ENGLEWOOD, Colo — Zach Allen makes his living mixing it up, blow by blow, in a mosh pit. A rugby scrum. A tumultuous collection of behemoth humanity.
It’s a wonder they can see where the ball is as they bounce off shoulder pads, thigh pads, face masks, biceps, triceps, hands, fingers, elbows and cleats. There’s just so much chaos along the line of scrimmage of a football game.
“There definitely is,’’ Allen, a top Broncos defensive lineman, said in an interview this week with 9NEWS for the Broncos Huddle. “The saying is, ‘See a little, see a lot.’ You just try to read your keys and hopefully make a play.”
The 6-foot-5, 285-pound Allen will be counted on to play rough, tough football today when the Broncos meet the Los Angeles Chargers at SoFi Stadium. By winning five of their last six games, the 6-6 Broncos are one game plus a tiebreaker away from the No. 7 and final AFC playoff spot. They have five games left to make up the difference.
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“We’re in the playoff hunt and every game is even more important,’’ Allen said. “It’s kind of like being 2-2 in a basketball series or hockey. Our focus right now is on the Chargers. We can’t look too far down the line but the nice thing is a lot of teams we play are teams competing for the last playoff spots so it’s a case of us controlling our own destiny a little bit.”
The Broncos haven’t played very well at SoFi since the Chargers moved there in 2020. Denver is 0-4 at the spectacular venue that Stan Kroenke built – 0-3 against the Chargers and 0-1 against the NFC Los Angeles Rams, who smoked the Broncos on Christmas Day last year. It’s commonly known the road is difficult on the visiting offense because crowd noise can make it difficult to hear the snap count. So what’s difficult about playing on the road for the visiting defense?
“Playing on the road for a defense is sometimes hard because of the amount of hard counts or dummy counts they can use,’’ Allen said. “But luckily, even in Houston (last week), our fans travel well and that neutralizes it or limits it so we’ve got a real great fan base that will help us with that.”
It may be around 40% Broncos fans among the SoFi crowd today as the Chargers continue to struggle to gain a segment of fans from the L.A. fan base.
In Allen’s last two seasons in Arizona, he was coached up by defensive line mate and future Hall of Famer J.J. Watt. They remain in touch even though Allen moved on to Colorado and Watt retired from playing and is now an NFL studio analyst.
‘Obviously, the player everyone knows about but being the leader and a mentor, he definitely helped me a lot with my career,’’ Allen said. “I think that’s why you saw those two years I was with J.J., I kind of made some big jumps.
“Even now, he’ll be doing the CBS broadcast and he’ll be texting me when he sees my game and sees our film. We still talk about it and he’s a great friend.’’
Allen, 26, joined the Broncos in March after becoming a free agent and signing a three-year deal worth more than $15 million a year. After growing up in New Canaan, Conn., playing his college ball at Boston College, and first four NFL seasons in the Arizona desert, what does he think about his new home city in Denver?
“Love it,’’ Allen said. “Love it. I actually went to B.C. with Justin. Obviously, he’s been here for so long and all he does is talk about how great it is. Everybody who comes here, it seems like they all retire here, they stay here forever. I definitely see why now. The weather’s great. The people are great. The living is great. The nature is beautiful and also, too, it’s fun coming to work every day here so I really lucked out.”
After sleeping in a Los Angeles hotel room Saturday night, Allen will get ready to defend quarterback Justin Herbert and the Chargers’ offense today.
“Definitely impressed with how he moves in the pocket,’’ Allen said. ‘And his arm, everyone can see how talented a thrower he is. But he can create space to make throws on the run. He has some good scrambling ability and luckily it seems like the past six, seven weeks we’ve only played scramblers so we’ve had a little bit of practice in that.’’
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