Broncos-Jaguars: The good, the bad and the ugly from Sunday

The Broncos are now 0-4 for the first time in 20 years. On Sunday, they fell to the Jaguars by a score of 26-24. A last-second field goal put Jacksonville over the top after Denver gained a big lead, lost that big lead, then fought hard to get back in the lead near the end of the game.

Broncos head coach Vic Fangio had a message of positivity for the team after another heart-wrenching loss.

“I still believe in them. I think they’re winners as individuals. We have to find a way to be winners as a team and we’re not playing well enough consistently enough to do that, but I do believe in these guys,” Fangio said.

The Broncos head out on the road to take on AFC West rival the Chargers in Week 5. Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s take a look at the good, the bad and the ugly from Week 4 loss.

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The Good

The Broncos pass rush looked like what we expected it to for the first time on Sunday. Von Miller, Bradley Chubb, DeMarcus Walker and Malik Reed combined for five sacks of Jaguars quarterback Gardner Minshew.

Miller’s two sacks made the home crowd go wild, as they catapulted Miller to the 100-sack mark for his career. Playing in his 124th career regular-season game, Miller is the sixth-fastest player all-time to reach 100 career sacks.

The second half didn’t go as planned with the Broncos. And once again (like in the game against the Bears), they were flagged with a roughing the passer penalty that kept their opponent’s game-winning drive alive. Against the Bears it was Chubb, but on Sunday it was Miller who was flagged.

“The refs have got a hard job. We’ve got a hard job. It’s just tough. It was a tough day, but we can’t really blame the refs. They do their best to call the game fair and make it fair for both teams. There’re probably some calls on both sides of the ball that people can probably question. It was just a rough one,” Miller said.

The Broncos entered the game with zero sacks in three games and they exited the game with five sacks. Regardless of the outcome, the team found their swagger when it comes to getting after the quarterback and I see that as a positive.

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The Bad

Turnovers will take down any team. If you’re a team like the Broncos, you can’t afford to make mistakes – even if they don’t seem that costly at the time they occur.

The Broncos were driving near the end of the first half with a 17-3 lead. They could have at least kicked another field goal to go up 20-3 or even could have scored a touchdown to get a 24-3 lead heading into halftime.

Instead, Joe Flacco threw an interception and the Jaguars were able to drive down and kick a field goal to pull closer with the score of 17-6 at the break.

“It was my fault, my eyes messed with me. I look at the pick obviously as a difference. Courtland (Sutton) kind of got covered and I looked back to throw what I thought was my shallow cross and Emmanuel wasn’t in my vision yet. All of the sudden, Emmanuel came into my vision as I was getting ready to throw what I thought was my shallow cross and it just completely interrupted what I thought. I didn’t have any idea who he was at that point, he was just really in my line of sight. I tried pulling back the ball yet again and it just floated out high to the guy that was kind of coming down and lurking the safety,” Flacco said.

Flacco has thrown three interceptions so far in 2019. In fact, Flacco has thrown one interception in each of the last three games. The Broncos aren’t good enough to overcome this type of mistake and these turnovers are something Flacco needs to clean up if the team wants to win a game.

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The Ugly

Jaguars running back Leonard Fournette went off against the Broncos. He set a career-high in rushing with the 225 yards Fournette gained against the Broncos.

A big chunk of that play came on a big 81-yard run in the third quarter, but it wasn’t the only time that Fournette was breaking tackles and gashing the Broncos defense. Entering the game, Denver had held opposing running backs to 3.5 yards per carry. That average is going to take a big jump forward as Fournette averaged a whopping 7.8 yards per carry against the Broncos on Sunday.

Broncos defensive end Derek Wolfe was brutally honest when talking about the team’s poor tackling and poor run defense of Fournette.

“He was patient in the backfield. They were trying to run it up inside the tackles, we would jam it up and then he would just bounce outside. That was the problem, it was just cut backs and bounce plays. He wasn’t just busting up the middle. I have to watch the film, so I can’t really tell you what’s going on here. I just know that we have to do a better job of tackling because it is embarrassing to have someone run for some 200 yards on you,” Wolfe said.

Teams are running more against the Broncos than they are passing. The Broncos have faced the most rushing attempts of any team in the league and they must be better at stuffing the run if they want to put themselves in better position to win.