“We didn’t play well enough, we didn’t execute well enough and that����ap how you get your (expletive) kicked in the NFL,” right tackle Mike McGlinchey said in the locker room.

All-Pro cornerback Pat Surtain II said the Broncos “needed some humble pie, for sure” and suggested that perhaps his team was overconfident heading into the regular season.

Quarterback Bo Nix called the blowout loss to a division rival a “nasty wake-up call.”

By the time Tuesday morning bled into early afternoon and head coach Sean Payton held a conference call with reporters an hour after it was originally scheduled, he and the coaching staff had taken a long look at the 21-point loss and also been over it with the team.

“Certainly a slap in the face,” Payton said. “When you come off training camp and your offseason program, it����ap one thing to lose in a hard-fought game where you feel like you played well. I don’t feel like we played up to our standard, and certainly that starts with us as coaches, myself.

“So yes, it����ap disappointing. That would be a great way to describe it.”

Payton, according to tight end Adam Trautman, told the Broncos in the locker room after the game that the key to moving on quickly was to flush the loss, not erase it. The veteran head coach is adamant about feeling the sting and working through all of the problems the day after the game, no matter how much material there is to slog through or how unpleasant that process may be.

“You have to have that honest day where you come in as coaches,” Payton said. “We first meet and we go through everything and discuss what are the things we would’ve done differently? Then you have to have that… I know it����ap a shorter week, but there’s no way we can get past today without looking at the tape and looking at the things that we have to improve on before we even play the next opponent.”

All-Pro defensive tackle Zach Allen said he thought that process went well Tuesday, calling it “a really productive film today” and that “for everybody the mood is that everybody is excited to get back to work and to get back to the practice field.”

“(The game) definitely wasn’t up to our standard and it����ap been addressed,” Allen added. “We’ve bounced back from bad losses the past few years. We play a really good Jacksonville this week and that����ap going to be its own challenge.

“That����ap where we made the corrections in the tape and now we’re on to Jacksonville on a short week. It����ap going to be tough, but we’re excited for the challenge.”

Even with a short trip back from Kansas City, the Broncos’ charter didn’t land in Denver until after 1 a.m. Tuesday. Players came in for treatment like usual the morning after the game, but unlike some short weeks, the Broncos are also planning on Wednesday being the players’ off day before practicing Thursday and Friday, then ramping up Saturday for the Jaguars on Sunday afternoon at Empower Field.

“Obviously, your ego takes a hit in a game like last night; the whole team’s ego takes a hit,” McGlinchey said Tuesday on a conference call with reporters. “But when you can take out the emotion and the expectations of what we wanted to do vs. what we did, you can see it from a clear lens of why the mistakes were made, what situations did we put ourselves in, and how do we not put ourselves in those positions going forward? …

“Flush the feelings that you have today, flush the embarrassment, flush all that stuff and just get on to the task at hand and take it at face value, which is that we have a job to do and we have to figure out how to do that job well.”

Lil’Jordan Humphrey is back on the Broncos’ 53-man roster

The Broncos re-signed wide receiver Lil’Jordan Humphrey to their 53-man roster on Tuesday in an expected move.

Denver cut Humphrey, a vested veteran, Monday before the game but planned then, as The Post reported, to bring him back to the 53-man roster.

The move was procedural and kept Humphrey’s base salary from becoming guaranteed. It leaves the team with flexibility to move him to the practice squad if needed later in the season, though sources indicated on Monday that Denver’s plan is for Humphrey to be on the 53-man roster going forward.

The Broncos didn’t have to make a corresponding move because they didn’t promote anybody on Monday when they cut Humphrey.

Those descriptors are probably enough to capture the tenor of the Broncos’ locker room after a 31-10 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday night at Arrowhead Stadium. Denver got embarrassed on national television, and will now spend the week trying to rebound from the third-worst defeat of the Sean Payton era.

Here is The Denver Post����ap stock report on the loss.

Stock up

Zach Allen: Even in a game where Denver’s defense was dismal, Allen still managed to post two sacks. Albeit, one of them came when Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes seemingly tripped over his own offensive lineman, but the defensive lineman tied for the team lead in pressures, according to Pro Football Focus. He also didn’t miss a tackle — an anomaly for Denver’s defense Monday.

Without Jonathon Cooper, the Broncos’ pass rush is relying even more on Allen to generate interior rush. Monday was a bad night for Denver’s entire defense, no doubt, but it wasn’t at the fault of its star defensive tackle.

Evan Engram: Engram was the capper to a beautiful Broncos’ scoring drive in the first quarter. Denver lined up Jaylen Waddle in the backfield and Engram was the lone receiver to the left side of the field. Waddle ran a short curl route, while the tight end sneaked behind the defense towards the back left pylon. He got wide open, and Nix found him for an easy touchdown.

First of the year for

: ESPN

— Denver Broncos (@Broncos)

That play was a hint of what the Broncos’ offensive play-calling could look like this season. Engram said earlier this summer that Waddle’s addition was going to help Denver’s offense a lot, saying “every time he’s on the field you have to account for him.”

Engram played 32 snaps Monday, 13 more than fellow tight end Adam Trautman and 19 more than Nate Adkins. His four catches for 43 yards led the team. He only had two games that crossed that threshold last season.

Pat Bryant: The darling of training camp was arguably the Broncos’ best offensive player. On Denver’s lone touchdown drive, Bryant recorded three catches for three first downs. He led the team in targets with six and recorded four catches for 42 yards.

Interestingly, Bryant split his time across the formation, playing 10 snaps in the slot and 12 on the outside on passing downs, according to PFF. But even Bryant����ap night wasn’t without blemishes. The second-year wideout committed a holding penalty inside the 5-yard line that backed up the Broncos’ offense after being flagged for a hold earlier in the game. Bryant took accountability for the hold near the goal line after the game, saying it was a bad penalty.

Jeremy Crawshaw: Never a good sign when a team’s punter is a “winner” of the night, but Crawshaw was on the field plenty Monday. The second-year punter boomed six punts for 314 yards, an average of 52.3 yards per punt. He pinned the Chiefs inside the 20-yard line three times and only had one touchback.

Kansas City’s offense was backed up for most of the night — not that it mattered much — and Crawshaw was a large part of that. Denver fans just hope they don’t have to see No. 16 on the field as much at any other point this season.

Stock down

Bo Nix: Courtland Sutton said Nix was “pacing like a mountain lion” ahead of Week 1. And while Nix said he wasn’t “necessarily filled with rage” after the game, the quarterback certainly did not play like himself. Nix played one of the worst games of his career, going 17-of-28 for 131 yards, good for a passer rating of 69.2.

Nix prides himself on limiting negative plays and turnovers. Monday night, he was sacked four times — tied for the most in his career — and coughed up the football three times (a career-high). He also threw an interception on the first drive of the game, gifting Kansas City an early score.

Nix did face significant pressure all night. The Chiefs forced Nix to flee the pocket several times and by the end of the game, it appeared the quarterback had lost some faith in the Broncos’ pass protection. He completed just 30.8% of his passes when under pressure, for a measly 11 yards. Not a good start to a massive year for Denver’s QB1.

Trench play: Arguably the most alarming issue from Monday night����ap drubbing was the Broncos’ play at the line of scrimmage. The Chiefs’ offensive and defensive lines manhandled Denver’s respective units.

The Broncos couldn’t run the ball, couldn’t protect Nix, rarely pressured Mahomes and certainly couldn’t stop Kenneth Walker III. Denver’s units up front are expected to be the strength of this team, which won’t win many games if those two groups play as poorly as they did Monday.

“We didn’t play well enough, we didn’t execute well enough and that����ap how you get your ass kicked in the NFL,” right tackle Mike McGlinchey said.

Alex Singleton and the linebackers: Hardly any defensive player was spared from the tackling bug the Broncos had Monday, but Singleton and Justin Strnad had particularly brutal nights. Singleton missed five tackles, got stiff-armed by Chiefs rookie running back Emmett Johnson and committed a personal foul.

Stiff arm. Juke. Rookie Emmitt Johnson pulling out all the moves on this catch-and-run

DENvsKC on ESPN
Stream on

— NFL (@NFL)

Singleton was not overly concerned about the poor tackling postgame.

“We’re going to be fine. We’re gonna work on it this week, we’re going to do what we need to do and we’re going to be fine,” Singleton said.

Davis Webb: We saw glimpses of what a Webb-led offense could do Monday night, but the rookie play-caller’s debut was largely a disaster. Six of Denver’s 11 full offensive drives ended without a first down. The Broncos managed just 61 rushing yards. Prized acquisition Waddle had one catch for 2 yards.

It����ap hard to get into a rhythm as a play-caller when your team is consistently behind the sticks, but Webb had also made some puzzling play calls. On a third-and-one near midfield, Denver went empty and failed to convert. The Broncos’ screen game was a non-factor, J.K. Dobbins was MIA in the first half and the Broncos committed a delay of game and used a timeout in the second half to avoid another one.

