There it was in black and white. Two words that said it all.
RUN IT!!!
Amazon Prime, December’s hardest working company, appeared to have delivered Christmas early in Broncos Country. Back in Denver, where fans of the orange and blue were nestled into their couches, watching the Broncos beat down the Chargers, the Amazon camera zoomed in on Broncos head coach Sean Payton. The shot captured the words that have been atop Christmas lists in Denver for most of the season.
RUN IT!!!
It was as if the coach himself wanted the world to know he’d been listening – that he’d not only heard the advice of crazed fans, opinionated talk show hosts and football savants, but that he’d taken their advice to heart. Right there on his very own play sheet in his very own handwriting, he’d written the only thing he and his team had to do on Thursday Night Football.
RUN IT!!!
And the best part was that it was working. In the first half, the Broncos bevy of backs rushed for 89 yards on 13 attempts. The team that had seemingly refused to run the football for the better part of Bo Nix’s rookie campaign suddenly looked like the 1997-98 Broncos – slashing and dashing, pounding the rock as if they were Terrell Davis and Howard Griffith behind the likes of Tom Nalen, Mark Schlereth, Dan Neil, Gary Zimmerman and Tony Jones. When the cameras caught Payton’s play sheet, it all made sense. Payton had finally committed to the running game and it was paying off in spades.
Down 21-10 with 50 seconds remaining on the first-half clock, the Chargers looked to be moving the ball. But the defense, as it has all season long, stepped up big, picking off a Justin Herbert pass and giving Denver the ball back on its own 18-yard line with just 41 seconds remaining.
And that’s when the coach stopped following his own advice.
Run it? Nah, let’s pass it.
Not so coincidentally, that’s when the wheels began to fall off for Denver.
On 1st and 10, Nix completed a pass that resulted in a 3-yard loss. On 2nd down, his pass was incomplete, stopping the clock and making things more interesting than they needed to be. On third, Payton finally dialed up a run, but predictable play-call allowed the Chargers to call a timeout in order to get the ball back.
As if Karma was watching, what happened next should have taught Payton a lesson about sticking to his own gameplan. A fair-catch penalty resulted in a successful, rare (as in, hasn’t happened since 1976 kind of rare) “fair-catch-kick” from 57 yards out, putting three more points on the board for L.A. Heading into half with a 21-13 lead, the play should have been merely an oddity, an answer to some trivia question someday. But instead, it ultimately signaled the beginning of the end for Denver.
On a colder than necessary Friday morning in Denver, fans will be griping about blown pass interference calls and quarterback flops that stole a win from their beloved Broncos. There’s no doubt those calls (or no-calls) played into Denver’s 34-27 loss, but they shouldn’t have even come into play. More likely? Karma was making sure that Payton was getting the message it had sent heading into the locker room, a message that sadly fell on deaf ears.
RUN IT!!!
Rather than listening – or reading the play sheet he’d crafted himself – Payton did what Payton has done all season: He reverted to his pass-heavy ways. In the second half, the offense that had just toted the rock at a clip of 6.8 yards per carry, was suddenly back to its old tricks. Denver’s ground attack put up 89 net rushing yards on 13 carries in the first half but added just 21 yards on eight carries in the second half. Rather than sticking to what had been working, the panic button was clearly pushed.
It wasn’t as if Payton’s rookie signal caller was bad; in fact, Nix had an excellent game. But even his statistics dipped in the second half without the benefit of a rushing game. In first half, Nix completed 71.4 percent of his passes. That number dipped to 42 percent in the second half.
It seems so simple, doesn’t it? When the Broncos run – or even try to run – everything works better. When they don’t, bad things happen.
Even with the loss to the Chargers, the Broncos will still likely make the postseason – even if they back in unceremoniously. The loss wasn’t pretty, but there’s a good chance it won’t costs the Broncos the playoffs.
But what it should do is remind Sean Payton what must take place if Denver wants to advance in the postseason.
RUN IT!!!
Coach, you said it yourself.