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When people start paying attention to what Denver is doing, I’m sure a lot of it will focus on Sean Payton’s hard-driven turnaround plan. Or how Russell Wilson has been reborn within it as a game-managing, chain-moving, point guard of a quarterback. But leave Denver’s defense out of the equation, and you’ll miss the story entirely.
You may remember that unit as the one shredded by the Dolphins for 70 points and 726 yards on Sept. 24—the Miami offense wasn’t even in third down until its third touchdown drive of that game. You’d also recall that the next week Justin Fields was nearly perfect in the first half, and the Bears, of all teams, wound up with nearly 500 yards of offense on the Denver defense at Soldier Field. And, as it turns out, that’s where the Broncos’ embattled defensive coordinator Vance Joseph, once fired as Denver’s head coach, drew the line.
“After that Chicago game, VJ sat us down in the defensive meeting room and showed us a lot of our bad clips to let us know what we need to be more detailed on and what we need to communicate better—but immediately followed with a lot of good clips and when we do things the right way, good things happen,” three-time All-Pro safety Justin Simmons told me postgame. “We just got to do our job and do it at a high level. For us, seeing that and knowing that we’re going to stick together and hearing VJ saying he’s not giving up on us, I think that was the light bulb for us, at least defensively, knowing that we can be a good team.
“We know we got the guys in the room. We knew we just had to buy in, all 11 of us, do our jobs, communicate at a high level and execute it at a high level, and we’ll be able to win some football games. That was big for us.”
Really, what Joseph, Simmons and the rest of the players and defensive coaches found was that communication had to get better, as did a certain aspect of their discipline. More or less, what the tape showed was a lot of busts happening as one defender fouled up his assignment, while others would rush to the scene of the crime to make up for it. So it was, as the coaches explained, much more correctable than it looked to the layman.
And the players would listen to Joseph in large part because Simmons, a captain, and Josey Jewell, the team’s star linebacker, played for the defensive coordinator while he was Denver’s head coach, a half decade ago. Which really helped, since not every player is automatically going to listen to a new coordinator—but would pay attention if a veteran could vouch for the coach in question.
“VJ’s always been up front and honest,” Simmons continues. “He cares about us. He talks to us. He lets us know what he’s thinking. He calls it exactly how he sees it. You fight for guys like that. I think from a defensive standpoint, we knew in the room that we just weren’t playing up to a level of our standard. It’s clear as day. We never really listened to the outside noise to begin with. We just needed to find a way to respond for him.”
Did they ever.
The team’s yards allowed went down in each of the five weeks following the Miami debacle (471 vs. the Bears, 407 vs. the Jets, 389 vs. the Chiefs, 331 vs. the Packers, 274 vs. the Chiefs), and points allowed dropped four straight weeks, from the Jets game (31) to games against the Chiefs (19), the Packers (17), then the mighty Chiefs again (9). And the numbers have stabilized since, with Denver holding the Browns under 300 yards in Sunday’s 29–12 win.
That’s allowed the Broncos to win a different way than fans of theirs or Wilson’s may be used to—with the quarterback’s needing just 134 passing yards to win by 17 against a solid (albeit QB-deficient) Browns team. It’s also, of course, much different than most people would’ve thought Payton would try to win in his second shot at being a head coach.
But there aren’t any pictures on the scoreboard, nor do they post those in the standings.
“Sean’s definitely come in and helped establish a formula,” Simmons says. “A lot of times in this league, it’s not about necessarily winning games, it’s finding ways not to lose them. Sometimes you make boneheaded penalties, you make boneheaded mistakes, Day 1 stuff. Speaking from a defensive standpoint, all of a sudden, they pop a 25-yard pass. It’s just things like that. When you’re able to hone in on the details and execute, you’ll find yourself in a lot of games. And you’ll find yourself winning a lot of those games.”
And the Broncos are starting to stack such wins by following that simple formula—faster than most, myself included, would’ve expected.
Now, the trick will be sustaining it.
