Nathaniel Hackett knows Broncos won ugly, but admits it’s still satisfying
Sep 25, 2022, 10:08 PM
That was something.
The Denver Broncos defeated the San Francisco 49ers 11-10 on Sunday night at Empower Field at Mile High, improving to 2-1 on the season.
This game was ugly. Very ugly. But Denver’s defense played outstanding, particularly in the second half when the unit forced three turnovers. QB Russell Wilson led one touchdown drive, capped off by a Melvin Gordon one-yard run, but it was enough.
Still, the Broncos know they have a ton to cleanup. Head coach Nathaniel Hackett gave a lengthy answer in his postgame press conference about how satisfying this one was, but also admitting the team must do better.
“As a coach, you always want to be able to coach harder when you win. Because there’s still so many things that we need to correct. Offensively, there’s probably some things even on defense, even though it was a great game. There’s always going to be things that we can correct and we all want to grow as a team,” Hackett said. “When you win you have that ability to coach even harder. For us, to build off of it, heck we had a good win last week. We had another one this week and however we have to win we’re going to do everything we can. We just want to be sure will all stick together.”
And stick together the Broncos did. The defense got stop after stop, even with the offense looking inept most of the night. Wilson threw for just 184 yards, going 20-33 through the air. Gordon had only 26 yards on 12 carries, but also the game-winning score. That group has to be better, as the Broncos punted 10 times against the 49ers.
“It’s something that we’ve got to correct. We obviously want to score a lot more points and it didn’t happen today. We knew it was going to be a slugfest versus this team. When we needed to get it, we got it, and we’re going to continually develop and get better as an offense,” Hackett said.
Through three games the Broncos have just three touchdowns. They scored one against Seattle, one against Houston and one against San Francisco. Still, their 2-1 record has them tied atop the AFC West with the Kansas City Chiefs. A win is a win, but Denver won’t be able to replicate this formula very often.
It’s nice to get the victory, but also hear the head coach say the offense needs to get a ton better. And quickly.
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