Travis Kelce vs. Broncos defense
How do the Broncos contain future Hall of Fame tight end Travis Kelce, and prevent him from beating them all by himself?
Nathaniel Hackett just laughed at the question, which no NFL defense has been able to definitively answer for the better part of a decade.
“I mean… when you watch him, you try to get a route tree on him, and you think you know the route he’s going to run,” Hackett said. “But he’s got such a savvy to his game, and he’ll adjust midway thru the play and understand that ( called) route isn’t going to win. He fits in a hole ( in the zone coverage), he breaks away from man, he finds of the timing of it consistently with ( Patrick) Mahomes.”
So for the Broncos, it’s not necessarily about stopping Kelce. It’s about limiting the damage done by No. 87, who is 32 yards away from his seventh straight 1,000- yard season. In 15 career games against Denver, Kelce has 90 catches for 1,176 yards and six TDS.
Limiting Kelce’s damage means that the Broncos’ front can’t let Mahomes get into scramble drill mode, when the duo has the ability to connect for big plays ( catches of 20 or more yards), of which Kelce already has 15 this year.
“It’s really about getting to the quarterback as fast as we can, so that he can’t get the ball to Kelce,” Hackett said. “The more time they have together, the more they’re going to be able to get open.”
The defense got a good primer for Kelce last week in Baltimore against another All- Pro tight end, Mark Andrews. The Broncos held Andrews to four catches for 53 yards on seven targets using a combination of zone as well as man coverage, with cornerbacks Pat Surtain II and Damarri Mathis matched up with Andrews at times in the 10- 9 loss. Surtain was flagged for a critical pass interference call on Andrews on the Ravens’ final possession, a third- down play that extended the drive.
And Surtain emphasized that while the defense’s focus is on Kelce this week, they can’t forget about Mahomes’ receivers. Namely, Juju Smith- Schuster and Marquez Valdes- Scantling.
“Travis has a majority of the targets, but as far as receivers go, they are very diverse target- wise,” Surtain said. “( Mahomes) knows how to spread the ball around and use his weapons. He knows how to read defenses. It’s something that we are going to have to game- plan against and focus on and understand what he is trying to attack on our side of the ball.”