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INGLEWOOD, Calif. — DeShawn Williams let out a long breath as he processed the question.
The honest answer to whether he knew early on Sunday afternoon that his team was in big trouble was equal parts simple and unpleasant. At this point, 15 games deep into a lost season, unpleasantries are nothing new for this Denver team and Williams is a straightforward sort.
“Yeah. Yeah,” the defensive lineman said, trying to find the right descriptor for a 51-14 Christmas Day meltdown to the Los Angeles Rams. ”It was one of them, it’s like basketball. The other team is hitting all the 3s and you can’t do a damn thing about it.”
The Broncos have failed in all kinds of ways this season. They’ve failed because of questionable decisions by their rookie head coach. They’ve failed because of poor quarterback play. They’ve failed because the defense failed to stop opposing teams in critical situations. They’ve failed — on this field, to be exact, in October against the Chargers — because of all those things plus a rookie return man who muffed a punt in overtime. But never have they failed to this extent.
On Christmas Day, in front of a national audience, the Broncos for the first time this season failed in spectacular, flame-out fashion.
“We got our asses kicked,” safety Justin Simmons said.
“A bad game. Embarrassing game,” head coach Nathaniel Hackett said.
If a 23-10 loss at Carolina three days after Thanksgiving represented rock bottom, then this was the volcanic eruption that reshapes the seabed.
“It’s not acceptable, it’s not what we’re about,” Hackett said. “We went in with a mindset that we were going to be able to win this game but in the end we weren’t ready. We didn’t do the things we were looking to do. It wasn’t good enough and those guys know that, they know it’s all of us.”
Randy Gregory threw his helmet to earn a personal foul, earned another when he hit Rams quarterback Baker Mayfield high in the fourth quarter, and then threw a punch during a post-game altercation on the field.
Left guard Dalton Risner exchanged words on the sideline with backup quarterback Brett Rypien and shoved him during the game after two of Los Angeles’ six sacks on Wilson occurred on back-to-back snaps. Risner chalked it up to a misscomunication.
Jerry Jeudy, the third-year receiver who continued his surge with a season-best 117 receiving yards, still found himself distraught on the sideline, flanked by Wilson, wondering how it could have come to this.
“I let us down and it can’t happen,” said Wilson, who for the first time in 171 NFL starts threw three interceptions and was sacked six times in the same game. “It’s been disappointing. We’ve had some really good moments this year, we’ve had some really bad moments. We’ve had some in between, but we have to create some consistency.
“That’s the biggest thing we’re missing right now is that consistency.”
This should have been an opportunity to build on a modicum of momentum found over the past two weeks. The Rams, like Denver, entered Sunday 4-10, eliminated from the playoffs and a 3-point underdog on their home field. Like the Broncos, they’ve been ravaged by injury. Sean McVay’s sixth team hadn’t scored 24 points in a game since Week 6. They started Baker Mayfield at quarterback for just the third time since he arrived as a waiver claim earlier this month.
Mayfield, though, starred while Wilson struggled. Wilson threw an interception on two of his first three pass attempts. Wilson and later backup Brett Rypien combined for four interceptions while Mayfield finished with four incompletions on 28 attempts.
“It’s embarrassing, but it is what it is,” Williams said.
Somehow the 51 points, most by a Denver opponent since 2010, didn’t constitute the worst part of the loss for the Broncos.
Instead, it was the nature of the meltdown and the complete inability of anybody to stop the Rams. When Rypien and Risner got into it on the visiting sideline, it was little-used fifth-round rookie Montrell Washington who stepped in and moved Rypien down the sideline before returning to talk with the offensive line.
A 5-foot-8 punt returner trying to halt the inertia of 16 weeks of frustration. He had about as much of a chance as the Broncos did Sunday.
The avalanche finally cut loose.
The path it cut will make it difficult to see any seedlings of progress down beneath all that jumbled mess. Those seeds are what Hackett hoped would grow as conversations with his bosses continue on a regular basis. Instead, the next debrief will be an unpleasant one.
“We always talk about what happened and the whys,” Hackett said of his talks with general manager George Paton and CEO Greg Penner. “Where did things go wrong and where did they go right in all the different things we look at throughout a football game and throughout a week. We’re always evaluating everything. I’m evaluating myself, the team, the coaches, everyone.
“We have to do better all around because we can’t have a game like that again.”
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