The Broncos made life tough for Aaron Rodgers, and that was huge

The Denver Broncos won a low-scoring game against the New York Jets in Week 4. The score was 10-9 as the Broncos defense dominated and the offense struggled in the rain.

The Broncos are now 2-2 after four games. It seems like we’ve seen this team grow together and play good football – mostly on defense and at times on offense.

After the game, Payton mentioned his team’s grit.

“Just a couple comments, obviously a gritty win. Man, proud of how we fought. You don’t know sometimes; I think we talked about it last week how games unfold. I don’t think either team expected the weather to impact the game like it did that much in the first half. None the less, good team that we played, and we fought hard. It was good to get a win.” Payton said.

Here are three observations from the Broncos win over the Jets in Week 4.

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Hitting Rodgers

The Broncos defense did not let up on Jets QB Aaron Rodgers. They sacked him five times, but it was the 14 quarterback hits which really drove home the point Broncos defensive coordinator Vance Joseph was trying to make.

Down by six points at halftime, the Broncos defense did not let up. When the offense was able to put together a long drive to get a lead, the defense seemed even more rejuvenated when getting after Rodgers. He merely didn’t have much time to make a play because of the aggression the Broncos were showing time and time again.

I really appreciated how the defense was still going after Rodgers with a lead late in the fourth quarter. Some teams will play prevent defense in that situation and back off to force a team to dink-and-dunk down the field. Joseph did not do that and instead kept sending blitzes from all over the field.

Payton knows how much of a problem Rodgers is to defend.

“It’s tough to do against him. He’s someone that’s real good with his protection IDs and he’s also someone who he knows if he’s short one and he knows right away. So, you’ll send a guy in motion, he’s extremely smart so you may go another 20 games before you see that happen to him. Look, that was part of the success today.” Payton said.

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Jump-Starting Javonte

Entering Week 4, QB Bo Nix was the team’s leading rusher. Starting RB Javonte Williams had been struggling this season, and it seemed like RB Tyler Badie was going to emerge with a larger role against the Jets.

That didn’t happen.

Badie was injured early in the game, and the team had to turn to Williams on a wet field. He responded with the best game of the year, and it was his best game since Week 7 of last season.

Williams responded with 77 yards rushing on 16 carries (4.8 YPC). This is the first time he’s averaged over 4.0 yards per carry in almost a year. He looked like the player he used to be, and Williams was dancing less than he had been in previous games. In addition, the team was using wide-zone concepts more which is a strength of Williams.

Payton praised the guys up front when assessing what got Williams going.

“Well, I thought the key started up front. We got to some six holes, seven-hole wide zones, we got to some duo schemes, we brought them. We knew analytically this was a team that’s better in coverage and you had a little bit more susceptible, if you will, in the run game. Know we hit a couple traps, I could tell the lineman felt like at halftime that, hey, just keep – well that’s easy too when it was as wet as it was. Ultimately though when it dried up, we were going to have to make a play or two in the passing game. But those guys up front, I think were the key.” Payton said.

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Wet Football

Nix did not look good for most of this game – but neither did Rodgers. The conditions were terrible, and the football was wet which made it difficult to throw. While Rodgers finished with 225 yards passing, Nix had only 60 yards throwing in the win.

I like the fact that Nix only threw it 25 times. There was no need to fill the air with footballs in a close game where weather is a factor. Nix did have one great drive as a passer with the best throw of the day. That drive scored the only touchdown of the game for either team, and it helped the Broncos win.

Going forward, Nix needs to be better throwing in wet conditions. I’m sure the team will look at the film and see what they can do better to help the young passer out.

“Oh, yeah. I mean, when it rains like that for that long period of time, it’s hard to, I guess, get new dry footballs out there, but that’s how it’s going to be. You know, they were having to do the same thing. Usually, these weather games, they turn into, you know, run the football games. And that’s what we did in the second half. So, it worked in our favor and we didn’t turn the ball over. We kept throwing completions on first and second down and then we got a few third down completions. One being the in-cut to Court (WR Courtland Sutton) there in the third quarter, which was huge. So, we threw the ball when we had to and we made some connections when we had to. And that was the difference in the game.” Nix said.

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