The Denver Broncos have a championship defense. That’s become blatantly obvious to anyone who’s watched the Broncos for the last few weeks, but it’s just as clear that Denver needs more help from the offense and special teams to reach that championship goal. 

Yesterday’s shaky 13-11 win over the New York Jets in London provided plenty of evidence. The defense terrorized Jets coach Aaron Glenn into virtually waving the white flag before halftime, but the offense struggled for most of the day, and special teams and penalties played into the close score as well. 

It’s easy to use the long road trip and London travel to justify a lot of this, but coach Sean Payton acknowledged the reality of the situation in a story written by Nick Kosmider of The Athletic. 

“I didn’t think we played well up front,” said Payton, whose questionable call to drop back Nix for a long-developing pass in his end zone in the third quarter resulted in the safety. ” … I think Darren (Rizzi, the special teams coordinator) is probably just as disappointed relative to his units as I would be relative to our offense. Nonetheless, as the head coach, you’ve got to be excited for the team win.”

The special teams breakdowns included giving up a 72-yard kickoff return that helped the Jets get on the board with a field goal, and Denver lost the field-position battle for most of the day. The offense also committed five penalties, including two holding calls on backup guard Matt Peart as he stepped in to fill the gap left by guard Ben Powers biceps injury. 

The defense made up for it yesterday by overwhelming Jets quarterback Justin Fields throughout the game, and it helped star cornerback Patrick Surtain II shut down receiver Garrett Wilson. 

“It’s barely one or two seconds, I look up, there’s a sack,” said Surtain.

Payton knows there’s a lot of work to get the other two phases up to where they should be, though. The Broncos played one of those “one step forward, two steps back” games that usually result in an upset, and their margin for error is small even without the kinds of mistakes they made yesterday. 

“We are going to look at the film and see that we left a lot of yardage out there and opportunities out there,” Payton said. “But again, the way we played defensively, it was impressive.”