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One of the most common refrains among the frustrated is the idea that someway, somehow, the good stuff just has to happen. It just has to.
Luck or skill or brute force matters not. Let good prevail once and all of the struggles will be in the rearview mirror.
Denver head coach Nathaniel Hackett, wide receiver Courtland Sutton and several others in the Broncos locker room Sunday afternoon reached that point in the wake of a fourth consecutive loss, this one a 16-9 home failure against the New York Jets.
“Opportunities, I know I sound like a broken record, but they’re there and we’ve got to capitalize on them,” Hackett said. “It’s that simple. Once we start doing that, we’ll be able to see this thing turned around a little bit. But until then, it’s going to be the same story. We’ll be in a close game and we’ve got to win that (dang) thing.”
The question coming out of Denver’s most recent defeat — and it is not the first time the issue has been raised over this team’s 2-5 start to the Hackett era — is whether they even really gave themselves a chance in the second half.
This offense, bad in almost every way and by every metric this season, has been wretched in the third quarter and, more generally, after halftime. Again, the Broncos found themselves without answers down the stretch. Over the first 30 minutes of play and Brett Rypien at quarterback rather than Russell Wilson, Denver did several things teams need to do in order to win ugly.
It ran 39 plays to the Jets’ 24.
It held the ball for 19 minutes, 4 seconds to the Jets’ 10:56.
It had 12 first downs to the Jets’ five.
It ran the ball 21 times for a churning, if not explosive, 72 yards and a Latavius Murray touchdown.
This was far from a perfect performance, mind you. The Broncos’ kicking game left four points on the field — a poorly held extra point and an ill-advised 56-yard field goal attempt both faded to the right for Brandon McManus — and New York rookie running back Breece Hall’s 62-yard touchdown run both helped the Jets take a 10-9 lead into the intermission.
But Denver had control of the game flow and had the ball to start the third quarter.
Hackett, according to the CBS broadcast, said Sunday he wanted his team to commit to the run game in the second half.
So what happened? Rypien opened the third quarter with six consecutive passes out of the shotgun formation and the Broncos ultimately punted on fourth-and-1 from their own 48.
“I think we had a couple runs in there, but the situation determined that we had to pass the ball,” Hackett said. “I thought we had some good passes to still dial up to try to get some movement down the field. Wanted to get back into the red zone. Some of those were there, some weren’t.
“We’ve got to be better coming out of the half. That’s been another thing that’s slowed us down a little bit.”
The rest of Denver’s drives looked like this: Punt, punt, interception, punt, turnover on downs, turnover on downs.
They converted just 2-of-8 on third down in the second half.
They punted on fourth-and-1 two more times.
They threw the ball 28 times and ran it just seven in the second half, despite the fact that they didn’t trail by more than a point until the final 12:49 and didn’t need a touchdown to win the game until the final 4:35.
The Broncos have opened every second half of the season with the ball and started 21 total possessions in the third quarter. Two against Seattle ended with goal-line fumbles. The next 19 have ended in 13 punts, two interceptions, two missed field goals, one made field goal and one touchdown that was actually scored early in the fourth quarter at Las Vegas.
If third quarters are about halftime adjustments, the Broncos are getting schooled on the whiteboard.
If third quarters are about sticking with what’s working, they’re not doing that either.
If third quarters are about setting up the closing stretch of games, there’s part of the answer for why the Broncos have managed to lose five times in seven tries despite a defense that’s given up seven touchdowns total.
“Finding things that work for us and sticking to it,” receiver Courtland Sutton said of the key to improving production out of halftime. “It’s on us to figure out what those are and then even the plays that are called, execute them to a high level. The plays that are getting called, they’re getting called for a reason. Something that the coaches are seeing. … We can’t have 10 guys doing it or nine guys doing it or 10.5 doing it. It’s got to be all 11 executing for us to go out and have success.”
Even after yet more second-half failures, the Broncos had a chance against the Jets. On fourth-and-3 from the New York 25 coming out of the two-minute warning, Rypien made the same calculation in his head that Wilson made on the other end of the field earlier this month against Indianapolis: Get the ball to Sutton even if he’s flanked by the opposing team’s best corner.
Against the Colts, Stephon Gilmore knocked the ball away from Sutton in traffic. This time, Ahmad “Sauce” Garder did the same in single coverage.
“With that play, it’s on me to go make that play,” Sutton said. “Ryp gave me an opportunity to go make a play, the o-line did their job, everyone did their job for me to go make a play and I just didn’t come down with it. The DB made a good play, but it’s on me to figure out a way to make a play. …
“With us struggling on offense over the past few weeks, any opportunity we get to make a play, it’s on us to find a way to make a play.”
Most of the time in the NFL, good things don’t just happen. They have to be taken.
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