Broncos have come so far, but Bills loss shows they have so far to go
Jan 12, 2025, 6:52 PM
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — There was one team at Highmark Stadium that looked ready for the NFL postseason pressure cooker, and it was not the team that had missed the last eight postseasons.
Such was the lot for the Denver Broncos, whose palpable progress to this point was waylaid — at least temporarily — by a Buffalo Bills side that spent most of the day running through the heart of the Denver defense, while keeping the Broncos from establishing any kind of tempo-setting rhythm of their own when they had the ball.
Buffalo trampled the Broncos 31-7, and that scoreline was actually flattering in the context of the thorough demolition dealt by Buffalo, which dominated not so much on the strength of Josh Allen winging passes from Orchard Park to Cheektowaga and back again, but by a brutally efficient ground game that could have been the difference in the last game the teams played had then-offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey not strayed from it after an early James Cook fumble in what would be a memorable Broncos win on Monday Night Football.
The Bills fired Dorsey the next day, and their rampaging began virtually forthwith, culminating in a performance that brought back foul Denver memories of the early days of the Sean Payton-Vance Joseph stewardship, when foes like the Washington Commanders and Miami Dolphins ground up the Broncos with what appeared to be relative ease.
It didn’t always look easy for the Bills, but the yardage came in clumps, and when Bills running back James Cook plowed through the Broncos with defenders all over him for a 16-yard gain on Buffalo’s second possession, the Broncos’ fate appeared sealed.
Denver hung around within one score until near the end of the third quarter, but even as the game remained close on the scoreboard — and could have been tied at halftime had Wil Lutz not slammed his 50-yard field-goal attempt into the right upright — Buffalo’s hammerlock control of the game on the ground rarely ebbed.
What happened was clear to Broncos defensive end John Franklin-Myers.
“Just not getting the guy down,” he said. “I don’t know how many yards after contact they have, but put a body on the guy and just kept running.
“Guys ran hard, did a good job of kind of getting out the way of some of those tackles. So we gotta tackle better and defensive-line wise, gotta knock guys back a little more.”
And the fact that the Broncos offense could not counter put the Broncos into a vicious spiral from which there would be no recovery. Despite the improvement on the offensive line and in overall point production over the last two seasons, the Broncos still need more explosive skill-position punch to counter the sort of steady sledgehammer blows dealt by the Bills with punches of their own.
And with that, the Broncos spun towards a chilly end to what had been a season filled with the warmth of optimism.
TIME OF POSSESSION TOLD THE TALE FOR THE BRONCOS
Buffalo didn’t demolish the Broncos with big plays. It was with an unrelenting series of punches that sapped Denver’s defense of any functional resistance until it just couldn’t stand up.
Only once did the Broncos force a punt … which meant that for the second time in as many games against a foe not featuring an ocean of reserves, the Broncos forced just a single punt in the contest.
On Dec. 28, the Bengals didn’t punt until overtime. Against the Broncos, Buffalo punted just once — a fate sealed late in the first half by a false-start penalty followed by a Zach Allen sack.
That gave the Broncos a window, and they drove to a potential game-tying field goal at halftime. But Wil Lutz slammed it into the right upright. In the third quarter, Buffalo slammed the window shut with two more lengthy drives.
The Broncos had a narrow path to begin with. As Buffalo controlled the football, it became a sliver of daylight.
“There’s certain statistics that I think you can look at at the end of the game and it’s basically like, ‘Oh, that’s why our margin of error was so slim,’” tight end Adam Trautman said.
“And one of them being that we couldn’t possess the ball and they possessed the ball — I think they [two times] ours, plus, so that’s one thing. And then obviously going to turnovers.
“But yeah, time of possession killed us today.”
And as it turned out, the Broncos had their lowest time-of-possession figure since at least 1983, holding the ball for just 18 minutes, 17 seconds.
Too often in this season of promise, the Broncos failed to control tempo. Against the Baltimore Ravens in November and again when they faced the Bills on Sunday, they needed a series of lengthy drives to minimize defensive exposure to an opposing foe featuring an MVP-caliber quarterback.
In both cases, Buffalo’s Josh Allen and Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson were their usual dynamic selves, but found ample support from their runners — Cook and company on Sunday, and Derrick Henry back in Week 9.
There was no path to success in those games without the Broncos controlling the pace.
“You know, we understand the brand of football we play and when we play our brand of football, we see the outcome,” Franklin-Myers said.
“But today just wasn’t our brand of football.”
And truly being able to play that brand — especially when it comes to the offense being able to respond in kind to the Shermanesque marches inflicted upon Denver’s defense — may require some more roster-restoration work to build upon the efforts of the previous offseasons.
Denver has a core. And much of that core should be together for 2025, from quarterback Bo Nix through re-signed, emerging standouts like Pat Surtain, Quinn Meinerz and Jonathon Cooper. The entire offensive line, ranked among the league leaders in pass-block and run-block win rate throughout the season by ESPN Analytics, is under contract to return.
But if the Broncos want to counter the leviathan quarterbacks and their diverse offenses with power or speed — or, ideally, a combination of both as the Ravens and Bills possess — they remain at least an offseason of moves away from having the firepower necessary.
The season is over and the Broncos crossed off a number of items on their checklist as they seek to return to relevance.
But plenty remains left to be done — and plenty remains to be added for a team that couldn’t stop the Bills, and then couldn’t do enough to keep Buffalo’s stampeding offense on the sideline.
"Time of possession killed us today."
— Broncos TE Adam Trautman, on the stat that told the story of how comprehensively the Bills defeated Denver pic.twitter.com/PAYkTFLsh9
— Andrew Mason (@MaseDenver) January 13, 2025