Broncos hoping that Crawshaw’s big postseason will help him become more consistent in Year Two

One of the most fascinating vignettes revealed in the lengthy ESPN piece about Broncos coach Sean Payton’s playoff preparation was that he had a fake punt ready and called early in overtime of what would eventually be a 33-30 divisional-round win over the Buffalo Bills.

With fourth-and-11 at the Broncos 38-yard line, Payton made the audacious call.

“We had the right look,” he told ESPN.

But Tyler Badie, working on the field, called it off.

Had the fake punt happened, it would have become a defining moment for Payton — no matter how it turned out. Fail, and it would have potentially gone down in history as one of the most hubris-flooded calls in the NFL’s first 106 seasons of play. Success would have put it alongside Payton’s onside kickoff gambit to open the second half of Super Bowl XLIV.

It also would have erased what became the defining moment of rookie punter Jeremy Crawshaw’s season. Because when Badie audibled out of the fake punt, it teed up Crawshaw to uncork a punt that established his clutch bona fides on a professional level, a 55-yard missile that bounced out of bounds at the Buffalo 7-yard line, pinning the Bills deep in their territory and forcing them to go at least 53 yards to reach plausible field-goal range.

They wouldn’t make it that far, of course; Ja’Quan McMillian‘s interception took care of that. And Crawshaw walked off the field as one of the Broncos’ heroes, deserved game-ball winner for perhaps his best punt of the season exactly when it was needed the most.

“I think he finished this season — especially in the postseason — he finished the season on a high note,” special-teams coordinator Darren Rizzi said. “Had some really, really good, big punts for us in the postseason. So we’ll kind of hopefully pick up where we left off there.”

Indeed, the postseason provided an ideal punctuation on a campaign that saw Crawshaw become a training-camp sensation with his regular bombs — and occasional mis-hits — struggle in the preseason games, deliver a Week 1 performance that seemed to end all doubt, and then endure a horrific performance on a windy Thursday night in Week 10 that saw gusts so fierce that it affected his drops, leading to a string of shanks — including one with a sub-2-second-hang time.

So it can go for a rookie. Not everyone is going to be Seattle’s Michael Dickson, who strolled into the NFL in 2018 and was immediately an All-Pro.

“There’s a learning curve every year in this league. It takes everybody time to kind of get their bearings figured out,” Broncos kicker Wil Lutz said.

 

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WHAT THE BRONCOS NEED FROM CRAWSHAW IN YEAR TWO/h2>

Rizzi made it clear last month that he wants to see Crawshaw’s consistency improve. Indeed, that was the bugaboo even during his prodigious camp, when a typical Broncos punt period would see seven punts that ranged from good to great, and one that sent onlookers on the sideline scurrying for cover.

“It’s kind of like … the fireworks. There’s some booms, and then every once in a while, there’s one of those (that isn’t as good),” Sean Payton said last year early in training camp.

Now, it’s a matter of cutting those duds. A punter won’t ever be 100-percent shank free, but the goal now is seeing more punts like the one in overtime against Buffalo: long, soaring and ensuring no chance of a return. Without Crawshaw flipping the field, the Broncos’ road might have ended right there in the divisional round.

“I think with a specialist, from year one to year two, the biggest thing is consistency, right? Think about the people that play golf here. You’re hitting kind of that same ball all the time. We know what he’s capable of,” Rizzi said.

“… Just putting together a string of those [good punts] and kind of limiting the negative, limiting the bad punts. So that’s gonna be the biggest thing from year one to year two.”

Crawshaw finished as a middle-of-the-pack punter when all was said and done last year. Among the group of 32 punters who had at least 25 punts, Crawshaw was 15th in gross average, 20th in net average and 18th in percentage of punts that landed inside the 20-yard line. That’s a solid start; now the Broncos want to see him firmly settle among the NFL’s top half of punters, a place he has the physical capability to reach.

It’s just a matter of minimizing the miscues now.

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