremely well. Offensively, we’re not playing as good as we’re supposed to be. We’re the ones holding this team back and we’re trying to get it together, and the defense is holding us accountable. We don’t take it negatively. I take it positively.”
The Broncos are in the No. 9 slot in the AFC playoff race with only two games remaining, at Kansas City on Christmas and against Oakland in Denver on New Year’s Day.
Patience may be wearing thin. But time is running out.