We\u2019re finally here. It\u2019s the last week of the regular season and the AFC West Champion Denver Broncos have a chance to lock up home field advantage throughout the Playoffs, and with the added bonus of the Super Bowl being at Levi Stadium, a place that Denver doesn\u2019t seem to mind playing at.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how the Broncos win their fourteenth game of the season.<\/p>\n
1. Dominate time of possession<\/p>\n
Their last game against the Chiefs was a lot closer than it should have been, but through most of the game it had the feeling that it wasn\u2019t as close as the scoreboard may have demonstrated. The Broncos absolutely dominated time of possession, and over the last few weeks they\u2019ve been a lot better at putting together extended offensive drives. Over the last four games they have 11 drives of 10 or more plays, with a 19-play drive being their longest.<\/p>\n
If they\u2019re able to keep the clock moving, keep the Chargers\u2019 offense off the field, and finish drives with touchdowns, then this game will be over quick and they\u2019ll be able to put it out of reach even quicker.<\/p>\n
2. Force multiple turnovers<\/p>\n
The Broncos, while they have a top-three defense in yards, top-four defense in points, and have the most sacks in the league, they rank 25th in turnover margin at -5 and 27th in takeaways with 12 (nine interceptions and three fumbles). It really is impressive, in a way, that Denver is able to hold offenses to such few yards without managing even one turnover a game.<\/p>\n
Especially considering they\u2019re going against back ups on Sunday, it would mean a lot for this defense, who has relatively struggled since the bye week, if they\u2019re able to generate multiple turnovers on Sunday. Maybe Talanoa Hufanga can finally keep a hold of a pick because he should have at least five this year. And given how good the offense has been at elongating drives, maybe just even one turnover can put this game out of reach.<\/p>\n
The Chargers this year have given the ball away 19 times, right around the middle of the pack in giveaways. They have one of the better offenses in the league too. Vance Joseph needs to come up with something to fix this lack of game-changing plays.<\/p>\n
If it wasn\u2019t for that incredible defensive effort by the Chiefs to pick Bo Nix off on their side of the 50 yard line, that game last week would\u2019ve been not nearly as close as it ended up being. And I have a feeling that they\u2019ll have a similar game plan this week.<\/p>\n
This point goes hand-in-hand with the first one. If the Broncos want to dominate time of possession then they\u2019ll need to stay ahead of the sticks. No bad penalties are allowed. And they were pretty clean last week too in the penalty department. Offensively they only had that bogus false start and pass interference calls go against them. If they can recreate that on Sunday then they\u2019ll be in the driver\u2019s seat the entire game.<\/p>\n
No turnovers, no penalties, no making things harder for yourself. If Denver can to that then they should be able to cruise to the No. 1 seed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019re finally here. It\u2019s the last week of the regular season and the AFC West Champion Denver Broncos…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2064],"tags":[241,1151,7,1014,262,2444,2443,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-646273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-chargers","8":"tag-chargers","9":"tag-denver-broncos-news","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-los-angeles","12":"tag-los-angeles-chargers","13":"tag-losangeles","14":"tag-losangeleschargers","15":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115821568627461045","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}