Nix put the blame on himself and the players in the postgame, saying “we just didn’t put anybody in a good spot today.” That����ap true, but fans’ scrutiny will continue to be directed at Webb if the Broncos’ offense doesn’t rebound next Sunday.

Week 1 against Kansas City wasn’t just slow.

It was flat.

And lackadaisical.

And sloppy.

And penalty-pocked.

And a mismatch in the trenches, where Denver has won so many games over Payton’s first three seasons.

The signs of a dud popped up early, but they snowballed on the Broncos over the course of a steaming-hot night at Arrowhead Stadium and a 31-10 demolition by the Chiefs.

Here are seven thoughts from the loss.

1. Davis Webb’s play-calling debut not only failed to soar, it really never even got off the ground

Davis Webb sat alone on the end of Denver’s bench between series in the second half Monday night.

The 31-year-old Broncos offensive coordinator looked down at his play-sheet — it is a fraction of the size of the board Sean Payton uses to house the same set of calls — and scribbled notes.

Down the bench, quarterback Bo Nix looked at pictures from another unsuccessful Denver drive with quarterbacks coach Logan Kilgore and fellow signal-callers Jarrett Stidham and Sam Ehlinger.

Further away, head coach Sean Payton had a lengthy, mostly one-way conversation with offensive line coach Zach Strief.

Webb spent most of the defensive possession there, looking for the key to unlock an offensive quandary that felt a little more handcuffed every time Nix and his guys trotted back onto the field.

It was far from an aggressive posture.

It was far from what Webb and the Broncos expected in his play-calling debut.

It was not all his fault, of course, but it will not go down as a storybook moment the way his mentor, Payton, still recalls shredding a Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick-coached New York Jets team in his first game calling plays back in 1998.

The headline numbers tell part of the story: 10 points, nine first downs, 2-of-12 on third down. A 55-yard touchdown drive in the first quarter, but from there, six punts, a fumble, a turnover on downs, and one measly field goal. Just 176 offensive yards overall and only 61 of them on the ground.

Dig in, though, and the outing only gets worse.

Six of Denver’s 11 full offensive drives ended without a first down. Four more generated one apiece.

Outside of one touchdown on their second drive of the night, the Broncos went three-and-out and punted three times (Drives 4, 5 and 10).

Each of the seven others featured a sack, a penalty, a turnover or some combination.

Drive 1: Sack, interception

Drive 3: Holding penalty

Drive 6: Sack

Drive 7: Delay of game

Drive 8: Holding penalty, sack from the red zone resulting in a field goal

Drive 9: Offensive pass interference, sack/fumble

Drive 11: Fumble

That mess led quarterback Bo Nix to put the blame for the performance on himself and his teammates rather than Webb.

“Nobody has good plays to call when you’re in second-and-long and third-and-long,” Nix said. “The play sheet is very small. We just didn’t put anybody in a good spot today, we really didn’t.”

Asked if he thought players let Webb down, Nix said, “Absolutely. Absolutely. The players did not make it easy on him today. Pretty pitiful, actually.”

Bo Nix on Davis Webb’s play calling debut: “The players did not make it easy on him today. Pretty pitiful, actually.”

— Parker Gabriel (@ParkerJGabriel)

Multiple players cited the inability to generate yards on first down, which is when the Broncos feel they can really get into their preferred tempo and get deeper into their play sheet.

Nix said Webb was his normal self on the headset, “a total pro,” and that he was imploring Nix and the offense to get to the next play when things didn’t go well.

“He shot it with conviction,” Nix said. “We called exactly what we prepared for and what we wanted to get to and we just didn’t execute. Then we were behind.”

Webb had some interesting concepts, particularly early in the game. He deployed Jaylen Waddle out of the backfield and used multiple variations of two-back and multi-tight end sets.

He aligned Waddle in the backfield on the Broncos’ opening drive, then returned to it on the touchdown drive and used Denver’s new top receiver as a decoy. Waddle flashed into the flat and drew the attention of three defenders, allowing Evan Engram to run a corner route behind him and come open for a 19-yard touchdown.

The ’ first TD of the year.

Look at the eyeballs Jaylen Waddle draws.

— Parker Gabriel (@ParkerJGabriel)

After that, though, the offense could never get itself unstuck.

Not only that, but the same hum the offense exhibited in the summer did not travel to Kansas City. The Broncos incurred a delay of game, nearly had another on a third-and-1 that went awry and burned a timeout in the second half with the play clock running low.

That area is supposed to see a marked improvement with Webb at the helm. It will need to get sorted out quickly.

2. Davis Webb’s response after a rough first outing will be fascinating

An entire lack of rhythm becomes a compounding problem for offenses.

If you can’t get anything out of your openers and your early down plays, then it becomes harder to build from them into other concepts, wrinkles or set-ups.

Right tackle Mike McGlinchey has spent his career playing for Kyle Shanahan and Sean Payton, two of the best play-callers in football.

When the guy with the sheet gets rolling, it feels unstoppable.

“If you understand why things are being built the way they’re being built,” McGlinchey told The Post during training camp. “‘Hey, we just hit them with this and there are four other plays in this package that, now, they’re going to be worried about the thing we just hit them with.’ Something’s successful, so we’re going back to it in a different way. Back to it in the same presentation, but hit them with something else while they’re thinking about this.

“It����ap like building a story throughout the game. The best play-callers have that feel and they can see it as the week goes on. ‘This is why I’m calling this play.’ ‘This is why we’re building it this way.’ … Whatever the thing is. You’re on a five-play drive and you hit them with something you’ve been working on that you saw all week. Here comes the counterpunch from the same look. I love that.”

Every sport has its version. When a baseball player is seeing the ball well and his swing is grooved, hits come in bunches. When his timing is off, hitting gets hard in a hurry. It����ap more tempting to guess. To chase a little. To overcompensate. Same with streaky shooting in basketball.

After a dominant dopamine hit of a preseason opener in Atlanta, Payton marveled at the smoothness with which Denver’s offense ran with Webb at the helm, but also went deep on what he sees as the toughest nut to crack in play-calling and the other side of the coin from the flow state McGlinchey described: Getting yourself out of a jam.

Payton couldn’t have known it at the time, but he foreshadowed Webb’s regular-season debut.

“You can have games where that call sheet looks magnificent,” Payton said then. “And then there’s been games where you can stare at 140 and hate all of them. … I think the biggest thing is, how do you reset if it’s not going? You have a set of openers and you go three-and-out. Then, how do you reset? …

“What can you get to based on what’s being stopped, and how do you adjust there? And that’s not just at halftime. The halftime is eight minutes. You’re in, you pee, you grab a banana, and you’re talking with your players. That’s going on throughout while the defense is on the field, those adjustments and discussions.”

Webb and the offense searched for answers Monday night, but his old defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo and the Chiefs stayed at least one step ahead.

Now the Broncos have a short week to identify what went wrong and quickly set about finding fixes. Nix said Webb and the offense called the stuff they wanted. So, was it a bad plan? Bad execution? Some of both?

“Yeah, I mean, look, sometimes you have your openers and sometimes they go well, and other times you have to regroup,” Payton said. “So, we’ll have a chance to evaluate all of that.”

Players said afterward they expected Webb to respond well to the adversity this week. Nix believes Webb will handle the coming days the same as if the Broncos had won.

Wide receiver Marvin Mims said that, in a way, he’s excited to see what the offensive coordinator has in store.

“I think he’s going to respond great,” Mims said. “Davis, I mean, we had days of camp where they were not-so-great days offensively and the ways he’s responded and the things he’s done have been great. So I’m excited going into this week, short week, we’ve got to get going and get ready for Jacksonville to come to town.”

Marvin Mims, Jr. was glad to get back into the game after what he indicated was a recurrence of an injury he dealt with earlier in camp when he pulled up running a route. called it a hip injury tonight.

Mims: "It was just some old stuff coming back up and trying to…

— Parker Gabriel (@ParkerJGabriel)

Payton said he’ll treat Webb in the coming days, “no different than a player. You must evaluate the first quarter of the game, the second — and then make the corrections and learn.”

3. Bo Nix’s turnover and sack woes look like an aberration, but they also need to be

The first play of the game served as a harbinger.

Nix, a quarterback who is rarely sacked, got dropped for a loss on Denver’s first snap of the season.

It didn’t get much better for the third-year quarterback in his 2026 debut.

In fact, Nix had an outlier of an outing in multiple ways.

The 2024 first-round pick was sacked four times total on the night. It����ap tied for the most in a single game in his career and only the third time he’s been sacked that many times.

He also put the ball on the ground three times, the most of any game in his career.

In fact, over the course of Nix’s entire first season, he fumbled three times and lost none of them. Last year, he fumbled four times and lost two.

