Sean Payton is still concerned about the Denver Broncos’ defence, but Zach Allen blames Vance Joseph.
ENGLEWOOD, COLORADO – In the NFL, winning cures a lot of ills. However, in Sean Payton’s opinion, it does not fix everything.
Despite the fact that the Denver Broncos won their first game of the season by mounting the second-largest road comeback in franchise history against the Chicago Bears, Denver’s head coach is still concerned about the team’s defence.
“Yes to both,” Payton said on Monday when asked whether he was still worried about Denver’s defence and if the comeback can build confidence moving ahead. “I just told the squad this 15 minutes ago. ‘I’m excited that we fought back into that game, but man, let’s not finish today when we’re done viewing this film and don’t feel satisfied with how we performed,’ I remarked.
“[There are] too many things that are still disappointing or that we have to clean up,” the head coach added. “Offensively, the same thing. After the first touchdown, we paused for a while. We struggled for the first third of the game. This week, that sense of urgency must return. We’ll be playing against a lot better opponents in the next month or month and a half.”
Despite the season’s first victory, Payton has every cause to be concerned about Denver’s defence.
The Broncos are worst in points allowed (37.5), have the worst DVOA ranking through the first four games of a season since 1981 (38.5%), and have allowed the Bears to score 28 points after averaging just over 15 points per game entering Sunday. Furthermore, the Broncos enabled the Miami Dolphins to nearly score the most points in NFL history when they racked up 70 against Denver eight days earlier.
As the first month of the NFL season progressed and Denver’s defence continued to struggle, calls for Vance Joseph to be fired became louder.
However, Zach Allen, who has spent his whole career playing under Joseph, dating back to their time together with the Arizona Cardinals, stated on Monday that the defensive coordinator is not to blame for the team’s slow start.
“He’s been extremely successful in this league for a long time and has accomplished a great deal.” Everyone likes to point the finger at someone, but if you study the Dolphins footage, especially the first half, it was either guys not tackling or guys not executing the appropriate job. “It wasn’t about the scheme or anything,” Allen declared emphatically.
“I think a lot of people probably don’t understand the big picture,” continued the defensive lineman, supporting Joseph. “Again, that doesn’t really matter for us. We know exactly what we’re doing. What we’re currently working on. Everyone may say anything they want, but at the end of the day, they aren’t in the arena, so, yeah. [Joseph] is one of my favourite people. I believe we will be OK. We’re going to accomplish a lot. It’s still early in the morning. We’re going to change that.”
Please do not point the finger at Joseph. Allen suggests aiming it at the players. In fact, the difference between enabling Justin Fields and the Bears to score 21 points in the first half and restricting them to seven in the second half was just the guys doing their jobs better.
“The first half was sloppy, but in the second half, everyone started doing their job better, accepting their hard downs, and playing the way they’re supposed to play.” “There were still a couple of runs where we shouldn’t have slowed down, but we’ll get that fixed,” Allen said, blaming himself and his teammates. “We all settled in and improved our performance.” It was just a couple mental errors here and there in the first half, but everyone settled in and we were able to solve that.”
For the first 12 games of the 2022 season, Denver’s defence was among the best in the NFL. They’ve had a concerning drop-off a year later.
Allen, on the other hand, believes the group has a very high ceiling.
“We have the talent and the players.” “It’s just a matter of us executing better,” Allen explained. “There were hints of it in the second half.” When we do things correctly, we can play at an outstanding level. We just have to keep working on it.”
The defence of the Denver Broncos certainly needs to improve. According to Zach Allen, the majority of the blame should not be placed on Vance Joseph.
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