The Denver Broncos lost the game in two of three phases on Monday – offensively and defensively. I would say that special teams was the only phase that the Broncos won. Jeremy Crawshaw forced the Kansas City Chiefs to start three drives inside their 10 (9, 6 and 3 yard lines). The Broncos only started one drive inside the ten (on the 8). Marvin Mims averaged 18 yards on his two punt returns. That was about the end of the good for the Broncos.
The offense finished the game 2 of 12 on 3rd downs and 0 for 1 on 4th downs. The offense got only 9 first downs in the game and fumbled three times (only losing one). As crazy it seems, the Broncos are not the worst in the NFL after week 1 in terms of 3rd down conversion. The Browns are worst going 1 of 8 on first team in their game. When only the Browns are worse, you know it’s bad.
Advertisement
On the other side, the Chiefs had 19 first downs, and were 9 of 17 on third down. Defensively the Broncos are only seventh worst in 3rd down conversion rate allowed. The Cowboys allowed the Giants to convert on 9 of 11 which is crazy.
The Broncos had 58 actual defensive plays (KC had 3 kneel-downs) and somehow managed to miss a tackle on 29.8% of those plays. There were 34 solo tackles for the Broncos and 40 assisted tackles. Since missed tackle percentage does not delineate what play the missed tackle happened on (two can and did happen on multiple plays on Monday) we don’t know how many of those plays involved a missed tackle, but the Broncos had 24 missed tackles last night. Their were at least two on the TD pass to Rashee Rice.
According pro-football-reference.com the Broncos only had 85 missed tackles in the regular season in 2025.
Advertisement
The defense did end up getting two sacks (both by Zach Allen) who also had three QBhits to go with those sacks, meaning that he had at least five pressures in the game. The rest of the defense combined for two QBhits, one by Que Robinson and one by Jonah Elliss. Nik Bonitto did not show up in either stat, though he might have had a pressure. Admittedly he should have had plenty of them given that he was going up a player in Kahlil Benson who had never played a snap at LT above the high school level. Admittedly, the Chiefs were getting rid of the ball quickly on Monday, but he still should have had something to show. It’s possible that he had a pressure since those have not been tabulated yet.
According to NFL Next Gen stats, the Chief runners last night we getting -0.1 yards before contact, meaning that they were getting hit at or behind the LOS on most plays. They still managed to gain 223 yards on 35 actual runs on Monday (taking out the kneel-downs). That’s 6.37 yards per carry. That’s the second worst run defense in the league right now. Only the Panthers defense, which allowed 291 yards on 39 carries (7.46 ypc), was worse in week one.
