Broncos at Dolphins: The No Bull Review

There are no words for the pathetic level of football we witnessed on Sunday morning from the Denver Broncos. It is like the Broncos wanted to stand in solidarity with the CU Buffs after the absolute beatdown that the Oregon Ducks put on them on Saturday and said, “Coach Prime, hold my beer.”

Clear and present danger

I like getting a good feel for a team before making solid declarations. Let me go ahead and state the No Bull obvious truth:

Coach Vance Joseph is woefully out of his depth as a defensive coordinator. His lack of ability to coach a defense and do anything to have a team ready to play actual football is the number one reason this team will end the season as a loser.

Don’t get me wrong, I could point fingers at players ad nauseam that completely crapped themselves on the football field yesterday. The defensive roster is weak. We have a lot of very average players at best starting for us that don’t know how to tackle or take proper angles in order to stop plays.

But the thing that a coach is supposed to do if they are good at their job is to maximize what their players can do and get the best out of them.

There is no way on God’s green earth that what we saw on Sunday was the best we could get from that defense. Joseph lacks that kind of leadership ability.

There’s more you can do as a defensive coordinator to be good if you are missing that. The problem is that VJ doesn’t have that either. There are plenty of defensive coordinators who know the game so well that they are able to scheme a defense that is able to be successful (ask Miami how Vic Fangio is doing).

But what we saw on Sunday was a team running some very standard match-zone schemes that they’ve trotted out for weeks with very little scheming happening or variation to stress the offense or put your players in a position to be successful.

Add to this that our secondary is full of guys that really suck at playing zone like Damarri Mathis and Delarrin Turner-Yell. They play too soft, don’t know when they need to close distance and don’t understand how to read pass concepts in front of them to be able to jump the play properly.

Thoughts on the offense

I find it really hard to harp too much on the offense when the defense completely fell to pieces from the first play of the game on.

But you would have liked to see the offense try to push aggressively for points. They aren’t comfortable enough with the offense yet to feel comfortable doing that and it sucks. I’m not making an excuse for them. It was horrendous that our “#1 WR” Courtland Sutton put the ball on the ground twice. It sucked that our running game couldn’t churn out 8.1 ypc to match the Miami Dolphins.

They aren’t that offense yet. It will likely be a long time before they are.

Final Thoughts

This is sadly lining up to be a very long season. Many of us were hopeful for maybe a 9-7 finish. Let me go ahead and put that hope to bed: this team will be lucky to win 4 games. Don’t listen to any bullshit the MSM media and the Broncos PR team fish out there about how Sean Payton has turned things around in the past. That’s just hot nonsense.

This team is far more broken than anyone could have dreamed. It is a really good thing that Sean Payton is getting paid so well. He’s got his work cut out for him. I do still hold out hope that Payton is the right man for the job.

He’s going to need a lot of churn on this roster full of losers, though. He needs a defensive coordinator who can do anything at all as an NFL coach besides suck eggs. Neither of those things will get fixed this season.

It will be interesting to see what this team can do to take a step in the right direction. Next week the Broncos play the only other team in the NFL that is on the same sad level as they are. A loss to the Bears and we’ll be truly looking forward to a winless season with the hopes of #1 picks that can turn this roster around.