Excitement has been building as these Denver Broncos recaps have become increasingly punctual, but unfortunately, this is the latest one will wind up dropping.
In my defense, I just started a new job this week (keep an eye out for some additional Denver Broncos thoughts and musings over at 850 KOA), and attended the Week 5 game in-person, which made note-taking and the subsequent recap more difficult.
Next week’s should drop no later than Monday night though, so improvement is still coming.
Speaking of improvement, this Denver Broncos team is suddenly looking like a legitimately frisky AFC wildcard pick following their 34-18 rout of the Las Vegas Raiders.
Who were the biggest standout performers, and who offered the game’s few negatives? Let’s look.
Previous Stock Reports
DENVER BRONCOS STOCK UP
Javonte Williams
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, out of a deep-seated fear of potentially jinxing the splendor before us, but maybe, just maybe, Javonte Williams is back.
What made Williams so special in 2021 was his remarkable power and his ability to casually explode through oncoming tacklers. Averaging .256 missed tackles forced (MTF) per touch and .310 MTF per carry, his only peers in those stats’ histories were Nick Chubb and Marshawn Lynch’s best seasons.
He was such a dominant physical force that it negated his inconsistent vision, to an extent, and made him an effective every-down back in year one. When the injury sapped that explosiveness, the weaknesses in his game went from being camouflaged to being highlighted.
That was especially true through the first three weeks of this season, as some in Broncos Country petitioned for benching him in favor of Tyler Badie. Williams offering a meek .208 MTF/carry and .147 MTF/touch during that span and him averaging under 3.0 yards per carry was far from coincidental.
These past two weeks, Williams has more than turned it around. The forcefulness he’s shown these past two weeks has no equal this columnist is aware of.
The best campaigns of Chubb’s and Lynch’s careers saw them average .310 and 341 MTF/carry and .272 and .304 MTF/touch, respectively. These past two weeks, Williams is averaging .379 MTF/carry and .306 MTF/touch.
Now, it should go without saying that this is a very small sample compared to Chubb and Lynch’s season-long showings. Nonetheless, this dramatic turnaround is promising, especially because it’s all about something the running back is achieving in a vacuum.
Another reason to feel optimistic that there could be some real substance to this stretch from Williams is the fact that there’s been flashes of improved vision. On his first carry of the game, he saw Christian Wilkins flash late into his running lane, quickly sidestepped a gap to Wilkins’ left, left the former Clemson Tiger in the dust, and plowed ahead for a delightful gain that set the offense up with favorable down and distance.
Williams’ questionable vision has long been his Achilles heel, and developing it could lead to stable efficiency, even if his power wanes. If it doesn’t wane, it could be what propels him to something to grander.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Pat Surtain II
Pat Surtain II’s 102-yard pick-six was one of the most thunderous plays of recent Denver Broncos history, and of all the contests the league saw this week.
Not just because such a takeaway is inherently one of the game’s biggest momentum and scoring-swings imaginable, but because it was the key force in Denver snapping the eight-game streak Vegas lorded over them and it helped solidify to the nation what the Mile High City has known for nearly a half-decade — Surtain is the NFL’s best cornerback.
Last week we went in-depth on Surtain’s season-long numbers against a variety of elite receivers, so here, we’ll only update with the best receiver he matched up with this week — Brock Bowers. When covering Bowers he was targeted twice and tallied two interceptions.
Through five weeks, what Surtain has done is simply special. So much so that national media figures, such as The Athletic’s Robert Mays, have started to whisper about the idea of the standout defensive back winning Defensive Player of the Year — an honor that hasn’t been bestowed to a cornerback since Stephon Gilmore in 2019.
Gilmore’s win was one of the two we’ve seen since 1995.
Now we get to the meat of this article.
The odds are still stacked against Surtain, but, if he can pull this off, it would be a historic achievement and a tremendous win for his hopes of eventual Hall-of-Fame candidacy. The reason it’s so hard to do though, is because people seldom talk about exceptional cornerback play. As the old adage goes, ‘if a corner or offensive lineman is playing well, you probably aren’t saying their name much.’
