The Denver Broncos had an awful tackling percentage on Monday night against Kansas City in their awful loss.
If you thought the Denver Broncos were historically bad at tackling against the Kansas City Chiefs, you were right. According to Sam Jane of the Denver Post, the Broncos missed 29.8 percent of their tackles, which is the worst number in any NFL game since 2018.
Walker also had 144 yards after contact in the Chiefs’ 31-10 win, which was the ninth out of 5,386 running backs since 2022, according to Jane via Sumer Sports.
Two of the Chiefs touchdowns were due to multiple missed tackles, with receiver Rashee Rice beating cornerback Riley Moss and linebacker Jonah Elliss for a 13-yard touchdown catch, while Moss had another bad one on Walker’s 60 yard touchdown.
Even the backups got in on the action, as linebacker Alex Singleton and safety Talanoa Hufanga missed tackls on run by Emmett Johnson at end of the game that resultedin a first-down coversion for Walker's understudy.
“We didn’t do a good job tackling at all,” Hufanga said after the game.
The safeties and linebackers represent last lines of defense when Walker hits the second level, and linebacker Justin Strnad also mentioned the tackling, although there was a bit of excuse-making in his comment.
“We played a great back, I would say the best pure runner in the league, and in order to beat a guy like that you have to tackle well,” Strnad said.
Some even more blantant excuse making came from defensive end Savion Jones, who went back to training camp as a source of the probem.
“We ain’t tackled somebody since preseason, especially if you’re a starter, so just not having that experience coming up in the first game played a major factor,” Jones said.
None of these excuses will hold up going forward, and most of the players were candid in their self assessments. The Broncos seemed shocked at the level of physicality Kansas City showed, as Denver is used to playing more of a finesse team that relied on the ability of quarterback Patrick Mahomes to hit big explosive plays.
This week will almost certainly feature some extensive tackling drills. According to Jane, the Broncos typically do circuit drills and tackling drills, and they use a moving tackling robot during practice to practice tackling.
The next running back up in Week 2 is Bhayshul Tuten of the Jacksonville Jaguars, who’s definitely not Walker. He did force seven missed tackles in Jacksonville’s opener against the Cleveland Browns, so the Broncos still have plenty of work to do to prevent the kind of performance that doomed them against Kansas City.
