They are the Buzzkill Broncos. I’m so old, I remember when this team used to score touchdowns.
Yes, new head coach is a defensive genius. But in the NFL, attempting to win every game 13-10 is more likely to get you booed off the field than not having a ticket to the playoffs.
If preseason football can be trusted to reach any definitive conclusions, then we hold these truths to be self-evident: 1) and are going to make the Denver defense a two-headed monster, and 2) Rich Scangarello might be as ill-prepared to be an offensive coordinator in this league as was to be put in charge of an NFL team.
Through four exhibition games, what Scangarello has shown on offense is an insult to vanilla. The numbers for Denver ain’t pretty: 3.9 yards per rush, 64.3 quarterback rating, 12.25 points per game. Talk about buzzkill. Any way you cut it, thatap losing football.
Itap enough to make a Broncomaniac pine for the good, old days of Kyle Sloter.
But general manager wants us to believe quarterback is in his prime and broken-down guard will hold up for the rigors of a 16-game schedule and Noah Fant can buck the recent NFL trend of talented tight ends struggling as rookies.
So far, the offensive scheme of Scangarello has been paint-by-numbers conservative.
“I think we need to be able to open it up a little bit,” Broncos quarterback Kevin Hogan said.
During the final preseason game on Thursday, Fangio would like to see some separation between undrafted rookie Brett Rypien and Hogan in the battle for the No. 2 quarterback job, while ballyhooed draft choice Drew Lock recovers from a sprained thumb that could force him to begin the regular season on injured reserve.
Separation? I’d settle for seeing anything resembling competency from either Hogan or Rypien. Itap too bad neither guy appears anywhere near the NFL quarterback that our old friend Sloter has become at Minnesota.
Only a few days ago, Sloter ripped apart the hapless understudies on Arizona’s defense, completing 6 of 7 passes for 102 yards, a touchdown and a gaudy 158.3 quarterback rating in a preseason victory.
Would it be asking too much for either Hogan or Rypien to do the same Thursday night against those same Cardinals scrubs on the field in Broncos Stadium at Mile High? Probably.
But it seems obvious to me Rypien should win this battle. After watching Hogan bounce from Cleveland to Washington to Denver since entering the league in 2016, he has established his limited worth as an NFL backup, while there’s still potential for growth in Rypien.
Way back in January, when Elway tabbed Fangio to be a first-time NFL coach prior to his 61st birthday, everybody in town was counting on to return to the Denver coaching staff as offensive coordinator. But a tiff over Kubiak’s desires to fill out his staff with cronies forced an awkward break-up in his longtime bromance with Elway, and led Kubiak to a job as assistant head coach and offensive advisor in Minnesota, where Sloter is now thriving.
Meanwhile, back in Denver, nobody has more to prove than Scangarello. What the 47-year-old assistant coach brings to the Broncos is a question mark, because Scangarello has never been an offensive coordinator at the top level of college football, much less in the NFL.
Hey, nobody is counting on this offense to light up the scoreboard. But, so far, the Broncos look as lost as I do when stumbling around in the dark, fumbling for a light switch at 3 a.m., after being awakened from slumber by the nagging call of nature.
And, trust me, that is definitely not the way to the NFL playoffs.