So, stoke the flames, Broncos Country. Go to your nearest 7-Eleven, load a Jerry Can to the brim with gasoline, and turn the spark that is Surtain’s present DPOY hopes into a raging inferno
Bo Nix
The first five games of the ‘Bo Nix Experience,’ have been a bit of a rollercoaster. Before any Broncomaniacs jump down my throat, yes, that’s totally acceptable for a rookie, but nonetheless, we can acknowledge the up-and-down nature.
The first two weeks were deeply worrying, as Nix set different marks for historic ineptitude. That concern was eased a great deal though by the fact his Week 3 performance provided so much promise, but Week 4’s first-half ugliness invited the anxiety to creep back to the periphery.
In Week 5, Broncos Country desperately needed to see something from Nix to banish their nightmares and bolster the notion that Week 4’s backslide was primarily the product of a hurricane. He provided precisely that.
Now, the performance wasn’t quite as clean as the Tampa Bay showcase, but that’s entirely fine. Not every rain-free start has to (or should be expected to) be his best to date.
The important thing was that it looked like the game has continued to slow down for him and that his accuracy was much improved. It was a normal rookie quarterbacking performance. The precision we heard Coach Payton laud throughout the summer months showed up throughout the game, as opposed to being reserved to a few rare flashes.
Plus, it was his most productive start to date, and would have been one of the most productive quarterbacking performances of Week 5, had Troy Franklin hauled in the should-have-been deep touchdown.
The Los Angeles Chargers and young mastermind Jesse Minter — the foremost protégé of Mike Macdonald, who bedeviled Nix in Week 1 — will present a steeper challenge, but also, another opportunity for Nix to fuel optimism.
DENVER BRONCOS STOCK DOWN
Greg Dulcich
So far, this season has probably been the toughest it has ever been to formulate some quality ‘Stock Down’ options.
That said, Dulcich is a perfect candidate for this section of the recap.
After playing 79 snaps in Weeks 1 and 2, Dulcich has played just 41 snaps since, and, on Sunday, he was a healthy scratch vs. the Raiders. Given Dulcich’s injury history and lack of NFL production, a move like this could be a death sentence for his time in Denver.
For starters, the Broncos are in the running for the dishonor of, ‘worst tight ends in the league’ and Dulcich still hasn’t been able to demonstrate enough to be activated on gameday. Odds are this room is only more skilled next season, and, with the trade deadline nearing, it could even see a talent upgrade before the end of this season.
The third-year former Bruin was never a quality blocker, but he boasted receiving potential that, at one point, made him appear like one of the most promising young players on Denver’s roster.
Unfortunately, Dulcich doesn’t even offer the pass-catching benefit anymore. His -12.2 total receiving EPA ranks second-worst in the league among all NFL players, and his -3.1 receiving EPA/game is the worst of any player to have appeared in more than two games this season.
It’s very possible Dulcich has already played his last snap in orange and blue.
Run Defense
The Denver Broncos’ run defense was arguably the most exciting part of the defensive shutdown against the New York Jets.
Against one of the league’s most talented backfields, in an environment ideal for running the football, Denver completely asphyxiated Breece Hall and the New York ground attack, proving once and for all they weren’t the shaky run defense we might have believed them to be through three weeks.
Or so we thought.
The defense’s performance against a Las Vegas Raiders run game that entered Week 5 as literally one of the worst rushing attacks in NFL history.
They were so bad that they made the toxic Miami ground game look palatable by comparison. They stand apart from the rest of the NFL, and even still, can’t even fit their full logo on the graph.
Then they played the Denver Broncos.
The leap only saw the run game improve to league average, but, again, the leap from ‘maybe the worst rushing attack in the 100-plus years of NFL football’ to ‘this is almost a league-average ground game’ is still a massive vault, and one you don’t want to see your defense be responsible.
Plus, the Broncos defense is now set to face a Chargers attack that wants nothing more than to run the ball down your throat. Denver will have to prove they can’t be victimized that way on Sunday.