Essentially, Nix had a year’s worth of fumbles on Monday night. Over his first two seasons, he averaged one fumble per 318 snaps and one lost per 1,112 snaps.

In Week 1, he fumbled once per 16 snaps.

Nix has played enough football in the NFL to suggest that an outing like this one is an aberration.

All the same, the ability to avoid turning the football over and taking big negative plays has been one of the foremost drivers of Nix’s first two seasons. For Denver to get where it wants to go and for Nix to take another step forward in 2026, this outing has to be the exception.

4. The Broncos’ early running back rotation creates more questions than answers

Week 1 is ripe for overreacting, so there is time to see how Denver’s backfield looks over the first few weeks.

Still, there were some head-scratchers against the Chiefs.

First and most simply is the Broncos’ inability and unwillingness to run the football early in the game. Payton said afterward that some of Denver’s run calls turned to passes because they’re RPOs, but that doesn’t explain away 19 dropbacks and six runs in the opening 30 minutes.

Lead back J.K. Dobbins carried the ball twice in the first half and eight times for 36 yards overall.

When that����ap your leading rusher, nobody is going to have a particularly big night. But it was a surprise to watch Dobbins and RJ Harvey split nearly all of the offensive work. Rookie Jonah Coleman didn’t touch the ball on offense and played only sparingly.

As had appeared to be the case throughout training camp, Harvey also got Denver’s initial reps as the third-down and two-minute back.

The Broncos want him to handle that work because he is so dynamic and explosive as a pass-catcher. Monday night, however, showed that he still has work to do as a pass protector.

He didn’t whiff badly on any assignments, but even when the second-year man was in the right position, he sometimes got overpowered. That included Alohi Gilman charging through him and pressuring Nix despite Harvey initially getting in position to square him up.

That kind of production in that role will not suffice. If Nix isn’t comfortable and trusting in a back that he is going to do his job in protection, difficult third-down passing situations become even more of a high-wire act.

There is plenty of wonder to go around offensively after Monday. Obviously, Jaylen Waddle is not going to catch one pass for 2 yards every week. Same for Courtland Sutton and his two catches for 11 yards. Denver will run the ball more than 15 times in most games going forward. So on and so forth.

Still, the Broncos will at some point have to weigh the third-down tradeoffs with Harvey and consider getting Coleman on the field more if he’s not able to pass protect more consistently.

5. The Broncos continue to work their salary cap picture as the season begins

The start of Denver’s season brought a series of procedural moves that have become — and will continue to be — the norm in how the club manages its salary cap picture.

The Broncos made a series of decisions on option bonuses in the contracts they have with star players, including CB Pat Surtain II, DT Zach Allen, WR Courtland Sutton, and LT Garett Bolles.

The option bonuses are structured in a way that they don’t impact how much money each of those players earns in 2026 — all four have substantial guarantees as part of extensions and, in Surtain’s case, adjustments agreed to over the past two years.

What the bonuses do, though, is allow the Broncos to decide whether to prorate the maximum amount of each player’s 2026 money out over future years as bonus (smaller cap hit now, bigger prorated charges in the future), count all of the players’ money as base salary now (bigger cap hit now, less prorated charge in the future) or split the difference somewhere in between.

According to multiple sources, Denver exercised its options with Surtain, partially exercised them with Allen and Bolles and rescinded its option bonuses with Sutton.

The functional outcome of those results: Denver used proration most aggressively with Surtain, avoided it with Sutton and landed in the middle with Allen and Bolles.

The way the CBA accounts for option bonuses, the default assumption used is that they will be exercised and, thus, the bonus money is prorated for cap purposes. That����ap why teams like them. They get the benefit of proration, but they can put puzzle pieces together in any myriad combinations they want and decide as they go.

The Broncos’ decisions mean that Surtain’s cap number won’t change for this year, while the 2025 charges for Allen, Bolles and Sutton will all rise some this year, Sutton by the biggest margin. He had a $12 million option bonus , so his base salary should jump from $4.375 million to $16.375 million. His cap hit for this year will jump to $23.575 million. That is obviously a big difference this year, but it wipes out $9.6 million in prorated cap charges for Sutton in future years.

It would be easy to look at that decision and wonder if the Broncos parked more of the cap charge for Sutton this year in order to make him easier to move after the 2026 season, when he has no more guaranteed money in the four-year, $92 million extension he signed last summer. However, the Broncos generally are more conservative than some teams like Philadelphia when it comes to option bonuses and so rescinding them with Sutton is not necessarily a telltale. They partially rescinded some of Bolles’ option bonus last year and it clearly wasn’t an indication of a future move.

All told, the option bonus decisions are going to pull Denver’s available cap space from currently showing around $26 million per OvertheCap down to south of $10 million and perhaps near $5 million.

The Broncos, sources have said previously, tend to look at option bonuses in their internal models as if they are going to rescind them, so they have been operating in recent months as if they had modest cap space available rather than the big numbers that show up on sites like OTC and Spotrac.

It����ap all fairly complex and the sets of decisions made can make it more difficult from the outside to get a clear idea of exactly how much space Denver considers itself to have at any given time, but the bottom line in all of this is that roster and cap management never stops. The Broncos have dived into this world and are now working the levers they have to maintain an aggressive-yet-healthy cap position going forward.

6. No Broncos contract extensions done before the regular season

On a related note, the Broncos kicking off Monday finalized what had been becoming increasingly clear: Nobody got a contract extension during training camp. In fact, outside of bumping Surtain’s pay on his current deal this year, no player under contract has received an extension since the trio of Malcolm Roach, Luke Wattenberg and Wil Lutz last year over the team’s bye week.

The Broncos, of course, went on a mega run of locking up their core. But there are also several key players who are now playing regular-season games in the final seasons of their current contracts.

The list includes LG Ben Powers, TE Evan Engram, S Brandon Jones, DL Eyioma Uwazurike and every remaining player of Denver’s 2023 draft class: WR Marvin Mims Jr., CB Riley Moss, S JL Skinner and OL Alex Forsyth.

That is a bigger group of starters and key players than Denver has had playing out contracts than in recent seasons.

It����ap an indication of the Broncos’ roster depth, the reality that they can’t keep everybody and also the possibility that they’ll negotiate a contract extension with quarterback Bo Nix when he becomes eligible after the 2026 season.

At some point along the way, though, it will be interesting to see if Denver tries to get a couple of players on the above list to the table. They’ve typically done extension work around their bye week and have made retention runs ahead of free agency, too. Of that group, however, there are several players who already will command big dollars — Moss and McMillian among them — and others who can create even stronger markets for themselves this fall, like Mims and Uwazuruike.

7a. A few stats to wrap this thing up.

The tackling numbers from Monday night are absurd. According to NextGen Stats, the Broncos surrendered a whopping 247 yards after broken tackles. That is a whopping 63.2% of Kansas City’s total yardage on the night.

7b. The 21-point loss is the worst by margin in the regular season since a 41-10 shellacking by Baltimore in November 2024. The only other regular-season losses worse than this one in the Payton era are the infamous 70-20 blowout at Miami in September 2023 and a 42-17 loss at Detroit later that season.

7c. A silver lining, perhaps: The Broncos have not lost an opening-week game by multiple scores since getting blown out by Miami, 34-10, in 2005. That year, Denver finished the regular season 13-3 and went to the AFC title game. There’s a lot of season left.

The safety was baffled by the stat that told the story of the Denver Broncos’ 31-10 drubbing at the hands of the Kansas City Chiefs. The Broncos missed 28 tackles Monday night, including eight defenders who failed to bring down a runner multiple times. The Broncos’ 29.8% missed tackle rate was the third-worst in an NFL game since 2018, while their 247 missed tackle yards allowed were the most by any defense in that same span, according to Next Gen Stats.

The staggering numbers don’t stop there: Chiefs running back Kenneth Walker’s 144 rush yards after contact tonight ranked ninth out of 5,386 running backs since 2022, according to . For reference, no other back surpassed 100 yards after contact in Week 1, according to Next Gen Stats.

Two of Kansas City’s touchdowns were the direct result of multiple missed tackles, including Rashee Rice pinballing off Riley Moss and Jonah Elliss for a 13-yard touchdown. Moss missed another one when Walker got outside the defense on a 60-yard touchdown run.

It got so bad that even backup running back Emmett Johnson got in on the fun in the fourth quarter, making Alex Singleton and Hufanga miss on a third-down conversion for the Chiefs.

“We didn’t do a good job tackling at all,” Hufanga told The Post after the game.

Every single Broncos starter other than Zach Allen and Nik Bonitto missed a tackle Monday night at Arrowhead Stadium, according to Next Gen Stats. In the lead-up to the game, Denver stressed the importance of tackling Walker, who’s one of the most elusive backs in the league. At one point, Denver defensive players were pleading with each other to try to wrap up the reigning Super Bowl MVP.

