Nathaniel Hackett is the Broncos Biggest Liability
The new head coach is clearly over-matched to a degree we have never seen from a Broncos coach
Earlier this year when the NFL released the schedule, I opened up the secondary ticket market to see what it would cost me to attend Russell Wilson’s first game in Denver. Initially I was trying to find some value in the third deck, but a couple of tickets five rows up on the 25 yard line behind the Broncos bench going for less than half of other seats in that area caught my eye. I decided to splurge because of this bucket-list style event, thinking I’d cherish the memory forever of sitting that close for such a symbolically important game.
Walking out of the game yesterday, I could not have cared less whether I was 5 rows up from the field or in the very last row in the 3rd deck. The memory I will take from that game is the same: unprecedented frustration with the most incompetent head-coaching I have witnessed from the Denver Broncos in my lifetime.
I was initially thrilled with the new Broncos head coach. Nathaniel Hackett ran a modern offense in Green Bay with tons of presnap motion—an extremely effective tactic every smart team uses that former Broncos Offensive Coordinator Pat Shurmur had to be dragged kicking and screaming into incorporating into his playbook—and I assumed that the days of the Broncos playing a befuddling conservative style were over. I didn’t know if the Broncos would be a Super Bowl contender, but at the very least I assumed that with a new Hall of Fame QB and a young energetic head coach endorsed by Aaron Rodgers commanding the offense, the team wouldn’t be boring.
Fast-forward two weeks into the season and the Broncos have two touchdowns, have yet to score in the red zone and have been more conservative than they were under Vic Fangio. Sitting five rows up for the home opener of a new era is an immensely exciting prospect, yet I could not have been more bored watching that calamity unfold yesterday.
In the first game at Seattle, the Broncos had trouble getting the playcalls in on time and Wilson seemingly snapped the ball with 0 seconds left on the playclock more often than he did with time on the playclock. As immensely frustrating as that was to watch, it was relatively easy to excuse it. A new head coach implementing a new system for a new quarterback on the road in a hostile noisy environment is a recipe for miscommunication, and so Broncos fans could easily chalk that up to growing pains.
In week 2 at home, the problem inexplicably got worse under what should be ideal conditions. The home fans were so annoyed with the playcalls coming in late that we began counting down the play clock like it was the Royal Rumble in the 4th quarter. Most videos I’ve seen on Twitter show one play late in the 4th where it was particularly audible on the TV broadcast, but it started well before then after the calamitous sequence late in the 3rd quarter I embedded below the next paragraph. I have watched thousands of football games, many of them bad ones (I am a UMass grad after all), and I have never in my life seen a crowd get that exasperated with a head coach. Counting down the play clock was Broncos Country voicing a vote of no confidence in Nathaniel Hackett.
There is no sequence that better encapsulates how not ready for primetime Nathaniel Hackett and his coaching staff are (Defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero excepted, who opened the year with a half where no one on the field knew what anyone else was doing, he fixed it at halftime, and his unit has yet to give up a TD since) than this one late in the 3rd quarter. This is one of the worst sequences I have ever seen on a football field and it proves how Nathaniel Hackett simply is not ready to be an NFL head coach right now.
I sent this to a Lions fan and they were aghast at the level of incompetency on display here. Hyperbole is impossible in this situation, as the most extreme negative adjectives you can think of are perfectly accurate descriptions of how badly the Broncos botched these plays. This is as bad as it gets without turning the ball over. Add in the fact that the Broncos used all 3 timeouts by 7 minutes left in the 4th—including burning one when they forgot to send a punt returner out on the field—and it’s clear as day that the new Broncos brass has serious trouble competently managing an NFL game.
And I haven’t even gotten to the part where Hackett blew week 1 by deciding that settling for a 64 yard field goal (and not even trying to draw Seattle offsides as they let the clock run down) was a superior option to letting his quarter-billion dollar QB try to get 5 yards when the offense was averaging 6.8 yards per play in the 2nd half. If Hackett was actively trying to choose the worst option in every key moment so far this year, I don’t think the Broncos season would look that much different. Throwing from the shotgun three times on 1st and goal from the two while having a RB who averages like 4 yards after contact looks more like tanking than trying to win a football game.
People have pointed out that Josh McDaniels went 6-0 to open his career before becoming the biggest trainwreck in the history of Denver Broncos head coaches, and Vance Joseph who isn’t far behind him, started his career 3-1 before losing 19 of his next 27 games—so drawing grand conclusions from two games is premature. I am sympathetic to this line of reasoning, but the issues Broncos Country has with Hackett lie in his process, not necessarily his outcomes. They could be 2-0 right now and the fanbase would still be justifiably apoplectic at the lack of coordination and professionalism from what most people expected to be a playoff contender.
Not scoring touchdowns on 6 trips to the red zone? It could just be growing pains, but consistently throwing out of the shotgun in short yardage when they have a bowling ball at running back is the main reason the Broncos have yet to cash in a red zone trip. Additionally, saying in his mea culpa press conference that he would not have kicked the field goal if it were at 65 yards, but 64 was good enough to sit on the play clock and stop trying to move the ball demonstrates an alarming lack of understanding of basic statistics. Any head coach who thinks in binary terms with their field goal unit (and not in probabiities) is just a head coach who has yet to be fired.
But ultimately, the thing that proves that Nathaniel Hackett right now is not an NFL-caliber head coach is the inability to get the playcalls in on time. This is the most basic aspect of the job and this consistent mess is proof that he either is over-thinking the situation or is not prepared to adjust his gameplan to the ebbs and flows of a game or flat out cannot keep up with the fast pace of an NFL game. This doesn’t mean he can’t eventually fix these errors and get the offense back on schedule, but the pure fact that Russell Wilson consistently has to sprint to the line and eschew any pre-snap reads and audibles in order to just avoid a calamitous delay of game penalty proves that the biggest road block the Denver Broncos face en route to securing a playoff berth isn’t Justin Herbert or Patrick Mahomes, but their own head coach.
I hope that eventually Hackett figures all this out and becomes the head coach we all believed he was going to be when Denver hired him—it’s not fun sitting here talking about an unmitigated disaster two weeks into what should be the most exciting season since the Super Bowl 50 victory—but alas, here we are. Through two games it’s clear that the Broncos do not currently have an NFL-caliber head coach, and if Hackett fails to demonstrate any kind of improvement the rest of the year year while Denver misses the playoffs, the Broncos would be justified in firing him after just one season.