Three statements for each week one NFL game

Tennessee Titans @ Denver Broncos

1. Drew Lock should be very comfortable in that Pat Shurmur offense

While the Broncos only scored 14 points and the numbers didn’t look great, I thought what the second-year quarterback showed was pretty promising and he should continue to grow under his new offensive coordinator. I talked about Lock as one my breakout candidates in the midst of the offseason because of all the weapons Denver had added around him and the fact I liked the new OC as a fit for him. I liked how Shurmur put his young signal-caller on the move off bootlegs with easy dump-offs to guys like Noah Fant, who quickly burned the defense after the catch, Lock also did a nice job buying time in the pocket without taking a single sack and he showed a willingness to take some deep shots – even though he didn’t quite connect yet. Most impressive about this was that he didn’t have his top receiver Courtland Sutton and second-round pick K.J. Hamler to stretch the field. He did make a couple of ill-advised throws across his body – one for a TD to Fant and another one that should have intercepted in the second half, but overall I like where he is heading towards.

2. The Broncos defense will be a problem even without Von Miller

Man, the star of the show for Denver however was this defense. They received some devastating news just last week, when Von Miller suffered a potential season-ending ankle injury in practice, that could have really put a damper on them, but these guys came to play. Third-year linebacker Alexander Johnson was pretty much un-blockable, especially in the zone run game, where Tennessee’s linemen could not climb up to him before he shot the gap. He also shut down a QB sneak and got through untouched on a blitz to force an incompletion on the final drive of the game. Rookie corner Michael Ojemudia – who I highlighted as a sleeper – had a pretty nice debut, including what should have been his first career INT, but was wiped out by a teammate. And former Titan Jurrell Casey was a factor in his revenge game with a couple of passes batted down. While Tennessee did move the ball to some degree between the 20s, through three quarters they forced Derrick Henry to stop his feet or bounce out wide constantly, as they played downhill all game and Josey Jewell even put Henry flat on his back – an uncommon sight, holding the Titans to seven points through three quarters (combined with Gostkowski’s horrific kicking day).

3. Tennessee’s D-line could kick some ass

While I did think the Broncos defense was highly impressive and Drew Lock didn’t look bad in game one, this Titans front could be a problem down the road. Even though they didn’t sack Lock once, Harold Landry got after the young signal-caller all game long, directly forcing a couple of crucial incompletions – once with a tight-end wide open at the goal-line and another one on fourth-and-three close to midfield with about five minutes left in the game. Jadeveon Clowney was relatively quiet, but you saw that ability to crash off the edge and not allow the ground game to function coming his way. The guy I’m most pumped to follow however is Jeffery Simmons. He was another one of my breakout candidates for 2020, because of the type of dominant force he was in college, before he fell in the draft due to a torn ACL. He could be an absolute monster in the middle and already flashed some of that against Denver, knocking back his blocker in the run game on a few occasions and recovering a fumble.

You can also check out my Youtube recap of week one!