The Denver Broncos defeated the Indianapolis Colts 34-30 in their preseason opener on Sunday. Despite coming away with a victory, Denver coach Sean Payton had a few grievances with his team’s performance.
“There’s going to be a lot of tape that we like,” Payton said after the win. “Then there’s going to be a handful of things that we’ve got to get cleaned up. And really, when you look at the ball security issues – we had four fumbles. That has to be better.
“We talked about it coming into this game, this defense does a good job. They play a lot more zone coverage. They try to separate the ball from the receivers or runners, and so we’re fortunate in that regards to still get the win. I [also] didn’t like the penalties.”
Broncos rookie quarterback Bo Nix muffed a snap (and recovered it), fellow QB Zach Wilson and running back Blake Watson fumbled an exchange on a handoff, running back Audric Estime had a fumble that was returned by the Colts for a touchdown and tight end Lucas Krull also lost a fumble.
“[T]wo rookies had the ball on the ground,” Payton said. “One was a touchdown, and the other one, obviously we were able to recover, but a significant play later in the game. So those are the things that you’ve just got to make sure you clean up and those guys will learn from it.”
The good news is Denver has two more preseason games to get the miscues cleaned up before facing the Seattle Seahawks in Week 1. Players who made mistakes in Indianapolis have to learn from them and not repeat them.
“[T]hose are lessons and pretty soon, they’re lessons that can’t happen,” Payton said. “That was something I talked about last night. I told the coaches, that’s one concern I have is the ball security in this game coming in. It kind of manifested kind of how I thought unfortunately, I mean, they do a good job of holding players up, stripping the ball – that was Audric’s turnover. We had the exchange problem late in the game, and then obviously those are things that you hope to be cleaning up before the regular season starts.”
In addition to the turnovers, the Broncos also committed six penalties, including three on the opening drive that knocked them out of field goal range.
“We kind of shot ourselves in the foot, mainly those first two drives with penalties and that sort of thing,” quarterback Jarrett Stidham said after the game. “But I mean a lot of good I thought. Obviously, we’ll take a look at the film and get better from it, and obviously clean up the penalties. Like I said, that was probably the biggest thing, but thought we were pretty efficient there, pretty early on. Obviously, just the penalties, we’ve got to figure that out for sure.”
Stidham’s first drive stalled after Tim Patrick (taunting), Courtland Sutton (false start) and Mike McGlinchey (false start) were penalized. Stidham’s second drive ended when running back Samaje Perine bobbled an accurate pass and tipped it into an interception. Those are the kind of mistakes Denver will need to clean up before next week’s showdown with the Green Bay Packers.
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