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The Broncos are on the road to nowhere, and coach Nathaniel Hackett is a slacker riding shotgun.
So please remind me: What exactly does Hackett do around here? And why is he still here?
“We’re on the learning end of the experience of trying to get back to winning. Sometimes it’s a journey, sometimes it’s an ugly one, sometimes it’s a tough one,” quarterback Russell Wilson said Sunday, after Denver lost 22-16 in overtime to Las Vegas. The defeat left a bad football team that already had no margin for error with no reason for hope things will get better anytime soon.
I don’t know what highway the Broncos are traveling, but I’m pretty sure the devil is roasting s’mores by the fire at the end of this journey.
If it’s not too much trouble, can you kindly let me off at the next stop light, please? I’ve seen enough.
Fire Hackett.
Did keeping Vance Joseph or Vic Fangio longer make them better coaches? If Josh McDaniels is the worst coach in Broncos history, then why does Hackett have an 0-2 record against Kid McD?
Yes, dismissing Hackett after 10 games might be considered doing him dirty. Hey, life in the NFL ain’t fair. And we all know this isn’t working out.
So why wait?
Give defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero the title of interim coach, not merely to play out the string of another lost football season in Denver, but as a seven-game tryout to see if he’s the guy to lead this franchise back to glory. Changing a losing culture is too tough a task for a lightweight like Hackett.
Let Klint Kubiak show what he can do to fix what’s wrong with Wilson. If this franchise can’t fix Wilson in what remains of 2022, then 2023 and 2024 promise to be a miserable experience of flushing more of his $242.5 million contract extension down the toilet.
Can Evero and Kubiak be the future of the Broncos? We need to find out.
Otherwise, general manager George Paton will have to go full Elon Musk and blow out all his people in the trenches and start over, because if he brings Hackett back and the losing continues, the misplaced loyalty will likely cost Paton his own job.
If the Broncos showed Hackett the door today, would anyone know he’s gone?
Hackett has surrendered so much responsibility already, I’m not certain the man even trusts himself to do anything more important than handing Gatorade to players coming off the field.
Hackett no longer calls plays for the NFL’s worst offense. That job has been handed to a member of the Kubiak family, in the false hope an exercise in nostalgia might remind the Broncos of the way they were, back when this team was winning the Super Bowl.
Earlier this season, Hackett was stripped of game management responsibilities, so maybe we should blame Jerry Rosburg for the inexplicable decision to throw a pass on third down, with the Broncos clinging to a 16-13 lead and the Raiders out of timeouts with two minutes remaining in the fourth quarter.
The Broncos have somehow managed to lose three games in overtime, this time when their best player, cornerback Pat Surtain II, blew coverage on Davonte Adams, who caught a 35-yard touchdown pass from Raiders quarterback Derek Carr. If the Denver defense was truly world class, it would have stopped Las Vegas from driving for the game-tying field goal at the end of regulation.
“Everyone keeps talking about defense this and defense that. We talk about ratings and all this other stuff that doesn’t matter,” safety Justin Simmons said. “What matters is how you execute when it matters most. Had the defense been able to get a stop in the two-minute situation … We win the game. Point blank. Period.”
Six of Denver’s seven losses have been by a single score, which is enough to induce chronic insomnia. Bad luck? Perhaps. But in a league where the difference between winning and losing is often one or two key plays, bad teams find ways to lose.
“It’s never good to lose,” Wilson said. “But it’s like, man, at least somebody kick our butt and (make it) feel like we can’t be in the game.”
We hear you, DangeRuss. This slow death, inch by painful inch, one dumb penalty after another, with a horrendous Melvin Gordon fumble waiting to happen, is killing us all.
OK, so the Broncos have not been mathematically eliminated from playoff contention. The calculus, however, is about as daunting as putting a human on Mars.
“We can’t lose any more games,” Wilson said.
The Broncos are more likely to finish this season 0-7 than 7-0.
Wilson told the fans of Broncos Country: “We owe it to you guys to be better.”
This team is on the road to nowhere. Stop the bus. And tell Hackett, no longer trusted to make any big decision on his own, where to get off.
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