The Denver Broncos have been dancing around the questions surrounding their offensive inconsistency for weeks now, but those questions finally came home to roost last night as a game that should have been an easy win against the Las Vegas Raiders into a 10-7 nail-biter.
Quarterback Bo Nix and the Denver offense weren’t just inconsistent last night—they were flat-out bad. Nix missed makable throws all night long, and his ugly line of 150 yards passing on 16-for-29 to go with two picks and a touchdown pass barely did justice to his poor performance.
Running back J.K. Dobbins had some effective moments with 77 yards on 18 carries, but he was the one who stepped up with some blunt comments in which he pointed out the obvious.
"Yeah, cool, we're 8-2 ... [but] the defense is winning us the games and we're not helping them. We're not doing them any justice," Dobbins said in an ESPN story by Jeff Legwold. "I feel bad the way we play on offense and the way they play on defense because they're doing so great and we're doing so bad. They're our brothers too, and it just sucks because they're just out there so many plays, playing their butts off. We can't keep doing this to them."
Nix copped to his bad play as well, and with the Kansas City Chiefs next up on the schedule, he knows things have to change in a hurry.
"At some point, we've got to start moving the ball and scoring some points. Between penalties and sluggish football, we're just not playing very good. It starts with me. I've got to be better. ... We've got to find some juice."
It would be easy to write this performance off as a one-time Thursday night debacle, but that would be totally off base. The Broncos have been doing this sort of thing against bad teams for a while now, and while Nix’s last-minute heroics have been a fun story line, it’s their defense that’s carrying them. Denver punted seven times last night, and some of those punts were disastrous as well.
The defense, meanwhile, had six sacks as they allowed one touchdown or fewer for the fourth time this season. The Raiders offense isn’t exactly high-powered, but the Broncos held Vegas without a first down on seven consecutive possessions and a total of just 188 yards.
None of that will mean much, however, without significant improvement on the other side of the ball. Nix and the offense were exposed last night, and a second-half collapse could be in the forecast if they don’t turn things around.