Averaging 15 points per game with six total touchdowns, the Denver Broncos are nowhere near full stride five games into the 2022 season.
On Thursday night, the offense barely registered a verified trot.
First-year coach Nathaniel Hackett and quarterback Russell Wilson sat near the nine-time Pro Bowler’s locker after Thursday’s 12-9 loss to dissect what transpired without counting missed opportunities against the Colts.
“It’s a combination of a lot of things,” Hackett said Friday, regarding how to fix the passing attack. “I think it’s a combination of everybody getting used to each other down in that region. You can never practice that region enough and we have to execute better, we have to coach better, we have to come up with better plays and we have to run the ball more.
“There are so many different things that when we look at it, we can do a better job at across the board. Again, it’s being behind the sticks there, too. … It starts with me and getting better plays to those guys so they can execute it better.”
Wilson was still in his uniform replaying the loss that included a fourth-and-1 at the Indianapolis 5 in overtime. Wilson’s pass was knocked down in the end zone to end the game, as teammate KJ Hamler slammed his helmet repeatedly into the end zone turf. Hamler came open on an in-cutting route for a potential game-winning TD, but Wilson was looking to his left.
Wilson said postgame he felt like he let the team down, and then was subjected to wide-ranging criticism with the Broncos at 2-3 and wobbling under the strain of expectations.
Hackett said “without a doubt” he will simplify the offense, but that doesn’t change the call that will define the loss.
“I second-guess everything that I call because I always want it to be as good as it possibly can for the players and for the team. In that situation,” Hackett said of the fourth-down call, “I wanted to have a very good protection, wanted to get a first down to finish the game and not just a field goal. The defense had been playing great and wanted to finish it off for them. I wanted to be somewhat aggressive, but not too aggressive and in the end, we have to execute the play better.
“Of course, right now, I would much rather have run the ball and then kicked the field goal to take more time off, but in that situation, I thought it was a good play call. It was my decision to do that and (we) just need to execute better.”
Denver’s running game has been part of the problem in Hackett’s estimation, but at 4.3 yards per carry, the ability to successfully run the ball exists. One solution offered was to put Wilson under center more frequently. Wilson has been sacked 16 times.
“When we built the system, we built the system that was a combination of both our stuff and his stuff,” Hackett said of Wilson. “We wanted to be sure that we were doing it — a lot of the stuff carried over. … I think we definitely want to take a hard look at everything that he’s done successfully and make sure we’re accommodating him as much as possible so that he feels comfortable. But at the same time, we want to do things that our players do. It’s a different team than the team that he was on in the past. So we just want to make sure we’re doing all the right stuff.”
–Field Level Media
