‘It’s the 24-hour rule’ — Justin Simmons looks ahead to the rest of the season

Broncos Country is reeling from Monday night.

With a decidedly great defensive performance coupled with that terrible, horrible, no good, very bad offensive one, losing to the Los Angeles Chargers in overtime wasn’t just frustrating. Frustrating is not bad enough of a word. Some events remind you that there aren’t terms in the English language to accurately convey certain emotions, and this game is one of those events.

Perhaps one of the most gut-twisting elements of that game was how effective the Denver Broncos defense really was, despite their penalties, and even all the way up to that disaster of an overtime.

Free safety Justin Simmons, who just returned from injury, is reeling too. He said today, “It’s always emotional after the game...It’s hard to get up there with raw emotion and be able to articulate. I know I talked about how big the game was going to be for us. To get up there after an overtime loss was pretty tough.”

He is not, however, throwing his confidence to the wayside. Simmons brought up the 24-hour rule — giving yourself a day to really feel the loss, and then moving on and turning attention toward the game ahead.

“It’s the 24-hour rule. Now that it’s out the window, we’ll focus on the Jets and getting a huge win at home.”

Moving on isn’t the same as forgetting, though. The safety admitted that he has to juggle two truths at the same time: the first being that the Broncos are 2-4 and 0-2 in the AFC West; and the second being that there are still games for them to win.

“It’s weird. It’s a combination of both,” Simmons shared, “ It’s recognizing that we are who we are. We’re sitting here 2-4 and 0-2 in the west. There’s no, ‘Oh, put that to the side.’ That’s who we are.”

He went on, “It’s also recognizing that there is still plenty of ball left to change our season around. We’ve seen in year’s past with different teams. As soon as you get a couple wins under your belt and you’re on that streak, you just find a rhythm and hit the ground running.”

Simmons also shared some of the things running through his mind regarding the long offensive drives LA was able to get. “That was frustrating for us. Hats off to them,” he said, “There were some schematic things that they did that we had to adjust to throughout the game.”

A lot of the problem, he added, was self-inflicted by way of penalties (151 yards’ worth). The defense wants to focus on eliminating those penalties in future games, but sometimes it’s hard to tell where the judgements come in — especially when it comes to a plethora of PI calls.

“Everyone is talking about the pass interference calls. I don’t want to get fined, but I don’t know exactly how some of those were ruled,” he admitted carefully, “I know Chubb had that one roughing the passer call. I don’t even know what roughing the passer is.”

Simmons noted that talking to the refs and figuring out what they’re looking for, how they can play better, etc. is what they try to do.

“We try to have those conversations so those things don’t happen. Some of them are obvious, and some of the are judgment calls....At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter our opinion on it. The fact of the matter is that it was called, and it affects our game. It affects how we play the next play. We just have to better.”

Ultimately, Simmons believes in the entirety of their team (yes, including Hackett and the offense...), and says they collectively need to “block out the noise, and focus on the task at hand.” That’s exactly what they aim to do on Sunday when the Jets show up at Empower.

To be honest, I’m not worried about the defense. I’m much more worried about the Broncos’ offense. I don’t celebrate Russell Wilson’s injury (or any injury, for that matter), but I’m interested to see what would happen if we threw Brett Rypien in there and let him go for it. We’ll see what happens.