Well, that was...rough. Melvin Gordon’s face on the botched flea flicker pitch said it all.
The Denver Broncos were not just beaten by the Kansas City Chiefs. They were embarrassed by them.
The frustrating aspect of this has to be that the defense actually played well. The final score doesn’t really show how well they played.
Patrick Mahomes threw for just 200 yards and one TD. The Chiefs only managed 286 total yards on offense. How did it get so lopsided?
All it took to blow out the Broncos was a pick-six, a kick return for a TD, and winning the turnover battle 4 to 1. It wasn’t just a recipe for disaster. It was comedy gold.
I’m not laughing. Mostly, I’m not laughing because I feel like I’ve been duped. Maybe we expected too much, but it looked like the Broncos were getting close to competing with the Chiefs.
As Ian and I discussed on the MHR Radio Podcast pregame show, the Chiefs may not be the next step along the way for the Broncos, but they will be eventually. What we learned in Week 7 is that Denver is further away from competing with KC than we hoped.
And it’s not like the Broncos have been bad all year. Coming off a win in Foxborough against the Patriots, it seemed like the gap was closing. They competed with the Titans and the Steelers. They beat up the Jets with a backup QB. Playing a close game with the Chiefs wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities.
But apparently, it was. Drew Lock struggled. His two interceptions resulted in two touchdowns. The pick-six, and the weird KJ Hamler tip. By the way, maybe Melvin Gordon can get lessons on pitching a ball from Hamler. He tossed it perfectly into Tyrann Mathieu’s waiting hands.
Silver lining? Yes. The Broncos defense is still good. The offense is talented. The team still seems to be close to competing. Just not competing with the Chiefs. It’s like KC has become their mental block. They will have to figure out how to overcome this issue.
Light at the end of the tunnel? Turned out to be the train heading in the opposite direction.