“This ain’t us. We need to tackle him, get him to the ground,” defensive end Sai’vion Jones said about the messaging on the field.

Instead, Walker had a field day in his Kansas City debut. His 173 yards were the most by a Chiefs back since 2012 and his 14 forced missed tackles were the most by any Kansas City player since 2018.

Quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ pedestrian stat line in his return — 15 of 27 for 184 yards — was merely an afterthought Monday night. Mahomes was the only quarterback in the NFL not to complete a pass over 10 yards downfield in Week 1. He simply had to turn, hand the ball to Walker, and watch his new teammate gash the Broncos’ defense.

“We played a great back, I would say the best pure runner in the league, and in order to beat a guy like that you have to tackle well,” linebacker Justin Strnad said.

So what happened to Denver’s defense Monday night? This was the second-best rushing defense in the NFL last season, a group that surrendered more than 100 yards to just one running back, Colts star Jonathan Taylor.

Jones pointed to the unit’s lack of experience tackling in training camp and in the preseason. Teams don’t do live tackling drills during training camp and the Broncos’ starters just got a handful of drives in the preseason.

“We ain’t tackled somebody since preseason, especially if you’re a starter, so just not having that experience coming up in the first game played a major factor,” Jones said.

Denver also lost defensive tackle John Franklin-Myers in the offseason.

Most players were frank in their assessment. Monday’s efforts were not nearly good enough. Not when you’re playing the Chiefs. Not when you’re trying to contend for a Super Bowl. Not when you’re aiming to establish yourself as an AFC contender.

The Broncos will certainly aim to address the issue in practice this week. Denver does circuit drills, tackling drills and uses a moving tackling robot during practice to practice tackling. The road ahead isn’t any easier. While Jacksonville Jaguars running back Bhayshul Tuten isn’t Walker, he forced seven missed tackles on rushes Sunday, tying for the league lead in Week 1, according to .

If Denver wants to avoid a 0-2 start, it’ll need to fix one of the core parts of its highly paid and highly regarded defense. The Broncos’ championship aspirations could be in jeopardy if they don’t.

– Anthony, Denver 

Hey Anthony, thanks for writing in and getting us going this week. We’re finally almost there. There’s actual football to be played, though not until Monday for the Broncos and Chiefs.

That will also provide us with our first glimpse at what changes Vance Joseph and company make defensively. They won’t be wholesale, most likely, considering all of the success Denver’s had defensively over the past two years. What����ap interesting, though, is that Joseph hinted at a couple of the things he and his group think they’ve learned over the course of the preseason. Teams don’t do a full scout and full gameplan for you in August, of course, but nonetheless Joseph said recently he thought he sensed a pattern.

He thinks teams are going to try to use his group’s speed and aggressiveness against them with misdirection, boot action and more. That also helps quarterbacks — particularly fairly mobile ones — get out of the pocket and maybe stand a little bit more of a chance against the Broncos’ withering pass rush.

Joseph also thinks teams are going to try to dink and dunk on early downs rather than take big shots down the field.

“They’re trying to get four yards,” Joseph said a couple weeks ago. “They don’t want to be in second-and-7-plus or 8-plus, because that����ap obviously a pass-rush down. I thought last year we did a great job of basically playing third down twice. Most of our sacks came on second down. Third down is where they practiced their protection plans and slid to] Nik (Bonitto) or chipped (Jonathon Cooper). Second down is where we made our hay as far as the pass rush.”

Now, Joseph said, he thinks teams will try to be more conscious of setting up second-and-manageable and third-and-short,

“We have to understand how teams see us and adjust how we play third down and to continue to win first down,” Joseph said. “That����ap important for us.”

How exactly Joseph wants to go about that remains to be seen. One thing that����ap interesting: Every time the topic of creating more takeaways was brought to Joseph by reporters — and it happened literally almost every time Joseph talked — he’d acknowledge that Broncos want more but also would always also talk about playing good football. That seems to indicate that he doesn’t feel the need to make many changes to the overall way he deploys coverage — heavy match-and-man principles — and pressure. Part of generating interceptions in general is having eyes on the quarterback, but Joseph doesn’t seem inclined to suddenly start playing a ton of shells and zones just to do that and take away what he sees as this group’s stinger.

Regarding the NFL’s bye weeks, spreading them out over 8 weeks can be unfair for teams that have to wait until Week 14 for their bye week. While those teams that get an early bye, say in week 5, have to then play out the remainder of the season. Why can’t the NFL implement each bye week with 8 teams instead of 4? That way, weeks 8, 9, 10 and 11 would be more reasonable as it’s more in the middle of the season.

– Dan Dorn, Phoenix 

Hey Dan, interesting question. The bottom line is it����ap about television inventory. The league doesn’t have exactly even sets of bye weeks, either. Most weeks in the middle of the season, four teams are off, but one week, six are. Everybody plays the week of Thanksgiving. Only two teams have Week 14 byes.

But, yeah, to your point, four is kind of the standard number. If you have eight teams on byes plus Thursday night, Sunday night and Monday night games and maybe an early morning international game, that really hollows out the rest of Sunday in terms of programming options. The league is already stretched some on that front as it continues to expand to more Wednesdays, more streaming platforms and more standalone windows generally.

The Broncos have actually benefited from the late bye the past couple of years because it has allowed a week to get healthy and refreshed for the stretch run of the postseason. It����ap hard to complain about the middle of the season like they have this year, though.

Teams continue to figure out how to squeeze rest out of different pockets, too. Denver’s got the mini-bye after its Week 6 Thursday night game. The bye week is Week 10. Short weeks are tough in the lead-up, but the Broncos will welcome the rest that comes after their pair of holiday Friday games — Black Friday and Christmas Day — which come with a weekend off on the back end.

If the NFL goes to an 18-game schedule sometime in the near- to mid-term future, one point of interest is the idea of teams getting two bye weeks. That part would be good for players, though some of it will likely get chewed up by an expanding international slate and more and more standalone windows, odd days and so on.

What are you liking or disliking about this current Broncos roster as opposed to previous years?

– Ed Helinski, Auburn, N.Y. 

Hey Ed, thanks for writing in as always.

You never know for sure until the games start, but on paper, this looks like clearly the best set of offensive skill players overall since Sean Payton has been in Denver. My tenure on the beat only goes back a year before that, but it looks like the best I’ve seen here and perhaps the best since the Manning heyday. Adding Jaylen Waddle and Jonah Coleman without losing any standout contributors and then factoring in potential growth from Pat Bryant and others makes for an explosive, well-rounded group that also looks to have real depth.

We’ve covered this in other ways, but a year ago the Broncos’ third inside linebacker and third safety were Justin Strnad and P.J. Locke, respectively. Strnad’s a deserved starter now, but Dre Greenlaw is gone and so is Locke. They both played quite a bit last year due to injuries. Do the Broncos have real replacements for them if needed? The answer isn’t necessarily no, but it����ap an open question at this point, whereas last year the pecking order was quite clear.

Similar on the offensive line, I think. The starting quintet is set in stone and should be really good. Alex Palczewski and Frank Crum (out at least the first four games) are trusted reserves, but neither had a standout camp. If one of them or Matt Peart had to play a long stretch at tackle, how would it look? Maybe fine. Maybe not.

Who is going to replace John Franklin Myers (7.5 sacks, constant quarterback hits, knockdowns & pressu? Is is it Tyler Onyedim, Savion Jo,nes or Jordan Jackson?

– Tim Delphia, Denver 

Hey Tim, thanks for writing in. How about D) None of the above. OK, that����ap overstating things a little bit. But the bet here is that most of John Franklin-Myers’ snaps from last year — predominantly in pass-rush situations — will be handled by Malcolm Roach and Eyioma Uwazurike. Franklin-Myers played 46% in 2024 and 49% in 2025. That����ap slightly more than 500 snaps per year. The other defensive linemen last year, just for reference: Zach Allen played 797 (71%), D.J. Jones 431 (46%), Uwazurike 409 (36%) and Roach 401 (36%). Denver was mostly healthy last year up front, but Roach’s numbers are a bit skewed because he missed the first five games of the season. Over the final 12, he played half of Denver’s defensive snaps.

Generally speaking, the Broncos don’t want guys playing 800-plus snaps. Allen has rare stamina, but even with him, the coaching staff has been concerned about overwork over the past couple of seasons. Still, you can see a path to Uwazurike and Roach each playing, say, 150 more snaps this year and Jones playing a fairly similar role. That����ap tilting the mix fairly heavily toward four players. Right out of the gate, the best bet for a fifth is probably Jordan Jackson, given his veteran status and that he’s played real snaps for this staff. Perhaps at some point in the season, Onyedim will get a shot, too.

Why didn’t the Broncos keep Joly on the roster and try to get Justin Joly back on the practice squad? I’m assuming neither will be playing on game days anyway, at least initially. Wouldn’t Bentley have been easier to get through waivers?

