ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — It didn’t take much to get the Denver Broncos to simultaneously dive into everything that went wrong in this past Sunday’s blowout loss to the Baltimore Ravens and move on to this upcoming Sunday. Having the Kansas City Chiefs looming provided enough inspiration.
“We still got a lot of battle left … the road is only going to get tougher,” Broncos cornerback Pat Surtain II said.
The Broncos received a harsh lesson in their 41-10 defeat in Baltimore, discovering that they were nowhere near ready to slug it out on the road with an AFC heavyweight. Reigning MVP Lamar Jackson and the Ravens dismantled a Broncos defense that employed a more conservative game plan than it had in the previous eight weeks, utilizing more zone coverage to keep eyes on Jackson while running only six five-man pressures, five fewer than their previous season low.
Denver’s offense offered little complementary help, with four possessions gaining 1 or fewer yards, including three that each ended with minus-1 yards.
“It was a hard pillow to swallow to go in there Monday and watch that film,” Broncos wide receiver Courtland Sutton said. “… [But] if you dwell on it too long, it will beat you twice.”
The Broncos left M&T Bank Stadium with plenty of handwringing about what happened. Coach Sean Payton promised to take a stark unflinching look at it, saying on Sunday that Denver “can’t bulls—” itself. But the true test will be how the Broncos move on to what’s next.
And what’s next for the Broncos is the 6-foot-2, 225-pound embodiment of their also-ran status in the AFC West over the past eight seasons: Chiefs All-Pro quarterback Patrick Mahomes. The Chiefs are currently 8-0, three and a half games ahead of the Broncos in the AFC West. They are also 12-1 against Denver when Mahomes is under center. The Broncos will try to reverse that trend on Sunday at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium (1 p.m. ET, CBS).
The lone exception to Mahomes’ Denver dominance came in the Broncos’ 24-9 home victory last season, easily the best win of the then-soon-to-be-benched Russell Wilson‘s time as the Broncos’ quarterback, as Denver held Mahomes without a touchdown pass. The Broncos haven’t won in Arrowhead Stadium since 2015, their last playoff season. They haven’t swept the Chiefs since 2014, or almost three years before the Chiefs selected Mahomes in the first round of the 2017 NFL draft.
With 11 touchdown passes and nine interceptions this season, Mahomes isn’t showing his usual brilliance, but both he and the Chiefs have shown championship pedigree with six one-score wins. Mahomes has thrown for 300-plus yards in seven of his 13 career starts against the Broncos and has at least two touchdown passes in five games against Denver. Kansas City is also fifth in the NFL in total defense (293.6 yards allowed per game).
“[They’re] in a tier of their own,” Surtain said. “Just for them to be able to finish those close ball games and know when the time is to make those game-changing plays in such crucial moments.”
Payton took a learn-from-it approach early in the week to try and get one of his youngest teams in his 17-season tenure as an NFL coach to recalibrate quickly. Even Monday morning, just after Payton had spoken to the team, he simply offered, “[I] kind of finished up on Baltimore.”
However, these Broncos have not always responded well from mistakes — especially in-game — and it remains to be seen how well they’ll bounce back from a four-score loss during a tough stretch of the schedule that sees the NFC South-leading Falcons (6-3) follow the Chiefs.
Quarterback Bo Nix will bear watching in his first trip to the Chiefs’ home stadium. The rookie has thrown all six of his interceptions in the Broncos’ four losses this season. Nix has a QBR of 43.4 in Denver’s four losses, and his three highest QBRs — 74.3 or above — came in wins.
He also hasn’t responded well to early-game mistakes. In the team’s past two losses (Week 6 to the Chargers and Sunday to the Ravens), Nix had his first pass attempt intercepted. In the season-opening loss to the Seahawks, Nix’s first interception came early in the second quarter of a 3-3 game. In the 11 possessions that followed that pick, the Broncos punted six times and lost a fumble, and Nix threw another interception.
In the aftermath of Sunday’s loss, Nix believed it would be important for the Broncos to look hard at the blowout early, then figure out potential solutions and implement them once on-field prep for the Chiefs began.
“I think if you’re an older team and you’ve been in this situation, you can flush it,” Nix said. “So I think as a younger team with not as much experience, you have to kind of take it like it is and learn from it, grow from it, because you don’t want to be back in this situation.”
Their best rebound thus far was from a Week 2 loss to the Steelers that dropped them to 0-2. They responded with one of their better efforts, a 26-7 road win over the Buccaneers. They also got right after losing to the Chargers but were significantly aided by their following two opponents being the now-2-7 New Orleans Saints, who have since fired coach Dennis Allen, and the now-2-7 Carolina Panthers.
They won’t have that luxury this time around.
“Football is a humbling game … the highest of the highs and lowest of the lows,” Broncos cornerback Riley Moss said. “… You can’t forget, especially when you get your teeth kicked in, it’s something like ‘Ok, it happened, how can we get better so it doesn’t occur again,’ because that’s what winning teams do.”
