With the Broncos season on the line, Vic Fangio didn’t trust his defense

Vic Fangio finally got it right. In what should be the head coach’s final game in charge of the Broncos, he actually showed a grasp of the obvious.

The moment came with 5:31 to play in the fourth quarter. The Broncos were trailing 17-13 and facing a fourth-and-one from their own 34-yard line.

Conventional wisdom says the smart play would’ve been to punt. Denver still had all three timeouts remaining. The wise move was to rely on the team’s defense.

Instead, Fangio decided to roll the dice. He decided to go for it, with the game and the season on the line.

Had the Broncos not converted, the Raiders would’ve already been in field-goal range. So it was a huge, huge gamble to put the ball in Drew Lock’s hands in an attempt to keep the chains moving.

Why did Fangio do it? Because he didn’t trust his defense.

A lot is made of Denver’s positive stats on that side of the ball. The Fangio apologists tout the low-scoring games the Broncos play as evidence that the head coach is some sort of a defensive guru.

Reality suggests, however, that he isn’t. The good numbers are simply a byproduct of the way Denver plays the game; they play bend-but-don’t-break defense, but can’t make plays when it matters most.

Fangio knows this better than anyone. It’s why he didn’t trust his defense with less than six minutes to play on Sunday.

And he had good reason not to have any faith. That group hadn’t been good in the second half against the Raiders.

Leading 13-7 at halftime, the Broncos allowed a nine-play, 75-yard touchdown drive to open the third quarter. That was followed by an eight-play drive that ended in a Las Vegas fumble. Then, the Raiders burned 13 plays and 7:38 of clock to put a field goal on the board.

That’s 30 plays for nearly 17 minutes time of possession. Denver couldn’t get off the field in the second half.

So with the ball in their hands, facing a fourth-and-one, Fangio believed his best bet was to rely on an offense that had been anemic all day. He didn’t think the Broncos would get another chance.

In the end, he proved prophetic. Fangio was 100 percent correct.

Denver converted the fourth down, but ultimately had to punt. They gave up possession with 3:54 to play and two timeouts in hand. The Broncos never saw the ball again.

Las Vegas got two first downs, including a third-down conversion with 2:11 to play, and ultimately iced the game. In the end, the Raiders were in victory formation after the two-minute warning.

Game over. Season over.

The final score will get most of the attention. The Broncos offense only managing 13 points, seven of which came on a one-yard touchdown drive, will get the rest. But that’s burying the main story.

With the game on the line, with the season on the line, with perhaps his tenure in Denver on the line, Fangio trusted the Broncos offense more than he did the defense. That’s unbelievably telling.

Some will use numbers to support Fangio. But those who actually watch the games, who understand flow and realize that Denver can’t get opposing offenses off the field, know that the problem isn’t just on one side of the ball.

The Broncos play conservative football. They want to win low-scoring games. They want to rely on their defense, where they spend the vast majority of their money.

But at the most-important moment of the season, the team’s head coach didn’t trust that side of the ball. He didn’t trust that his defense would get the ball back in the final 5:31 of the game.

There are any number of reasons to believe that the Broncos current formula for winning doesn’t work in 2021. Fangio’s 19-28 record in nearly three seasons at the helm is atop the list. But it’s the way they’ve gotten to that mark that is even more telling.

Denver’s offense gave them a late lead against Chicago, Jacksonville and Indianapolis in 2019, only to see it evaporate in the final seconds of the game. The Broncos had a lead in last year’s season opener against Tennessee, only to watch it disappear in the waning moments. And on Sunday, the trend continued.

Was the Broncos offense good enough against the Raiders? Of course not. They were pitiful.

But to some extent, that’s by design. They didn’t turn the ball over. They didn’t make mistakes. And that’s their No. 1 goal on a weekly basis.

The Broncos formula for success is broken. And their head coach knows it.

Going for it on fourth-and-one with 5:31 to play said everything. Vic Fangio doesn’t trust his defense. Nor should he.

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