–  Mike C., Santa Clarita, C.A. 

Hey Mike, thanks for writing in. That certainly would have been conventional wisdom given that Justin Joly was drafted in the fifth round and Dallan Bentley in the seventh. However, the simple answer is that the Broncos must have believed the opposite to be true. Otherwise, they’d have done exactly what you suggested.

There are a couple of factors to consider beyond the baseline, which is that the Broncos were more willing to risk losing Joly than Bentley. One is considering why Denver took Bentley at No. 256 in the first place. The Broncos relished the idea of controlling the final two picks of the draft, in part because it gave them flexibility to choose between drafting players and building their undrafted free-agent class. By the time those picks arrived, the Broncos had a good feel for who they would get signed after the draft and who they wouldn’t. So they used the picks on players they wouldn’t have otherwise landed. That means Bentley was likely headed elsewhere in free agency if Denver didn’t sign him. On the other hand, they knew they’d land the likes of Tyler Miller and Gavin Ortega, so they took the free-agent route with them.

It����ap no surprise that Bentley would have had other suitors in free agency post-draft, but sometimes that plays a role, too. When running back Blake Watson made the 53-man roster a couple years ago, Payton said there were a half-dozen teams trying to sign him post-draft and therefore they guessed he’d get claimed if he was waived. Turns out, they had to put him on waivers a few weeks later anyway and they snuck him through to the practice squad.

Of course, you can make the same argument about Joly in the draft. The Broncos moved up from No. 170 to 152 to pick Joly, giving up Nos. 170 and 182 to do so.

Joly goes down as a miss, either on the evaluation, the likelihood of getting him to the practice squad or both. But the only real explanation for the way it played out at the roster cutdown is that the Broncos thought Bentley was a bigger risk to lose.

“Our goal is to compete for championships every year,” Penner had said a few weeks back when asked what he’d view as a successful season in 2026. “And if we put ourselves in that position, I think we’re going to be successful. And we’re going to win Super Bowls.”

As in, plural.

The AFC West needs a new daddy. The Chiefs were broken before Patrick Mahomes blew out his knee. The Chargers are the Buffalo Bills of Beverly Hills, forever cursed. The Raiders are still the asylum Maxx Crosby

Meanwhile, Bo Nix is 26 and under contract through 2027. Pat Surtain II and Nik Bontto are 26 and signed through 2029. Garett Bolles is 34 and locked up through 2028.

Let’s see: Franchise QB. Shutdown corner. Premier edge-rusher. Pro Bowl left tackle. That’s the NFL’s Holy Quaternity sorted, the four biggest boxes of football roster-building ticked off with giant gold checkmarks.

And we didn’t get into the fact that Zach Allen, one of the most under-pubbed defensive superstars in the NFL, is inked through 2029. Or that Quinn Meinerz is signed through 2028. Or that Talanoa Hufanga is only 26. A house is only as strong as its foundation. The Broncos are building on top of a steel spine.

“Well, nine (AFC West titles) in a row for the Chiefs was pretty good. That’s hard to replicate,” told me as we watched the Broncos practice at Dove Valley recently. “And it’s tough to even just win a division — forget winning the Super Bowl. Everything’s got to break your way.

“But if I’m looking at this (Broncos) team in the division, I’m saying I’m picking them to win this year. We’ll see what next year brings about as well. So to predict seven (or more) in a row is just so hard to say. But they’ll be in the hunt. They’ll be in the mix if everyone’s healthy and whatnot, yeah.”

The wonks keep whispering in my ear that the Chargers are due, that Justin Herbert is due, that Jim Harbaugh is due, that new OC Mike McDaniel is due. I say the football gods have had it in for the Spanos family even before they shoved a machete into the hearts of San Diegans. The Raiders might somehow figure it out someday, but that someday is nowhere close to now.

It’s not hard to see the Broncos rattling off five division titles in a row, the way they did under Tebow and Manning. The AFC West’s old money isn’t worth what it used to be. Chiefs Kingdom still flies its crimson flags high, but towers of BBQ-stained bricks have become faded and worn. Munitions are low. The devil has come to collect his due, interest compounded by a decade of Mahomes’ miracles. No. 15’s reconstructed knee is a bigger riddle than Nix’s new ankle. Defensive tackle Chris Jones just turned 32. Kansas City traded one starting corner to the Rams (Trent McDuffie) and watched another corner (Jaylen Watson) sign with L.A. as a free agent.

Tight end Travis Kelce — congrats on the nuptials — will turn 37 in October. At 37, Antonio Gates saw his targets (52) and touchdowns (three) drop by half from what they were during his age-36 season. At 37, Tony Gonzalez retired. At 37, Shannon Sharpe had been working at CBS for about a year. Rob Gronkowski turned 37 this past May.

“I mean, it’s Mahomes’ injury and Kelce’s age, and that was going to happen. Again, when you look at their roster, there are a lot of question marks,”

“You have that receiver group — of course, they brought Kenneth Walker III in to kind of supplement that. But you look at that receiver group, you’re like, that’s not scaring anybody. And as great as Kelce’s been, you’re like, ‘He’s not the same Kelce of old.’ The defense has some holes. Do they have enough pass rush, still? So there are a lot of question marks with the Chiefs — where in years past, there weren’t that many, and Mahomes could take everybody up to a different level. No one’s scared of them anymore.”

To wit: In 2024, Kansas City trailed or was tied entering the fourth quarter in five regular-season games that season. The Chiefs went on to win all five. In 2025, over Weeks 1-14, while Mahomes was still active, they tied or trailed after three quarters eight different times — and went 1-7 in those contests.

Payton’s been here before. Actually, he’s been here a lot. The Saints had notched just two division titles in their history from 1967-2005. Sunshine Sean won seven of them in the Big Easy from 2006-2021, including a run of four straight from 2017-2020.

“It’s going to be a heck of a dogfight,”   said of the AFC West. “It might be whose defense plays better. But, yeah, as far as a window goes, I think the Chiefs are right there. As long as Herbert’s healthy with the Chargers, they’ll be a contender. And I like what I’ve seen so far from Bo Nix and Sean Payton. As long as they’re together, they’ll be a contender.”

The most pressing concern for Broncos from ’27-29 probably won’t be Mahomes, Herbert or Fernando Mendoza. It’ll be math. Nix’s rookie deal is up after the ’27 campaign, with a club option for 2028. He’s slated to feature a cap number of $5.08 million this fall and $5.92 million in ’27 — one of the biggest bargains, and QB bargains, in the entire NFL. But if you’re a proven QB1, those savings don’t last.

“These young stars that have emerged (for the Broncos), that have become part of this team, that have become a force in the NFL, they’re slowly but surely going to start getting plucked off,” Ruiz noted. “They’re going to cash in on big free-agent contracts

“Can (the franchise) draft well enough to sustain that success over a period of time? That’s what will determine how sustainable this run is for the Broncos. But (GM) George Paton and Sean Payton have worked very well together. There’s no reason to believe at this point that they can’t draft and develop the way some of the top teams do.”

With a year remaining on Mahomes’ initial four-year, $16.4-million rookie contract, the Chiefs ripped it up in the summer of 2020 and inked him to a 10-year pact that averaged $45 million per season.

The franchise went to four more Super Bowls over the next six seasons, winning two. But in this league, those Bills have a habit of catching up with you. Those Broncos, too.

It is experienced. It is accomplished. This group has set records the past two seasons, racking up sacks at a rate few defenses in NFL history have ever maintained.

The Broncos have to replace John Franklin-Myers in the starting lineup and a pair of contributors last year in Dre Greenlaw and P.J. Locke. They appear poised to do so ably, particularly on the defensive line, where several younger players have shown flashes in training camp.

This group is convinced it’ll break its own sack record again, though Joseph told them they don’t need to. They just need to perform and win games. If they create well more than last year’s 12 takeaways, all the better.

Here’s a look at the Broncos’ probable defensive two-deep come the fall.

Defensive lineman

Zach Allen | 99
6-foot-5, 285 pounds, 29 years old, 8th season, Boston College

Allen’s best two years came with close friend John Franklin-Myers playing next to him, so the challenge for the $100 million man and first-team All-Pro is pretty simple: Maintain his standing as one of the best in the business with some new faces around him.

Tyler Onyedim
6-foot-3, 292 pounds, 23 years old, Rookie, Texas A&M

The promising rookie may not crack the starting lineup right away, but he’s got the ability to play in the rotation in some form or fashion this fall. If injuries strike, Onyedim will need to be ready quickly.

Nose tackle

D.J. Jones | 93
6-foot, 305 pounds, 31 years old, 10th season, Mississippi

Jones just keeps going and going and going. He played some of the best ball of his career in 2025 and looks primed to keep it going this fall. Jones is a high-end run-stuffer and a critical, under-the-radar leader of the defense.

