Broncos-Bears Instant Reactions: Broncos Brock-n-roll in team win

The Broncos improved to 8-2 with a tough road win in cold Chicago. Here are my instant reactions.

Offense

Brock's start with the Denver Broncos started off with a bang as he and the offense marched down the field to score in short order. We had a running game show back up as well as accurate down field passes with zip on them.

The downsides we saw started with fairly predictable play calling as Kubiak really seemed to keep plays simple in structure for his QB which is a smart thing to do in my opinion.

Also, Osweiler wasn't very aggressive with his throws. Most of his down field throws were to wide open routes or guys who had a step. There's nothing wrong with this at all with a well balanced team like ours, but as he gets more and more practice, he's going to have to learn how to challenge defenders with back-shoulder throws or jump balls where his large targets have the advantage.

The offense really had struggles in the 2nd half as they kept having great field position and coming away with no points. I loved the aggressiveness to go for it on 4th down, but I feel like better play calling would have helped us on that drive in not even being in a 4th down situation as we ran so many times in a row that Chicago was predicting it, then threw on 3rd down and 1 which was also predictable.

In the 4th quarter our TD drive was pretty phenomenal though. The play calling kept the Bears on their heels. Osweiler threw a strike to Cody Latimer on a great route that looked pretty pro to me. He even looked

Defense

I really thought the defense still looked way too reactive at times early against the Bears. While the run defense was very stout, the passing defense wasn't impactful and the pass rush seemed really mediocre. Do we miss DeMarcus Ware that much or have teams just started to figure us out?

In the 2nd half the defense really had trouble handing yards to the other team via penalties. A lot of it was from the refs giving the Bears a little hometown love, but TJ Ward had a late hit helmet to helmet on Cutler that was inexcusable. I thought he should have been benched for it honestly. Luckily for him the defense got solid and held the bears to nothing with a 4th down stop.

Even with all the dumb penalties, the defense played pretty outstanding overall with Von Miller making a game winning strip sack play (this is what you want from your defensive starts...impactful plays).

Other Thoughts

• Colquitt punted like a scrub in this game. He had so many opportunities to pin the Bears deep and missed quite a few with very short punts
• Foxy sure is consistent in going prevent late in the half, right? I don't miss that.
• I thought we were done with the fetal position move on a 3rd and long?
• The coaches really have to do something about the penalties. we gave up over 100 yards in penalties. That just makes it easy for the other team.
• It seems so long since we've had a win, but it sure does feel good!