To say that the Broncos defense “lost” the game on Sunday is a little harsh; it’s also correct.
For as good as they’ve been through seven weeks, the defense just couldn’t get it done on Sunday, and it all culminated in the 12-play, six-minute drive given up to Andrew Luck and the Colts to close the game.
The Broncos have been able to count on their defense to make a play all season, but this time around, it was Luck making the plays. Time after time, no matter the down or distance, Luck seemed to do just enough to get the best of the Broncos secondary, and it lead to an absolutely painful final few minutes.
Denver had chances to turn the game around — plenty of them — but they couldn’t capitalize. And the Denver Broncos defense have only themselves to blame.
Here’s what they had to say after the game:
Gary Kubiak on the defense losing their cool:
“Did we do some not very smart things at the end of the game to get the ball back, I agree with that, but we dug ourselves a hole as a team the first half. We showed a lot of character getting out of the hole and getting ourselves into position, but we didn’t close the deal. You have to give them credit. They were tremendous on third downs. Then we had one more possession there and obviously got into a tough situation. Just weren’t able to close the deal after battling our way back.”
Malik Jackson on what the Colts did well:
“Doing whatever they were doing man. They were just passing the ball. We kind of made some mistakes. It really wasn’t them it was we beat ourselves in this game. They were a good team, but if we would have done what we had to do on the defensive side we would’ve been alright.”
Malik Jackson on beating themselves:
“Yeah, as a defense we didn’t play Coach Wade (Phillips) football. They got behind us sometimes or they ran the ball on us. It’s one of those things that you know, offense showed up today, but we just didn’t do enough to stop them from scoring points.”
Brandon Marshall on what this game does for the defense:
“We’ve got a little chink in our armor, but we just know that we got to go back to practice. Starting tomorrow, we have to watch the film. Get back to work on Wednesday and work on all the little things. We got beat today so we definitely have a lot to work on.”
T.J. Ward on where they go from here:
“Just a bad day. You know how those days (can) be. We’ll bounce back. 7-1. It’s a long season ahead of us. Name the last undefeated Super Bowl champion, the (Miami) Dolphins. Okay, so we’ve got a lot of season left. We’re the same team. We had a bad game. We’re going to bounce back next week.”