Eyioma Uwazurike
6-foot-6, 320 pounds, 28 years old, 4th season, Iowa State

The list of Broncos breakout candidates doesn’t go far before landing on Uwazurike. He’s had a monster training camp and appears ready to show it to the rest of the league. He’s a massive human, and he can move.

Defensive lineman

Malcolm Roach | 97
6-foot-3, 290 pounds, 28 years old, 7th season, Texas

Roach keeps adding to his repertoire. First he was a high-end run-stuffer. Then he added leader and culture-setter once he arrived in Denver. Now he’s a feisty pass-rusher, too. That adds up to a truly valuable player and person for Joseph’s group.

Jordan Jackson | 94
6-foot-5, 289 pounds, 23 years old, 2nd season, LSU

Every year Jackson is billed as a bubble player, and every year so far he’s made it and then found himself on the field. Sai’Vion Jones is a third-round pick from 2025, and maybe that ends up mattering here, but Jackson’s a better player at this stage.

Outside linebacker

Nik Bonitto | 15
6-foot-3, 240, 26, 5th season, Oklahoma

Bonitto has improved in each of his pro seasons and now has a $100 million-plus contract and a reputation as one of the most feared pass-rushers in the NFL. He’s probably already underpaid. If he takes another step forward this fall, look out.

Jonah Elliss | 52
6-foot-2, 246, 23, 3rd season, Utah

Elliss couldn’t stay healthy in 2025, but he’s had a terrific training camp this summer and looks primed to take a leap in his third pro season. He’s a naturally talented rusher who’s strong enough to handle run duties and versatile enough to play in the middle of the field some, too.

Outside linebacker

Que Robinson
6-foot-4, 243 pounds, 25, 2nd season, Alabama

One of the prime breakout candidates for the Broncos, Robinson showed tantalizing flashes as a rookie and now looks set to be a regular. He could start if Cooper is suspended. Dondrea Tillman figures to factor in here, too.

Inside linebacker

Alex Singleton | 49
6-foot-2, 240 pounds, 32, 8th season, Montana State

Fans may not have liked Denver’s ILB production last year, but you know who did? Vance Joseph. His opinion, obviously, is the one that matters. Singleton is cancer-free, healthy, back on a new two-year deal and is Joseph’s eyes and ears on the field.

Jordan Turner | 55
6-foot-1, 231 pounds, 24, 2nd season, Michigan State

Turner played special teams last year and is a player the Broncos think has developmental traits. Now he’s potentially a snap away from being counted on defensively.

Inside linebacker

Justin Strnad | 40
6-foot-3, 235 pounds, 30, 7th season, Wake Forest

Strnad put together the best year of his career in 2025 and landed a new three-year contract as a result. It’ll be interesting to see if he’s on the field rather than Singleton in some sub packages and, if so, if that means he wears the green dot.

Karene Reid | 47
6-foot, 226 pounds, 26, 2nd season, Utah

Reid made the team last year as an undrafted rookie primarily as a special teamer and could be next in line defensively after Levelle Bailey was injured in the preseason. Second-year man Jordan Turner could make a run and so could rookie Taurean York.

Cornerback

Pat Surtain II | 2
6-foot-2, 202 pounds, 26, 6th season, Alabama

Superlatives for Surtain almost don’t move the needle anymore. The best corner in football? Yeah. Four Pro Bowls, three All-Pro nods and 2024 Defensive Player of the Year? Yep. Hall of Fame track? Inarguably. He’s the best player on the team, and the most disruptive defense in the NFL is built around the idea that there are very few better on the planet.

Kris Abrams-Draine | 31
5-foot-11, 178 pounds, 24, 3rd season, Missouri

Every time Abrams-Draine has been thrown into action, he’s acquitted himself well. There’s little doubt he’d start for at least a handful – and maybe more than that – of teams around the league. He’s luxurious depth to have outside.

Cornerback

Riley Moss | 21
6-foot-1, 193 pounds, 26, 4th season, Iowa

Few Broncos have had better training camps than Moss. He is a terrific athlete and is wired for the job. If he plays a little smarter, a little less handsy and with a little more refined technique this fall, he’s not only going to make an elite pair with Surtain, but he could play his way into a massive payday.

Jahdae Barron | 23
5-foot-11, 200 pounds, 24, 2nd season, Texas

Who’s first up outside if the Broncos have a need? Barron or Abrams-Draine? The early bet is on KAD, but Barron has got a ton of work both outside and in the slot so far in training camp. The perimeter isn’t his strong suit just yet, and it occasionally shows against Denver’s deep receiver group.

Nickel

Ja’Quan McMillian | 29
5-foot-10, 183 pounds, 26, 4th season, East Carolina

McMillian went from undrafted to backup to one of the best slot men in football. He’s been a playmaking machine, made one of the great plays in Broncos playoff history with a game-saving pick against Buffalo in January and is the heartbeat of Denver’s defense.

Jahdae Barron | 23
5-foot-11, 200 pounds, 24, 2nd season, Texas

Barron’s most natural position is in the slot. He didn’t beat out McMillian as a rookie in 2025, and it wasn’t really even a competition this summer. Barron, though, will be used occasionally in the slot, certainly as Denver’s dime back. How many ways can Joseph find to get him on the field?

Safety

Talanoa Hufanga | 9
6-foot, 200 pounds, 26, 6th season, USC

Hufanga’s first season in Denver was a smashing success, both in that he played the entire year and that he brought a physical element to the back end of the defense. Hufanga’s played so much football but is still just 26 years old. Year 2 in Joseph’s system should be fruitful.

Devon Key | 26
6-foot, 208 pounds, 28, 3rd season, Western Kentucky

Midway through camp, Key looks like the next man in if either safety misses time. His defensive time in the starting lineup a couple years back wasn’t pretty, but coaches and teammates think he’s grown considerably as a player since then.

Safety

Brandon Jones | 22
6-foot, 191 pounds, 28, 7th season, Texas

Jones was playing really good football last year before a torn pec ended his season in December. He’s good in coverage, a sure tackler and yet another veteran in Denver’s secondary.

JL Skinner | 34
6-foot-4, 220 pounds, 25, 4th season, Boise State

Skinner has been a high-quality special teams player so far in his career but has not broken through as a reliable defender. This is a key autumn for him in that department. He played through a torn labrum last year. Eventually, this spot could go to veteran Taylor Rapp.

Punter

Jeremy Crawshaw | 16
6-foot-3, 205 pounds, 25, 2nd season, Florida

Crawshaw hit some big punts in the postseason, and this summer looks capable of jumping into the NFL’s upper echelon. He’s got major power behind the ball and has been steering it well, too.

Former Broncos head coach Gary Kubiak wanted Joseph, then the Bengals’ defensive backs coach, to be his defensive coordinator in Denver in 2015. Then-Denver general manager John Elway put in a slip to interview Joseph. Longtime Bengals head coach Lewis wanted Joseph to advance. But someone — as Lewis tells it — wandered upstairs to convince Bengals owner Mike Brown that Joseph was valuable enough to keep, and Lewis tried to convince Brown to no avail, and the Bengals blocked Joseph from leaving.

So a year later, Joseph left Cincinnati “because he was upset,” as Lewis said, to take the Dolphins’ defensive coordinator job. Another year later, Joseph landed the top job in Denver on the heels of Kubiak’s retirement and at the beginning of a transitional era.

The what-if, from Cincinnati’s 2015 blockade, is significant. Lewis was asked: If Joseph had already been immersed in Denver’s building for the two years before he succeeded Kubiak, would things have gone differently?

“It’s probably,” Lewis affirmed, “a really different outcome.”

Instead, the Broncos went 5-11 and 6-10 in two years before firing Joseph, sending him spiraling back down the rungs of an arbitrary NFL coaching ladder that is remarkably difficult to climb back up. The journey, since, has taken him back to Denver as a coordinator, in a remarkably humble move for a fired head coach — “no fear,” as Cowboys DC Christian Parker put it — only for the NFL to pass him up with each passing coaching cycle.

After he put together two straight seasons of top-three defenses in Denver, 10 head-coaching jobs came free this past NFL cycle. Five teams requested to interview Joseph. None of them chose to hire him.

As Joseph has built his resume, peers across the league point directly to him amid a troubling demographic trend across the NFL: it’s empirically difficult for Black coaches to earn a head-coaching job, and even more difficult to earn a second job.

“The success he’s had the last couple years in Denver, having the defense like he’s had, and building the credibility, credentials that he’s had — not to get a shot or another shot, is unbelievable to me,” Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles told reporters at the NFL owners’ meetings in March. “So, something has to be fixed.”

Joseph declined to be interviewed for this story, and had no hand in supporting it. In June, he told reporters it was “OK” he didn’t get a head-coaching job this past cycle.

