The Broncos didn’t come into the 2021 season with an offense that looked like it would set the world on fire, but the hope was that it would score enough points to let a strong defense pave the way to victories.
That plan looked sound during the first three weeks of the season. The Broncos opened with three straight wins before things turned the other way for them. They’ve trailed by at least 10 points at halftime of each of their last four games and they’ve lost them all, including a 17-14 loss to the Browns on Thursday night.
Seventeen points isn’t a massive number, but the defense failed to step up in big spots in the second half. After a Browns touchdown to open the third quarter cut the Cleveland lead to three, the Broncos allowed a 13-play touchdown drive that took more than seven minutes off the clock. The lead was back down to three with just over five minutes to play, but the Browns ran out the remaining time on the clock by picking up four first downs.
“You look at the final score and you’re going to think, ‘Well, 17 points is good enough defensively,’ but we didn’t play good defense tonight,” Broncos head coach Vic Fangio said, via Ryan O’Halloran of the Denver Post. “We let them drive it too much, way too many third-and-1s and we didn’t play well enough to win the game.”
The Broncos host Washington in Week Eight, visit Dallas in Week Nine, and then return home to face the Eagles before their bye week. If they can’t find the right spark to turn things around in that stretch, there will likely be a lot of talk in Denver about who will be taking over for Fangio for the 2022 season.
