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Grading The Week: Worried about Broncos’ defense? You should be.

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Vance Joseph deserves a raise. Or three. The Broncos defense has carried the flag for one of the most fun, outta-nowhere seasons in team history — a heady mix of kids and vets raising Cain while allowing Bo Nix and a young receiving corps time (and space) to grow up on the fly.

That being said: What the heck was that this past Thursday night, VJ?

Seriously. After this past Thursday’s Brain-camp Bowl at the Chargers, the Broncos’ once air-tight D has surrendered at least 32 points in two of their last three tilts. Context: Over the previous 12 games, a Denver opponent had topped the 30-point threshold just once (Baltimore, Week 9).

Team Grading The Week’s been crunching the numbers on the Broncos lately, and they ain’t pretty. From Weeks 11-15, no NFL defense has given up more than Denver’s 298.5 passing yards allowed per game. So: Has VJ’s unit been “found out”?

Or are they just fatigued, the way GTW Central fears Nikola Jokic will be come springtime, after having to pull a franchise’s backside out of the fire so many times over so many months?

We’ve got an additional theory, and it stems from another concerning statistical trend.

Broncos Sack Attack — C-

The Sack Attack is … well, starting to lack.

The Broncos are averaging 2.3 QB takedowns per game over their last three contests — which, ordinarily, would be fine. Heck, even serviceable.

The problem? Regression.

Over Weeks 3-12, a 10-game stretch that preceded Jerry Jeudy rolling back into town and breaking our souls (and many, many coverages), the Broncos racked up 40 sacks (4.0 per game).

Again, we never claimed to be math experts up in the GTW cubicles, but that’s a drop-off this month of roughly 50% over the previous 10 weeks.

And did we mention that Denver went 7-3 over that 10-game span?

Or that the Broncos are 2-4 in the six games in which they’ve racked up two sacks or fewer — a stretch that includes Week 15 (vs. Indianapolis) and Week 16 (at L.A.)?

Whether that slippage is a chicken or egg thing with a beat-up secondary, it doesn’t matter. Because with Cincinnati (Joe Burrow) and Kansas City (maybe Patrick Mahomes) up next, the temperature inside the hen house at Dove Valley is only going to get hotter over the holidays.

NWSL expansion to Denver — A

Women’s pro soccer is coming to our fair city, and it’s about darned time, too. News of the Mile High City beating out Cleveland and Cincy for an NWSL expansion team only affirms what anybody with a pulse around here already knows: Denver is a good — like really, really good — soccer town.

So good, that it sort of blows Team GTW’s minds to this day that the Front Range isn’t a part of the massive North American World Cup game plan for 2026. (One veteran GTW staffer insists that the single-best game day atmosphere he’s seen at Empower Field over the last six years was not, in fact, a Broncos home game — but the CONCACAF Nations League final at Mile High in June 2021 between the U.S. and Mexico.)

But a belated fist-bump to some of the powers that made this be, especially Ben Hubbard and Tom Dunmore of For Denver FC, the wind that helped to get this particular ball all the way over the line.

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