“My focus now is to get back in position, and that’s winning games for the Broncos and being a great defense again,” Joseph said then. “It’s a process that is different every single year. I can’t be concerned about the outcomes. Just keep pushing forward, winning games and being in position to interview.”

Coaches close to Joseph have told The Post he remains undeterred. Some speak with near-outrage on a hiring system that — since 2018 — has excluded him.

“I’m not an owner, not a general manager,” Seahawks assistant head coach Leslie Frazier told The Post at February’s Super Bowl week in San Francisco. “But how does that happen? I just don’t get it. His resume should speak for itself. Disappointed. I hope that things will change.

“But when there are 10 jobs, and there’s not one Black coach who anyone feels is qualified or capable of leading their team — just makes me scratch my head. It����ap just disappointing.”

—

There are several plain and possible contributing factors across the NFL for Joseph’s extended and incomplete climb back to a head-coaching chair. Cleveland’s Todd Monken, for one, is the only head coach (60) hired this cycle who is older than Joseph and hasn’t won a Super Bowl as a head coach. Franchises, too, have increasingly shifted in recent years toward targeting young offensive play-callers in the Sean McVay mold, as one prominent NFL coaching agent told The Post. And, of course, Joseph doesn’t have a long string of head-coaching victories as a second-chance hire.

The league’s static progress in head-coaching diversity, though — just three Black head coaches are set to helm NFL teams in 2026 — is hard for many to ignore.

“There’s not many of them anywhere,” said former Browns head coach Hue Jackson. “And the numbers get worse. The numbers are as bad as it����ap ever been, now.”

There is a stark historical disparity, too, in the time between second chances for Black and white head coaches. According to coaching data collected and analyzed by The Denver Post, there have been nine Black head coaches and 29 white head coaches who coached in the 2000s, were fired from a head-coaching job and rehired by a different organization.

The average number of seasons between top jobs for Black coaches is 4.2, compared to 2.7 for white coaches.

This known disparity in falling back down the ladder, Jackson believes, can influence decisions to even approach head-coaching jobs

“I think a lot of guys that I know — are personally afraid to do it,” said Jackson, who hasn’t been an NFL head coach since a 3-36-1 tenure with the Browns from 2016 to 2018. “Because you have success, and you get this opportunity, and let����ap say you get it. Where do you go when it����ap over?”

“I think people have had an opportunity to see firsthand that if you do step out there and take that chance,” he continued later, “this is what could happen to you.”

Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores’s discrimination suit against the NFL, filed in February 2022, has ignited years of debate about the role of race in the league’s hiring practices. So has examination of the league’s long-standing “Rooney Rule,” . But key to this conversation, as several former Black head coaches spoke with The Post about, is the difficulty of Black coaches not only getting hired but also being rehired.

“In this business, they want to know, did you win or did you lose?” former Browns and Chiefs head coach Romeo Crennel told The Post. “And if you win, generally, you get a chance to stay. If you lose, now then – that becomes part of your resume, that you are a losing head coach. And so, when these people start looking for coaches, they aren’t crazy about hiring a black coach that����ap a losing coach.

“And so, that makes it tougher for a black coach to get rehired.”

—

Joseph began his football career as an option quarterback at the University of Colorado, where he overlapped with current Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy for a year. Both were members of Colorado’s chapter of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, and Bieniemy — who is still close friends with Joseph — said both still live by an old fraternity motto: “Humility With Dignity.”

“He’s an outstanding communicator, and he’s one of the top damn NFL defensive coordinators in this business right now,” Bieniemy told The Post of Joseph in July. “And he deserves a shot.”

Joseph’s head-coaching stint in Denver remains a stain, overseeing two years of sluggish Broncos offenses that fielded four different starting quarterbacks. But those in the building from that era, still, take up for Joseph. The franchise’s fatal flaw in those 2017 and 2018 seasons, as former Broncos defensive coordinator Joe Woods indicated — now the Raiders’ defensive-passing game coordinator — was not aligning expectations with an objective assessment of the roster’s talent.

Kubiak was gone, after a 9-7 slip in 2016 from 2015’s Super Bowl title. Peyton Manning was a year retired, and the Broncos had already whiffed on 2016 first-round QB Paxton Lynch. Pro Bowl staples like Demaryius Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders were entering the twilight of their careers, and Denver’s vaunted “No-Fly Zone” secondary was losing altitude.

“Probably one of the main things from Denver that (Joseph) learned is that, just from an organizational standpoint, that everybody has to be on the same path in terms of what the outlook is,” Woods said. “When we were there, we were coming off, ‘Hey, we were just in the Super Bowl in ‘15, we’re a couple pieces away.’ But I think really, at that time, we weren’t.”

The 2017 Broncos started 3-1 under Joseph and finished 2-10, starting three different quarterbacks. Veteran Case Keenum wasn’t the answer at quarterback a year later.

And still, former Denver tight end Virgil Green calls Joseph a “football wizard,” and ex-Broncos great Von Miller said Joseph did “the best job he could do” with the tools at his disposal.

“It was a hangover there,” Broncos great Von Miller told The Post this spring. “It had nothing to do with VJ’s coaching, or perspective. We, as far as recruiting, we had a hangover there. We were behind the ball as far as scouting, and getting guys in there that really could change, like, the organization. And we had missed that whole mark for that whole time VJ was there, and then leading up to VJ getting there. So VJ, he really didn’t have much to work with.

“VJ did an incredible job, as far as his managing of the team,” Miller continued. “His managing of the offense, of the defense, our schemes. We won some games that we should not have won, with the team that we had. We had trouble at the quarterback position. We had trouble everywhere. We didn’t have the No-Fly Zone. It was all types of things that were happening, and VJ managed it well.”

And Joseph, as Lewis told The Post, has been able to watch Denver’s roster-building strategy under Sean Payton and understand the need to build around a quarterback.

“You give him Peyton Manning,” Miller said, recounting Joseph’s head-coaching years, “we’re going to the Super Bowl. You give him a Josh Allen, you give him one of these great quarterbacks, we’re going to the Super Bowl.”

In Denver, now, players almost universally praise Joseph’s ability to relay complex, aggressive defensive schemes. His units have produced two straight seasons of franchise sack records, largely due to creative packages that use inside linebackers and nickel blitzes. And he stepped in seamlessly for Payton for two days this camp, when Denver’s head coach flew to Canton, Ohio, for Drew Brees’ Hall of Fame induction.

At one point during Joseph’s brief time in charge, nickel cornerback Ja’Quan McMillian went up to Joseph and told him: “Head coach looks good on you.”

“He’s a leader of men – like, he checks every single box,” All-Pro defensive lineman Zach Allen told The Post at the Pro Bowl in San Francisco in February. “I don’t know what the teams are looking for. But for us, it����ap good news. So we’ll take it.”

When will another team take Joseph, though? Most everyone in Denver’s building and Joseph’s orbit — and Joseph himself — remain expressively optimistic he’ll get a second chance. But luck in the NFL is fickle, and proven leadership hasn’t worked on its own accord.

Lewis laid out a hypothetical situation in which injuries befall the Broncos’ offense in 2026, the wins stop coming, and Joseph’s overall defensive impact from two previous seasons is lost in the weeds.

“That is my worry,” Lewis said. “That, really, is my worry.”

Joseph will walk into another head-coaching cycle, now, only able to control a handful of factors in front of him. But those who know him ultimately present the image of a man who will control those factors as well as anyone in his profession.

“Was Vance ready?” Kubiak said, asked if Joseph was ready in 2017. “Yeah, Vance is ready. I mean, he’s been ready for a long time.”

“It’s very lucky. It’s so rare in our league to have what we have,” McGlinchey said.

The offensive line is a microcosm of a Broncos roster that’s predicated on continuity entering the 2026 season. With nearly the entire starting lineup returning, it’s difficult to parse through the roster to find any potential breakout players. For two straight seasons, general manager George Paton and coach Sean Payton have zigged while the rest of the NFL zags. On average, only 56% of NFL players return to the same team from one year to the next, and just 35% of players return every two years, according to a study done by .

But there are always surprises in the NFL. To gauge who could emerge this season as an impact player for Denver, The Denver Post asked several Broncos which of their teammates could shock people in 2026.

Eyioma Uwazurike

The amount of love Uwazurike has gotten throughout camp will be music to both Broncos fans and the team’s front office. After John Franklin-Myers departed to the Tennessee Titans in free agency, it left a big hole in the middle of Vance Joseph’s defense.

Uwazurike felt prepared to fill the void. Last season, he told The Post he was “100% able to take over that role completely.” He’s looked the part this offseason, consistently disrupting plays during team sessions and repping alongside All-Pro defensive tackle Zach Allen in positional drills. His teammates have noticed.

“I’ll say Eni, bro. Eni’s had an amazing camp. He’s a guy that just disrupts,” wide receiver Pat Bryant told The Post when asked who could break out for the Broncos this year. “Like coach was saying, man, it����ap going to be hard to keep him off the field. Big guy. Moves very well. I’m excited to see what he does this year.”

