How the Broncos game plan showed they have a ways to go

BALTIMORE — Sean Payton and the Denver Broncos coaches knew the gravity of the task that awaited them here Sunday.


They knew they had to contend with a Baltimore Ravens offense featuring the reigning league MVP, a running back on pace for a 2,000-yard season and a collection of pass-catching targets featuring two matchup nightmares at tight end and a young WR1 rounding into form with as many 100-yard games in October as the Broncos have had in the last two seasons.

And that’s why they made it clear early: When in doubt, go for it.

On fourth-and-1 from the Baltimore 44-yard line with a scoreless game in the first quarter: go for it.

On fourth-and-4 from the Baltimore 33 — well within Wil Lutz’s effective range — early in the second quarter with a 7-0 deficit: go for it.

On fourth-and-goal from the Baltimore 2 when trailing 10-0 in the second quarter: go for it.

There were two more fourth-down attempts in the fourth quarter, but by then, the competitive phase of what would be a 41-10 beatdown at the expense of the Ravens was complete.

Only the fourth-and-goal from the 2-yard line succeeded — and it took the Broncos’ version of a “Philly Special,” the trick play made famous in Super Bowl LII, to pull it off.

One-for-5 on fourth downs is poor. In fact, it puts the Broncos among the bottom tier of teams who go for it so often in a single game.

But the raw numbers — especially in a game that got away from the Broncos as thoroughly as Sunday’s did — are less illuminating than what the decision to be so audacious revealed.

“Yes. I think there are some games where your palate has to change,” Broncos coach Sean Payton said.

And it did. This was not a game Payton felt could be won straight-up with a by-the-numbers strategy. Not against Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry and Zay Flowers and a Baltimore defense that had been struggling, but he maintained was better than the numbers.

It showed confidence in the offense, to be sure.

“We were, shoot, a half-football close from being able to convert a couple of those,” wide receiver Courtland Sutton said.

What also made the gambit fascinating was that it went against much of what had been seen by the Broncos during Payton’s 26-game stewardship — not necessarily on fourth downs, but in overarching philosophy.

In plenty of games, Payton played the field-position battle, trusting his defense to come through. At times in previous games, the old John Fox maxim that “sometimes a punt is not a bad play” seemed to apply to the Broncos.

In other games, Denver could also be judicious about going no-huddle, even though the offense has shown bursts of effectiveness when going up-tempo. Against the Ravens, there was no hesitation.

“Yeah, we were in and out of it. We felt on film and doing some of the report studies, it calmed down some of the pressure looks,” Payton said.

“We had some success with it, and other times it all sounds good, then when you go three-and-out, it doesn’t sound as good, and the defense is right back on the field. I think we tried to in a few different series to feature it.”

Time and again, the Broncos threw caution to the Chesapeake Bay-fueled breezes.

Had the Broncos converted on fourth down when Javonte Williams was ruled short of the line to gain after a Ravens replay challenge, the game might have flowed differently. But the on-field ruling was wiped out by a pylon camera only present because this game was broadcast by CBS’ No. 1 crew of Jim Nantz and Tony Romo.

Had this been a more typical Broncos game with, say, Andrew Catalon or Spero Dedes at the mic, the angle that overturned Williams’ first down wouldn’t have existed.

But this was a step into the NFL’s big time, a place with which the Broncos have been unfamiliar since Peyton Manning’s retirement.

Sadly for them, the results were familiar. The missed chances, self-inflicted wounds and the risks that exploded in their faces accumulated.

“We had a lot of opportunities that could have went another way, but my boys always says, ‘Man, if ‘if’ was a fifth, we’d all be drunk,'” Sutton said. “And I think that’s a great way to go about it.

“You know, you can sit here and say ‘if’ this, ‘if’ that all day, but we didn’t capitalize when we needed to. And that’s the moral of the story you can say for the game.”

Indeed, if the Broncos were further along in their rebuilding process — in possession of more experience, more talent, or both — they likely wouldn’t have felt the pressure to keep hitting on 19.

But this is a team still very much under construction, defined as much by its lingering shortcomings as its attributes.

Their game plan was not that of a team that felt it was close to the game’s elite. Instead, it was one of a club that remains aspirational, needing to upend the chess board in order to defeat one of the sports’ grandmasters.

If they see the Ravens again in January, they might be ready for the jump in class. Sunday, they weren’t, instead absorbing would could prove to be a necessary lesson on their road to relevance.

“You do need to have that ‘stove is hot, don’t touch it’ moment,” Sutton said. “And I think that we had that moment today where it was like we had to learn that when the opportunity is there, we have to find a way to capitalize.”

With a trip to undefeated Kansas City looming, the Broncos must absorb that lesson in a hurry.

Post by @masedenver

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