ENGLEWOOD, Colo — These will not be the three-weeks-ago Chargers the Broncos will be facing on New Year’s Eve.
“We’re 100 percent going to get a different team,’’ said inside linebacker Alex Singleton, the Broncos leading tackler with 153.
The Chargers’ team the Broncos faced three weeks ago in Los Angeles was a mess. Brandon Staley was five days away from losing his head coach position. Star quarterback Justin Herbert was two quarters away from suffering a season-ending finger injury. The Broncos won handily, 24-7.
Now led on an interim basis by outside linebackers coach Giff Smith and backup QB Easton Stick, the Chargers nearly beat the Bills in Buffalo on Saturday before losing 24-22 on a field goal with 28 seconds left.
“All I want to do is beat AFC West teams,’’ Singleton said during a Zoom conference call Tuesday with the local media. “These last two games (against the Chargers and Raiders) are important. There’s still a chance we can win the playoffs. I know we’re fully focusing on the Chargers this week. We’ve got to beat the Chargers to be able to do that. They’re not going to come in here and lay down and let us dictate the game. We’ve got to go do that. To be able to do that at home and win at home is important.”
Stick, who engineered a fourth quarter touchdown drive against the Broncos three weeks ago in relief of Herbert, went 23 of 33 for 215 yards against the Bills.
“Easton Stick. He’s going to play better,’’ Singleton said. “There’s a difference between when Justin Herbert is getting every single rep in practice and you’re just kind of getting scout reps and walkthrough reps. And now he’ll be 2 ½ weeks of full starter reps so he’s going to play better. They’re going to have a game plan for him. We’ll see what they do early in the game and hopefully we’ll be ready for it.’’
As Singleton anchors the Denver defense, Mike McGlinchey sets the right edge in protecting quarterback Russell Wilson on offense. In the Broncos’ upset loss to New England on Christmas Eve, Wilson was sacked in four straight, third quarter possessions.
“Certainly it wasn’t good enough,’’ McGlinchey said Tuesday. “It wasn’t good enough as a group, as individually for myself, it’s all got to be better. It’s a tough deal. They had a good plan. They rushed a lot, they blitzed quite a bit. And they made us have to be perfect and we didn’t do that. And unfortunately it hurt us a lot in the way we operated on offense.”
The Broncos’ bleak playoff chances can turn hopeful this week if they, first, beat the Chargers, and then have roughly four of six other games fall their way -- the Colts lose at home to the Raiders, the Bills lose at home to the Patriots, the Jaguars lose at home to the Panthers, the Steelers lose at Seattle, the Bengals lose at Kansas City and the Texans lose at home to the Titans.
The playoff scenario requires so much help from outside forces the Broncos can only concentrate on their game against the Chargers.
“To be able to be a true professional you have to be able to put your best work in during the hardest time and biggest times of adversity and certainly we’re going through that right now,’’ McGlinchey said. “But I believe this team is capable of great things.”
Fourth quarter: “I think the spontaneous nature and the way we played (that fourth quarter), we’ve been pretty excellent this year in the 2-minute-type drill and I think Russell has succeeded in that aspect throughout his whole career.”
Alex Singleton: “Obviously it sucked. The message from coach was go enjoy Christmas, kind of get away and be ready to come in and work. That’s our mindset right now. Take care of business like we know we can and want to.”
“Going into last week it was kind of you had to win all three to control our own destiny. We didn’t do that so it’s forget whatever you wanted to think. We’ve just got to prepare to beat the Chargers this weekend and let everything else take care of itself.’’
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