The Broncos are 6-2 and sitting on top of their division, but Joel Klatt still isn’t ready to pretend everything on offense is fine.
Klatt, the FOX lead college football analyst who grew up a Broncos fan, said Sunday’s win over Kansas City was one of the most emotionally gripping games he can remember. He gave the defense plenty of credit for getting after the quarterback. But the offense kept dragging him back into the same concern: Denver is 30th in total offense at 273 yards per game, and that number is hard to ignore no matter what the record says.
On his weekly visit with the “Stokley and Evans with Mark Schlereth,” Klatt pushed back on the idea that the Broncos’ run game is being held back by the backfield. When asked whether running back Jonah Coleman can carry the load, Klatt said the issue starts somewhere else.
“I don’t think it’s a running back issue. I think it’s an O-line issue,” Klatt said.
He said he watched the game with his father, an 81-year-old former coach who coached for 30 years, and the same thing kept jumping out: the backs aren’t getting front-side movement. Klatt also said he doesn’t understand where the belief came from that Denver has a strong offensive line.
“I don’t know where this notion came from that Denver has a good offensive line,” Klatt said.
Klatt tied that problem directly to Bo Nix, saying the quarterback is too quick to check the ball down on first-progression timing even when there isn’t immediate pressure and a deeper route is available.
“This guy either doesn’t trust his ankle or doesn’t trust the five guys in front of him,” Klatt said.
For Klatt, the issue is about confidence, belief and trust. He said Nix has already shown he can make the throws, pointing to a seam throw to Jaylen Waddle, but the consistency still has to come.
In his view, a quarterback has to trust himself, trust the concept and trust the people around him. He thinks Denver is making small gains in all three areas.
Third down is where the whole thing starts to tilt. The Broncos are last in the NFL with a 29 percent third-down conversion rate, and Klatt said that kind of failure eventually wears down a defense. He said the short throws short of the sticks are the kind of thing that makes him want to throw things at the television.
Still, he sees a chance for the offense to clean things up because the schedule opens up. Denver already went through a rough early stretch with the Chiefs twice, the Seahawks, the 49ers, the Rams and others. Now the next six games include Carolina, Las Vegas, Miami and the Jets, and Klatt believes that gives the Broncos a real opportunity to stay on the field and help their defense.
“If I have to scream one more time at the TV, I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” Klatt said.
That’s where this all lands: if Denver’s offense grows while the schedule gets friendlier, Klatt thinks there’s room for this team to keep rolling. If it doesn’t, he expects the defense to keep carrying a load that eventually gets too heavy.
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