The Denver Broncos had too many busted coverages in their loss on Thursday Night Football against the Los Angeles Chargers, and that’s an issue head coach Sean Payton says needs to get addressed. That challenge comes at a crucial time with the team now shifting their focus to taking on the Cincinnati Bengals and their elite level weapons in the receiving game.
Denver Broncos coverage mishaps must get addressed
With Christmas Day falling on Wednesday, Broncos head coach Sean Payton met with us on Sunday morning as the team begins their preparation for the Cincinnati Bengals and Joe Burrow next Saturday.
One of the bigger issues the team ran into during Thursday’s loss against the Chargers were free runners in coverage. Justin Herbert and the Chargers capitalized against Denver’s defense with various crossing patterns underneath, and then eventually some deeper crossing patterns.
It was death by a thousand papercuts, and certainly penalties didn’t help, but Herbert capitalized against Denver without a premier name at wide receiver outside of Ladd McConkey, who caught six catches for 87 yards, and Josh Palmer, who hauled in three catches for 41 yards. As a matter of fact, the Chargers had seven different receivers haul in passes of 10+ yards in Denver’s loss.
Most of that came from Herbert and the Chargers attacking the middle of the field, versus the production coming down the sideline. The only play that hurt the Broncos down the sideline was a Herbert pass to Derius Davis, who got behind P.J. Locke on a wheel route.
Payton mentioned the coverage issues in his postgame comments, but he brought it up again in his Sunday morning conference call.
“Well, I do think it’s correctable but some of it is really basic route principles,” Payton said. “Underneath coverage, busts… When you play a good quarterback like that you can’t make it easy on him. You get into a bunch look, and you have a route distribution of a shallow or vertical—you have to be able to match that distribution. We didn’t do a good enough job several times by dropping coverage and that’s something we have to look closely at.”
Some good news for Denver is that there is hope that cornerback Riley Moss returns this week against the Bengals, but that will all be contingent upon how he practices this week. Late last week, he upgraded from a DNP to a limited participant, which is a positive step in the right direction coming off of an MCL sprain that’s forced him to miss three games.
“We were and have been super excited,” Payton said of Moss. “Obviously the guy that plays opposite of [CB] Patrick [Surtain II] is going to get a lot of business. All throughout training camp, he really rose to the occasion, battled, competed, and throughout really a good portion of the season. He’s a big reason why we were playing so well defensively. The sooner the better when we can get him back in the lineup. Hopefully it can happen this weekend.”
On film, it’s not necessarily any of Denver’s cornerbacks that the coverage is concerned over, but it appears to be at inside backer and safety. There were several instances over the course of the last three games where it seems the communication between those two position groups has had a few lapses, and that’s led to big plays, and that’s something Payton will want Vance Joseph and Jim Leonhard to address.
The Denver Broncos will play the Bengals this upcoming Saturday at 2:30 p.m. MT.