Free Friday: Chargers defense rebounds as Herbert stuns Broncos

The Broncos came right out and punched the Chargers in the mouth. Three straight touchdowns to start the game with the normally weak Broncos run attack dominating the Chargers on the ground. The Marvin Mims near-touchdown demonstrated a lot of what was on display early:

The Chargers simply couldn’t keep outside leverage on this play and it cost them.

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Los Angeles did not fold — Justin Herbert was keeping them in the game early, and then Kris Abrams-Draine picked him for what at the time looked to be a momentum-shifter at the end of the half. Then the Broncos stalled out and created a “For the lovers of historical oddities” moment. There was a free kick field goal after a Broncos penalty to end the half. A successful one had not happened since the 1970s. Cameron Dicker stood up to the moment to cut the lead to eight at halftime.

The Broncos ended the third quarter with one positive rush, an Audric Estime run at the very start of the half. And once the Chargers started shutting that down and getting more pressure on Bo Nix, it was harder for the Nix scheme to stay together. Nix was barely pressured at all in the first half, taking only one Joey Bosa sack. (Hilariously it came after Herbstreit and Michaels dogged him for the better part of five minutes for playing hurt and looking like it.) Chargers DC Jesse Minter started dialing up big plays, getting the run gaps stuffed, and Nix shrunk in the spotlight.

Herbert had little run game to work with for most of this one and the Chargers ran a lot of play-action successfully. To his credit, he also looked a lot better against the blitz than he did against Tampa Bay last week. And also to his credit, he willed the Chargers back into this game:

You know, normal quarterback stuff. I feel like a lot of this year NFL media has been forced to play the “ah this quarterback is good, but the situation isn’t right.” Maybe that’s just me having to write about Patrick Mahomes or Jalen Hurts or C.J. Stroud every week. Well, here the situation was also not right. The Chargers were not bringing a lot else to the table on offense, and Herbert had to overcome some big drops and some big wins by Vance Joseph on sacks. And then he just kinda did it, and you remembered “oh yeah, franchise quarterbacks are good.”

Guard Trey Pipkins, who has been clearly been reading the books that Jim Harbaugh left around, said that “We would follow [Herbert] into the depths of hell …We would literally follow him anywhere and lay our lives on the line for that man.”

Here’s what happens when you don’t have a franchise quarterback (yet):

Quack.

Nix finished the game with just 3.3 air yards per attempt despite a few balls like that. His deep ball was spraying wildly. And once the Chargers were able to remove the threat of the Denver run game, they had big success on Denver’s passing plays. Nix had 43 passing yards on checkdowns in Denver’s final drive to cut the lead to seven, and he had 155 passing yards at halftime. In the space between? 66. Whether you want to look at an earlier deep ball that sailed so far it almost went out of bounds, Nix throwing the ball well past the line of scrimmage on the final drive … like I’m not trying to lay into him, he’s had a good rookie season. But we know a bad game when we see it.

The Chargers slide into sixth in the AFC playoff picture with the win, a head-to-head sweep over Denver handing them the tiebreak. This has made Cincinnati’s push for a playoff spot a little more interesting because they can take a head-to-head tiebreak on Denver next weekend. But we’re still talking about them — or Indy or Miami — needing to win out to catch the Broncos. What it really did was increase the odds that Denver is playing the No. 2 seed, likely the Bills, on the road in the first round.

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