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Name of the game for the Broncos defense? Create more turnovers

If the Broncos want to steal a road win on Monday in New England, they need to win the turnover battle.

Good morning, Broncos Country!

There has been one glaring issue with the Denver Broncos defense.

Through the first four games, the defense has two takeaways. That’s tied with the Las Vegas Raiders and Dallas Cowboys. At least Denver isn’t the Houston Texans, the worst in the NFL with zero.

The issue of turnovers isn’t just on the defense, either. The Broncos have turned the ball over eight times. That means Denver is minus-6 in turnover ratio.

As Adam Malnati and I discussed on the MHR Radio Podcast, if the Broncos want to steal Monday’s game with the New England Patriots, they need to win the turnover battle. If Denver is able to finally get some takeaways, that will (likely) give Brett Rypien and the offense more possessions to get points. Conversely, the Broncos can’t give the New England offense extra possessions.

Yes, it’s cliche to say Denver has to win the turnover battle if it wants to win on Monday. But it’s also the truth. If the Broncos start doing the little things correctly, the big things will take care of themselves. The best way to do that is with turnovers.

As Denver defensive coordinator Ed Donatell told the media this week on if the defense needs to generate more turnovers:

“Yeah, absolutely, and I take full responsibility for that. We had a tough month. It wasn’t good and it wasn’t what we wanted. But really the only thing that matters is what we do this week to help our team win. The major emphasis is that we have to catch the ball. We had a couple balls in our hands, a couple tips that we’ve got to come down with, we’ve got to attack runners. But that’s a point of emphasis: we need to do it and we want to set up our offense for points. They put up a lot of points last week without us even helping them. If we help them, good things are going to happen.”

Broncos Blast

Each Saturday, I do a segment on Denver radio station ESPN 1600 AM. On this week’s Broncos Blast, we went positive and I lay out how Denver can win on Monday.

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