Something had to change.
The Denver Broncos, losers of three straight, made that change on Wednesday morning when coach Vance Joseph informed the team of his decision to start quarterback Brock Osweiler at quarterback for their Week 9 game against the Philadelphia Eagles.
Trevor Siemian didn’t give Joseph much of a choice after his three-interception performance in a 29-19 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday night. During that three-week span, Siemian has tossed six interceptions and lost a fumble, which is ultimately what turned out to be the deciding factor in the switch.
“We’ve lost three games in a row. We’ve had games with multiple turnovers, which you can’t have,” Joseph said of the change. “We’ve out-gained our opponents in the four losses. Our numbers and stats for Monday night… it’s silly. We won the yardage. We won third downs. We won the red zone. We lost one battle, and that’s turnovers.”
The truth is — for the most part — the Broncos have played well enough to win in each of the last three games. Their inability to take care of the football has been their downfall. Joseph hopes that when Osweiler takes over on Sunday, he helps “stabilize” the offense. Once the offense is stabilized, he’ll feel as if he has a better understanding of the state of his team.
“I’m hoping that this move can simply stabilize the offense so that we can get into a fair game — so we can win some football games — or to simply see where we’re at as a football team,” Joseph said. “We can’t see where we’re at until we stop turning the football over. It’s impossible to win in this league with three to four turnovers a game. [On] Monday night, it was a 20-13 game with three minutes to go in the third quarter and we have four turnovers. How about just two, and see where we are? I’m anxious to see where we are if we don’t turn the ball over to see how good we can be.”
A confident Osweiler took the podium Wednesday afternoon at UCHealth Training Center, knowing full well what’s expected of him this weekend.
“You have to protect the football,” Osweiler said. “The saying is, ‘ball security is job security.’ If you protect the football, you’re going to stay out there on the field.”
Just like in 2015, Osweiler has the chance to help the Broncos out of a jam in the middle of the season. After the journey that he’s been on, it’s hard not to focus on how everything has come full circle. According to Osweiler, though, that’s the last thing on his mind.
“This week’s not about me,” Osweiler said. “This week is solely about our football team finding a way to get a win on the road, in a hostile environment, against a great opponent. We know we have a huge challenge ahead of us, but we’re excited to go out there, compete and see what we can do.”