All going wrong for once-proud Broncos

Nov 16, 2017 - 5:41 PM ENGLEWOOD, Colo. -- There are no mincing words about it: Right now, the Denver Broncos are a bad football team.

Their five-game losing streak, the club's longest in nearly seven years, is the second-longest in the NFL, trailing only that of the winless Cleveland Browns.

The Broncos' minus-97-point differential in the last five games is the league's worst in that span. Only the New York Giants, San Francisco 49ers and Browns have won fewer games.

"I'm at a loss, man," defensive end Derek Wolfe said after the Broncos' 41-16 loss to the Patriots on Sunday. "I'm confused. I'm embarrassed, frustrated.

"The bottom line is, we stink right now. We're not a good football team. We're not playing good. We're not communicating well with each other. The players, we all get along. We're not fighting and arguing with each other, but it's just like, 'What the hell are we supposed to do, man?'"

The Broncos look nothing like the team that won Super Bowl 50 barely 21 months ago. Even their vaunted defense has accounted for 85 points allowed in the last two games.

"It's sad that we went from being a championship-caliber team to a team that stinks, and nobody respects us," Wolfe said.

The problems go deeper than this current slump.

Since starting the 2016 season with a 7-3 mark that had them in position for what would have been their sixth consecutive playoff appearance, the Broncos are 5-10.

In those 15 games, the offense has accounted for 15.9 points per game and has been held to 16 or fewer points 10 times, including six of the last seven games.

They also keep digging themselves holes; their average halftime deficit during their current losing streak is 16.4 points, and has been at least 14 points in each game.

"You can't beat NFL teams spotting them 14 and 24 points. You can't do it. It's not going to happen," head coach Vance Joseph said.

The solution, in the short run, may be to strip down the game plan.

"We have to find a formula that helps us win, obviously, but when you're game-planning for an opponent, you can sometimes have so many answers that it costs you somewhere else," Joseph said.

"We're making too many small mistakes within the game plans. So sometimes you have to scale it back and not have so many answers, but play a cleaner brand of football."

The Broncos might not have so many questions to answer if they didn't have the league's worst turnover margin. But that's where they stand 10 weeks into a season that is teetering on the brink of collapse.

--Despite the recent spate of special-teams miscues, Broncos head coach Vance Joseph stood by his special-teams coordinator, Brock Olivo, when asked about him Monday.

"Brock works hard, he's a young coach and he's a bright coach," said Joseph, who praised Olivo's attention to detail with his players. "He's going to be a great coach in my opinion."

Olivo, in his first year as a coordinator after a stint as a special-teams assistant in Kansas City, has displayed an enthusiastic, energetic demeanor in meetings and at press conferences.

However, it has not translated to the field, as the Broncos are one of just two teams to allow a touchdown on punt and kickoff returns this year and are one of five teams that rank in the league's bottom five in average yards allowed on kickoff and punt returns.

"I watch him work every day and the mistakes that we've had, Brock's responsible and I'm responsible, but he hasn't muffed a punt," Joseph said.

The Broncos have fumbled a league-leading six kickoffs or punts this season. Isaiah McKenzie is responsible for five of them, including two in the last three games that have put Denver's opponents in position to score 10 points.

--While Brock Osweiler will make his third consecutive start against the Bengals next Sunday, second-year quarterback Paxton Lynch continues to watch and wait on Sundays.

Lynch, who suffered a sprained right shoulder in the Aug. 26 preseason game against the Green Bay Packers, has progressed to making "intermediate" throws in practice, Broncos head coach Vance Joseph said, but has not advanced to the point where he could play in a game if the need arose.

"He's still throwing intermediate passes and not really deep passes yet," Joseph said. "We want to make sure he's totally healthy before he plays again. That timeframe, I'm not sure when it's going to come or end."

Trevor Siemian, who started the Broncos' first seven games this season, has been active the last two weeks as Osweiler's backup while Lynch continues to recover.

NOTES: QB Brock Osweiler will start a third consecutive game next Sunday against the Bengals. Osweiler threw a fourth-quarter interception with the Broncos down 25 points, but didn't take a sack and displayed more poise in the pocket as he completed 18 of 33 attempts for 221 yards with a touchdown to go along with that late pick. ... TE A.J. Derby emerged from Sunday's game with a "sore shoulder," Broncos head coach Vance Joseph said. Derby leads Broncos tight ends with 224 yards and two touchdowns on 19 receptions this season. ... WR Emmanuel Sanders had his best game of the season, catching six passes for 137 yards. He was over 100 yards before the first half ended. Sanders is two weeks removed from missing a pair of games because of a sprained ankle and came into the game with 26 catches for 296 yards in six games. ... ILB Todd Davis suffered an ankle injury, but there was "nothing serious there," Broncos head coach Vance Joseph said. Davis played Sunday after missing two games because of a high-ankle sprain. ... WR Cody Latimer moved up to the No. 3 wide receiver spot, playing 75 percent of the snaps Sunday night. Latimer caught three passes for 28 yards in the loss. ... WR Bennie Fowler was demoted to the No. 4 wide receiver spot behind Cody Latimer. He played 18 snaps and had no receptions and an offensive pass interference penalty that was declined.



REPORT CARD VS. PATRIOTS

--PASSING OFFENSE: B - Brock Osweiler looked steady in his second start this season, helping Emmanuel Sanders to his best game of the year and finding Demaryius Thomas for his second touchdown in as many weeks. But the Broncos struggled in the red zone again; just one of their three drives into the red zone ended in a touchdown. This is an offense that desperately needs more receiving production from the tight-end position, but with Jake Butt out for the season, the remaining tight ends do not appear capable of providing it.

--RUSHING OFFENSE: B - Unlike in previous games, the Broncos didn't stop running the football as their deficit mounted; they ran 12 times for 57 yards in the second half, a solid 4.8 yards-per-carry pace. Denver's best drive of the night -- a 13-play, 75-yard march to open the second half with a touchdown -- saw eight runs, with two of the five first downs on the series coming via the ground.

--PASS DEFENSE: C-minus - Tom Brady peppered the Broncos with short-to-intermediate passes throughout the game, slicing and dicing Denver's defense for 266 yards on 25-of-34 passing. The Broncos sacked Brady just once, and his quick reads and constant double-teams from their blocking scheme neutralized Von Miller for much of the night. And as has often been the case, the Broncos were besieged by tight ends, allowing Rob Gronkowski, Martellus Bennett and Dwayne Allen to combine for 123 yards and a touchdown on eight receptions.

--RUSH DEFENSE: B - After being gashed by the Eagles a week earlier, Denver's defense tightened up against the Patriots' multi-faceted ground attack. New England's running backs averaged just three yards per carry, and none of their 28 attempts went for a double-digit gain.

--SPECIAL TEAMS: F - It was a calamitous night for the Broncos' special teams, whose gaffes led to 24 Patriots points that were effectively the difference in the game. Isaiah McKenzie's muffed punt return after an early three-and-out started the avalanche, which included a 103-yard kickoff return, a blocked punt and a 12-men-on-the-field penalty that kept alive a Patriots drive and led to a touchdown that ended the scoring. It is hard to imagine a single special-teams performance being worse across the board than this.

--COACHING: C-minus - The Broncos had just 10 men on the field for one of New England's four touchdowns, and struggled to adapt to the Patriots' expected reliance on running backs and tight ends. But the biggest issue is on special teams, where coordinator Brock Olivo's unit seems consistently unprepared. After its best game of the season in Philadelphia, it had its worst, and the final moment of bottoming out might have been when it had too many men on the field on a punt, giving the Patriots a first down that they turned into seven points.