Twice in the waning moments of Thursday night’s game against Indianapolis, the Broncos’ coaches had to decide between playing for a first down or going for broke.
Twice they took the aggressive route.
Twice they put the ball in quarterback Russell Wilson’s hands and asked him to make the play they wanted rather than the one they needed.
Twice they failed.
The result: An entirely avoidable 12-9 overtime loss to Indianapolis at Empower Field and a long 11 days ahead trying to figure out what the path back toward a successful season looks like from 2-3.
Even bad would have been good enough against a mostly hapless Indianapolis outfit that also couldn’t find a way to get the ball in the end zone.
Instead, bad devolved into disaster for Wilson and the Broncos.
The final 14 minutes, 20 seconds, of regulation and the overtime period included two Wilson interceptions and a fourth-down incompletion on fourth-and-1 late in overtime when coach Nathaniel Hackett turned down a short field goal attempt. On that play it looked like Wilson had KJ Hamler wide open to his right. Instead, Wilson sidearmed a tight-window pass for Courtland Sutton that was batted down, ending the game.
“It’s very simple. At the end of the day, I’ve got to be better. I’ve got to play better,” Wilson said. “The defense played their butts off. We had some key good drives, moved the ball into the red zone, just didn’t get to capitalize on some of them. …
“At the end of the day, throwing two interceptions can’t happen. Can’t happen. I let the team down tonight.”
Not long before that final sequence, the Broncos had Indianapolis on the ropes after finally finding some run-game success and bleeding the visitors of all three timeouts as the two-minute warning approached.
On third-and-4 with 2:19 to go, a first-down run would have essentially ended the game. A run that comes up short meant a likely field goal for a six-point lead after the two-minute warning with Indy out of timeouts.
Instead, Wilson dropped back to pass, looked to his left, came back right and shot an errant slant route toward receiver Tyrie Cleveland. Stephon Gilmore intercepted the pass in the end zone, giving Indianapolis life. They had the ball and trailed by three instead of, at best, needing a last-minute touchdown drive to win.
“Just can’t throw that,” Wilson said. “Got to throw it out of bounds if it’s not there. He was cutting across the field and we were just a little bit off on that.”
It only got worse.
In overtime, after Colts kicker Chase McLaughlin made a field goal at the end of a 42-yard drive to push his team in front, Wilson immediately drove the Broncos into position to win the game again with completions of 24 and 47 yards.
Melvin Gordon picked up nine yards and change on three rushes but Denver faced a fourth-and-short from the 5-yard line. Quarterback sneak? Run play? Play-fake from under center?
Instead, after a timeout to talk the options over, Hackett and Wilson decided on a pass play from the shotgun.
“We wanted to win the game,” Hackett said. “Wanted to put the ball in Russell’s hands and called a play that we know he really likes. It didn’t work out.”
With about 2:30 left in overtime, a first down would have left Denver with plenty of time to try to still play for a win rather than settling for a tie.
“We went to Courtland there and (Gilmore) made a good play,” Wilson said. “I was ready to move around if I needed to. … We went for it. We didn’t want to end up tied. We wanted to win the game. That was our mentality.
“I think coach made a good call. I’ve got to find a way, whatever it takes.”
This is the type of game Denver general manager George Paton traded five draft picks and three players for Wilson this spring to win.
The veteran quarterback knows it. His teammates know it. Everybody knows it.
“The good thing, one thing I know about myself is I’m going to respond. I don’t know any other way,” said Wilson, who finished 21-of-39 for 274 yards.
According to the NFL’s NextGen Stats, Wilson, known throughout his career as one of the best deep-ball throwers in football, finished 2-of-15 passing with two interceptions on passes that traveled more than 10 yards in the air.
Denver’s offensive troubles, though, extend far beyond a bad outing from the quarterback.
The Broncos didn’t score a touchdown Thursday night and have just two in three home games so far this season. They are without running back Javonte Williams for the rest of the season and now will be without left tackle Garett Bolles, who suffered a right ankle injury that Hackett said “didn’t look good,” for a considerable amount of time, too. They haven’t found any consistent threat among their skill position players beyond wide receiver Courtland Sutton and they haven’t been able to get out of their own way even when promising drives arise.
Case in point: Before Wilson’s late interception, Denver settled for field goal attempts at Indy’s 15, 16, 26 and 27-yard line. They made it to the Colts’ 32 early in the fourth quarter before a Lloyd Cushenberry false start pushed them back to first-and-15 and, two plays later, Wilson threw an interception on a floater to nobody on third-and-13.
“Same stuff, man. Just bad ball. Bad ball from all 11,” Cushenberry said.
Perhaps no play stood more emblematic of the Broncos’ offensive problems through five games than that one.
Denver can’t keep itself ahead of the sticks and only bad things happen in long-yardage situations.
“It puts you behind schedule, whether it’s third-and-long, second-and-long, first-and-long, whatever it may be,” Sutton said. “If you’re looking at something-and-long, you have to try to get back on track and that takes away from already being on track. The more times we can keep ourselves out of those situations, the more times I feel like we have success, but as soon as we shoot ourselves in the foot with a penalty or not converting a play, it hurts us.”
Thursday was the season’s low point to date in that department. The Broncos faced 15 third downs and converted on attempts from one yard and two and also picked up a fourth-and-2 just before Wilson’s second interception.
Nine of Denver’s other 13 third-down tries came from 10-plus yards, including one from 17, two from 16, 15, 13 and 12, and three from 10.
“Just too many things that aren’t coming together,” Hackett said. “For us, the offense is going through some adversity and I believe they’re going to get through this and we’re going to learn from it and grow from it. We have to.”
The question now is how? Where are the answers going to come from? Certainly, Wilson has played better than he did on this night and will have to going forward. But who will step up alongside Sutton? Can the offensive line, a group that’s fared just OK overall and hasn’t helped generate a consistent run game to this point, get dramatically better quickly? Can a mistake-prone unit quit finding ways to get in its own way?
“It’s hard, we’re all going to be thinking about it over the weekend, but at the end of the day life goes on, the season goes on,” Cushenberry said.
