WEEK 15: BENGALS AT BRONCO'S / ONE DOWN, FOUR TO GO

[Broncofan]

Let's be clear - TeddyB was a massive reason why we lost today's game.  No one should deny this.

But Fangio's mismanagement in the 2Q (along with Shurmur) resulted in a 6-pt swing, instead of us being up 13-10 had we been even a tad more aggressive, we went down 13-10.

That 6-pt swing was literally the margin for victory.   And let's combine his end-of-4Q 2:35 with injury time clock set at 25 on 2nd down for CIN, were both literally game-changing management decisions.

Anyone who thinks Fangio should stay as a HC is absolutely delusional as to our chances to be a sustained playoff contender.   He hurts us so much.

The painful thing to our L - it's probably going to kill us even if we somehow went 3-0 tiebreaker wise.  But make no mistake, we saw today we're missing 4 things to be a legitimate contender, and only 1 of them is a player:

1.  Get us a top 10 QB and our W would purr.   Look at what a flawed QB like Lock did for 1-2 drives.   

2.  Get us a real HC who can do the entire skill set.  Not just a great DC who's terrible at the other parts.

3.  Get us an OC who can maximize our weapons.  

4.  Get us a ST coach who can just make us league-average.  I'm not asking for top 10, I'm asking for league-average.

#2 - #4 is pretty simple action-wise, it's a clean sweep of the coaching staff (but if we can keep OL coach Munchak who doesn't want to coach outside Colorado to be with his grandkids), then we get the best of both worlds.   #1 won't be easy, but we've got the targets who are interested (Russell Wilson & A-Rod).     

Today was likely our season re: playoffs.  It's AWESOME that we're playing meaningful games in December - but we should learn from what we've seen the last 3 years.   Fangio is now 1-22 as HC when trailing, and TeddyB is O-for (or it's the other way around).   Time for change is long overdue, and irrefutable.

[BroncoBruin]

A vintage Bolles home game too, felt like the good old days when he was maybe the most hated Bronco ever. 

[paul-mac]

Lock throwing ducks and Bolles getting called for holding repeatedly gave me 2019 nostalgia 

[broncos67]

1 minute ago, BroncoBruin said:

A vintage Bolles home game too, felt like the good old days when he was maybe the most hated Bronco ever. 

Like I said, all the usual suspects came out to play today. Just a tremendous throwback to last year.

[7DnBrnc53]

Honestly, this doesn't bother me. I don't want to make the playoffs. I want the QB's and coaches out. Playoffs is the last thing this organization needs right now.

[broncos67]

Can we also discuss the decision by Shurmur to have Lock run the football? On what planet was that a wise idea? It's incredible how stupid Shurmur's play calling is. He's so far out of his league right along with Vic. I really cannot express how thrilled I am that we'll be firing them both.

[Broncofan]

2 hours ago, broncos67 said:

Can we also discuss the decision by Shurmur to have Lock run the football? On what planet was that a wise idea? It's incredible how stupid Shurmur's play calling is. He's so far out of his league right along with Vic. I really cannot express how thrilled I am that we'll be firing them both.

Oh yeah, that's just part of the 3-headed monster we just witnessed (Shurmur's play-calling probably was 3rd to Teddy's play and Fangio's complete L in game management at 2Q and 4Q pre-2 min warning), but Shurmur gets his share too.

The bright side to today:

1.  Our D was terrific, and it was our young guys who led the way.  Very hopeful.

2. No one (EDIT:) from our 2022 core got hurt. 

3.  This game almost certainly seals Fangio's fate as HC if playoffs mandate was the requirement for him to return.   Given how we just lost the most important game do-or-die in our season with game management and bad QB play / OC game calling - it's a lose-the-battle, win-the-war scenario.

We win the war in 3 ways:

1.  All talk of Drew Lock / Teddy B as any part of our 2022 plans only needs LAC INT / this film to show how little Lock has progressed (the same flaws) and the entire 2022 game film for our L's to show what TeddyB doesn't bring even as a caretaker.

2. It seals Fangio & Shurmur's fate if the playoffs are no longer realistic, so long as playoff-mandate-or-fired take that Allbright has repeatedly reported, holds true.   As others mentioned, I think this was more Paton's cover than a simple equation, but now we're likely on the right side of this equation result-wise for the long-term welfare of the org.

3.  Finally, the way we lost this game (game management, awful QB play, and questionable play-calling) does NOTHING to change our attractiveness for the Wilson/A-Rod/Watson (although I think Watson is MIA bound) tier of QB's of places to target (and since they all have functional no-trade clauses, they essentially get to pick her top spots). 

Edited December 20, 2021 by Broncofan

[BroncoBruin]

Gotta say, it’s really bull**** listening to Fangio clearly going out of his way to give Lock zero credit when he’s been calling Teddy’s play “good” almost every week. 

[germ-x]

14 minutes ago, lomaxgrUK said:

A simply horrific outing for our entire passing Offense.

Terrible QB play.

Consistent pressure given up across the entire OL.

Drops at WR.

Pass pro issues at RB.

Don't see how it can get worse than that.

Today was one of the few entire games I’ve caught all year.  Thats 100% correct.

Again I haven’t watched much all year and with better QB play this team would look much different, but man Jerry Jeudy is disappointing.  He wasn’t physical in college and that was my biggest concern but not only is he not physical he’s disinterested.  Again, QB that can play can change that, but his lack of physicality probably keeps him from ever being a legitimate #1 WR.