A raw fourth-round pick in 2022, Uwazurike served a year-long gambling suspension that held him out in 2023 and then played a marginal role in 2024. He finally found consistent playing time in 2025, finishing the year with 39 tackles, five tackles for loss and five quarterback hits.

Known primarily as a run-stopping defensive tackle, Uwazurike took a lot of early down snaps last year. That freed up Franklin-Myers to be more effective on third downs, but Uwazurike has insisted he is not just a run stuffer. In his final season at Iowa State, he racked up nine sacks. The 320-pounder has some quickness to his game and worked on his pass-rushing repertoire this offseason. Fellow defensive tackle D.J. Jones called him “unblockable.”

“The leap he’s taking right now is pretty scary,” Jones said.

Payton also pointed to Uwazurike as a potential breakout player, saying he’s played “really well.”

Pat Bryant

Offensive coordinator Davis Webb dubbed Bryant as “Patty Ice” this offseason, and if you earn a nickname like that from a new signal-caller, you’re probably doing something right.

Bryant has arguably been the Broncos’ star of training camp, as he’s garnered praise from Payton, Webb, his fellow wide receivers, defensive players and the media. The second-year wideout out of Illinois is set to be Denver’s third wide receiver, behind Courtland Sutton and Jaylen Waddle, by becoming much more comfortable in Payton’s system.

Safety Talanoa Hufanga, who’s had to help guard Bryant in training camp, said Bryant was “a role player” last year as a rookie, still learning Payton’s scheme.

“Watching his leap, you kind of could see it as the season went last year, but what he’s done through this camp, he’s really solidified himself and making a name for himself in this league,” Hufanga said.

Que Robinson

The second-year edge rusher might be the unproven player the Broncos are counting on this season. Robinson’s job got significantly more important after Jonathon Cooper was put on the commissioner’s exempt list. It seems as if he’s ready for the increased role.

Several players tabbed Robinson as their breakout player of the season. Bryant pointed him out and tight end Evan Engram said he’s had to “lock in” whenever he’s facing the linebacker in pass protection drills.

“The guy I’ve been super impressed with is Que Robinson, he’s been a force all camp,” Engram said. “He’s definitely growing as a player and he has a bright future ahead of him for sure.”

Sam Ehlinger and Bo Nix

While no players specifically pointed to Nix or Ehlinger, each quarterback got some love from their teammates. Cornerback Patrick Surtain II said Nix is “better than before, more sharp.”

“He’s ready to show the world what he’s about. Not that he already didn’t, but he’s ready to make a statement,” Surtain II said.

Payton said Ehlinger greatly improved this offseason. Ehlinger “earned” his spot on the 53-man roster despite being the third quarterback on the depth chart, Payton added. If Ehlinger has to play significant snaps this season, something disastrous likely happened in Denver, but Payton’s praise for the signal-caller is worth monitoring.

You know, the one that could have ended Malcolm Roach’s career and the Broncos’ season.

It happened on the fifth day of training camp. Blocking and grunting turned into gasping as Roach sacked Bo Nix for a safety, putting his own football life in jeopardy.

“I know this is going to sound crazy, like, ‘He is making this up. We got pushed into to him. I am like nobody trying to hit Bo. I need Bo. I need number 10,’^” Roach told The Denver Post. “That is where you come to respect Bo and the guys on the other side of the ball. It wasn’t intentional.”

You could hear a pad drop. And hearts sink. Then Nix spoke.

“He got up and smiled and said, ‘Do it again!’^” Roach recalled. “I told him, ‘Umm no way!’^”

So imagine Roach’s surprise when, a few weeks later, Nix fired a football in the defensive lineman’s direction. That tension turned into fists flying after Nix threw an interception to Alex Singleton, leading Nik Bonitto to go full WWE and dive onto the pile.

“It was crazy. I want this reported. I didn’t even touch Bo on that play. They said it like I hit Bo. I didn’t hit Bo,” Roach said. “And when the fight happened, I wasn’t anywhere near it. I was on the sideline talking to D.J. (Jones). I was too tired to fight.”

It was one of the few moments when Roach was not causing havoc. It can be argued that receiver Pat Bryant and defensive lineman Eyioma Uwazurike had the best training camp, but if you picked Roach, there would be no argument.

He signed a one-month lease at the end of July and lived in the backfield for a month. Roach made a play every day, breaking through and throwing down spike strips to stop running backs in their tracks or bursting around the end for a conceded sack.

“As far as the rotation goes, Roach, I believe he’s going to take that JFM (John Franklin-Myers) job and run with it,” Jones said. “He’s done a great job.”

Don’t bother lowering expectations with Roach. He is ready, having learned under Zach Allen and JFM for two seasons. When Roach signed a three-year extension last November, he was cast in a bigger role.

A player once signed as an elite run stuffer is poised to show he can make an impact as a pass rusher.

“The more reps I get, the more the game slows down. And I have been intentional in my work. Maybe one day, I work on eye placement. The next day, I am not trying to grab the arm, I am trying to grab the elbow. It’s the little things that when you take it into individual drills, then get to full speed in team, you might not get it perfect, but you are working towards that so much that your B-plus is the equivalent to an A.”

Roach is a tireless worker. His uniform should feature rolled-up sleeves. In making the transition to filling snaps on the end, he adjusted his body type. He will play closer to 295 pounds than 305.

“I knew I had to be in my best shape. I for sure dropped body fat and weight. I had to get more explosive. It was about getting toward that build where I could rush better,” Roach explained. “But I still have to maintain my strength against the run. That is my bread and butter.”

As the conversation drifted, food became a topic. It is always interesting how players bond. This Broncos team conjures memories of the 1997-98 crew in their closeness. Nix brought some of the offensive players together for workouts and boating in Austin, Texas, this offseason.

There is not always a need to get on a plane. Sometimes, you just need to pull up to a plate.

“It kind of almost feels like a college team. We do things at the house. Guys will ask,  ‘What do I need to bring?’ I tell them, ‘Just bring your body.’ We are about to get on this barbecue pit and eat. They even wanted me to boil crawfish for the guys,” said Roach, connecting to his Louisiana roots. “We don’t even talk about football. I am a firm believer the more we are around each other, the more we love each other. And the more I love you, the more I am willing to put my body on the line for you.”

The benefits of continuity extend beyond dinner. There is a trust among the players. It has made winning the Super Bowl — after falling painfully close in the AFC Championship Game — an obsession. Heartbreak has not eased with time.

“When you have all those hours built up together the last three years, the long days and long nights of training camp, of practice,” Roach said, “it makes you want it more because you know the story behind it.”

Roach is part of the narrative. He actually would make a great narrator, since he is often seen before heard. His attitude provides a bump, his sense of humor a laugh.

Given how well he played a year ago, setting a career-high with four sacks and 26 assists on tackles, he has evolved from Vibes Guy to Glue Player.

“He’s got a lot of juice. He’s one of those compound multipliers. A lot of his traits are infectious,” Broncos coach Sean Payton said. “He practices hard. I think all the way back to when he was undrafted out of Texas and we signed him (to the Saints) — the improvement for him has been remarkable. He’s always going to be looking at what he can do a little better.”

When chasing rings, players like Roach assert a meaningful presence. He can provide levity one moment, and play the heavy the next.

He is not hard to find. Just look for the smile.

“What do I love about this game? It’s like recess everyday, except for big kids,” Roach said. “You can’t do this job if you just like it. You gotta love the people you are around. I know when I come into work, I am going to be happy about something.”

Roach symbolizes the fabric of this team, of a franchise that absorbed an $85 million dead cap from releasing quarterback Russell Wilson and has made the playoffs every year since.

The 28-year-old logs the hours, embraces the process and plays for something bigger. Jones took him under his wing, and JFM tutored him even while knowing Roach was going to take his job.

“I always tell SP (Payton) and GP (general manager George Paton), ‘You do a great job of bringing in the right guys.’ In this business, you think you want the biggest names, but when you are in it, you just want the guy who is going to do his job and be a great locker room guy,” Roach said. “I am not saying star players aren’t. But, we have guys who fit the culture.”

That has been evident all summer. The defense is driven to lead the league in sacks for a third straight season, while increasing takeaways. Everything seems possible when eyeing the depth and the potential of Roach to step up in a big way.

“They could ask a lot of guys if they would rather get the sack title or a Super Bowl ring. Pretty sure they would all say Super Bowl,” Roach said. “The standard has been set. And we know we can’t do it without the work.”

Or the quarterback.

“When I hit Bo, it was just guys in the trenches playing hard. I am happy it wasn’t bigger than it was. But from the moment we got back in the locker room, guys were laughing and talking. That is the type of brotherhood we have,” Roach said. “But yeah, that won’t be happening again.”