It’s hard for me to draw many negatives from the Broncos’ Week 1 performance. Yes, they were sloppy; the offense turned the ball over far too many times, and the defense was drawing yellow flags out of the referees’ pockets like they were some sort of cloth magnet.
But they won. And in the NFL, that’s all that matters.
Still, if we enter into Week 2 without dissecting the Broncos’ performance with a critical eye, we’re only setting ourselves up for failure. Denver earned that win — without those critical errors, they may have won by 10, not one — but they needed a large dose of Mile High Magic to ink that first notch in the win column.
The Broncos can’t rely on magic to win football games. Maybe it worked well for Tim Tebow and the 2015 Super Bowl champs, but if these Broncos want to win football games, to repeat, they’ll need to be better.
With that said, here are five Denver Broncos who need to improve upon their Week 1 performances:
Trevor Siemian
Let’s start with the game’s most important position.
Trevor Siemian has exceeded all expectations. A year ago, this kid was planning a career in real estate. Today, he’s the starting quarterback of the reigning Super Bowl champs, and he’s beating the Carolina Panthers on primetime. I don’t care if he had six interceptions on Thursday … that’s impressive.
Nonetheless, if the Broncos want to put a stranglehold on the league, they need Siemian to be better. I can’t fault him too much for his two interceptions — one was a great play by Thomas Davis and the other was a poor decision but an even worse blitz pickup — but he does have to start moving on from his initial read much more quickly and find a way to push the ball down the field when available — Emmanuel Sanders is still wide open down the right sideline.
The good news, though, is that he should be able to do just that.
Siemian is not a finished product, and while the finished product may not be all that great either, it’s unreasonable for us to act as if he’s not going to improve. For as poised and mature as every one of his teammates seems to think he is, he’s still just a second-year quarterback.