[Broncofan]

1 minute ago, germ-x said:

Today was one of the few entire games I’ve caught all year.  Thats 100% correct.

Again I haven’t watched much all year and with better QB play this team would look much different, but man Jerry Jeudy is disappointing.  He wasn’t physical in college and that was my biggest concern but not only is he not physical he’s disinterested.  Again, QB that can play can change that, but his lack of physicality probably keeps him from ever being a legitimate #1 WR.

Jeudy got open at 3 key plays - deep 2x wide-open (2nd one on the Sutton DPI, so at least it didn't cost us), beat the double-team on 3rd down that TeddyB misfired by 5 yards on 3rd down.   With decent QB-ing, he'd have had a massive day.  Sutton made 1 absolutely terrible drop.   And he didn't fight hard on the TD throw that Apple broke up, that's fair (as @lomaxgrUK & @grizmo78 pointed out).  It was also underthrown by 1-2 yards.    But at least he had separation.  Patrick was the one guy who made plus plays out of terrible throw by Lock.   But honestly, the plays weren't on the WR's, they were all on TeddyB's inability to be willing to throw the ball there. 

Honestly, I don't know how the WR's get any flak other than the drops (and ironically Jeudy wasn't one of them, 2021 has played out very differently there so far, as we'd hoped, given the film on his skills).   The O's lack of production was all TeddyB today (and then Lock's mistake costing us 3, if not 7 pts with the fumble, and his flaws showing up that limit him so much, and haven't improved since his rookie year).

[broncos67]

2 minutes ago, germ-x said:

Today was one of the few entire games I’ve caught all year.  Thats 100% correct.

Again I haven’t watched much all year and with better QB play this team would look much different, but man Jerry Jeudy is disappointing.  He wasn’t physical in college and that was my biggest concern but not only is he not physical he’s disinterested.  Again, QB that can play can change that, but his lack of physicality probably keeps him from ever being a legitimate #1 WR.

To be fair, and it's not necessarily the best trait, but our WRs just seem bored because we have no QB or play calling that utilizes them. I can't say I blame them. The route concepts Shurmur designs are largely terrible or at best vanilla. I'm hoping if Lock gets some run these last few games that we open up the offense a little bit.

[BroncoBruin]

You can understand Jeudy’s frustration leading to some apathy in this offense. And with Drew things just seem to snowball with Jerry, they might be one of the worst QB/WR connections I’ve ever seen. They’ve just never been able to figure it out. 

Edited December 20, 2021 by BroncoBruin

[paul-mac]

I think both Jeudy and Sutton are great but they just aren’t the kind of receivers to bail out a bad QB. They’re the kind of guys who will get open in creative ways and put themselves in position to be thrown open by guys like Rodgers but they aren’t going to elevate the play of the who’s who of crappy QB play that we get in Denver.

 

 

Tim Patrick on the other hand IS the sort of WR who can make plays even with poorly thrown balls. I’ve also been really impressed with both of the tight ends in recent weeks. Okwuegbunam is an absolute steal on day 3 of the draft and Noah Fant has finally started to show a bit of fight in the past few games. 

[Broncofan]

49 minutes ago, BroncoBruin said:

Gotta say, it’s really bull**** listening to Fangio clearly going out of his way to give Lock zero credit when he’s been calling Teddy’s play “good” almost every week. 

Lock wasn't great with ball security, and that missed 3rd down pass where Sutton was open, and his flaws we've seen, are all there.  But he also was 10x better than TeddyB today in terms of actually throwing the ball.   

That's honestly Fangio trying to cover his *** for the decision to start TeddyB all year long.  And to be clear, it can clearly be justified in that TeddyB never lost a game to a clearly inferior team (maybe CLE with their injuries), by not making mistakes.  But it's so obvious TeddyB has ZERO ability to make difference-making plays against good teams to carry the team to victory.     We won vs. LAC and DAL because we enjoyed a 3+ TO differential in TO's vs. LAC and +5 at DAL (4th down stops don't count as TO's, but functionally they're the same - you get ball and lose no field position).  The gamescript allows a bad O to win when that happens.   We won those despite the O limits TeddyB (and Lock) brought those 2 games.

______________

 

Side rant:

CIN is a much better team than we are when healthy - they were missing both starting T's and their top run stuffing LB, and their top CB.   That levelled the playing field in a massive way.     But our D was simply oustanding.   But once again, our O couldn't get past 20+ pts.  

In today's NFL, giving up 22 pts should be a path to victory at least 60+ percent of the time.   With us, it's a path to a L almost 70-75 percent of the time with Fangio and Shurmur.  And yes, since the  Lock/Flacco/TeddyB/other trash-level QB play we've had to endure with Fangio/Shurmur, too.    Today we gave up 15 pts...a number that wins 75-80 percent of the time...and lost, and no one can really argue we were the better team...because of how bad our O and our game calling & game management (and special teams) were.

Remember I said at the start of the year we're a 9-8 or 8-9 team with the personnel/coaching, but hoping we'd make progress to be ready to contend legitimately once we had our QB.   At least it's clear no QB on the roster should be on the squad next year (OK maybe Brett Rypien as our rookie-contract 3rd QB)

Edited December 20, 2021 by Broncofan

[paul-mac]

I might start a just giving page to pay for a taxi to the airport for Bridgewater, Lock, Fangio and Shurmur. All four of them need to be chased out of Denver asap.