The Broncos tried something different on Sunday by having quarterbacks coach Klint Kubiak call the team’s offensive plays instead of head coach Nathaniel Hackett.
A game-opening 92-yard touchdown drive made that look like a wise move, but the Broncos weren’t able to find the end zone again. The 16 points that they managed still might have been enough, but a blunder by quarterback Russell Wilson left the door wide open for the Raiders at the end of the fourth quarter.
Wilson threw an incompletion on a third down on the first play after the two minute warning when he should have taken a sack in order to keep the clock running. The Raiders had no timeouts, but got the ball with 1:43 left and drove to tie the game on a Daniel Carlson field goal thanks in large part to Wilson’s generosity.
The Raiders would go on to win on a Davante Adams touchdown in overtime and Wilson said after the game that “the ball just kind of went away from me” while trying to get it to rookie wideout Jalen Virgil. Hackett’s take was that the Broncos needed to do whatever they could to keep the clock running.
“We called a pass — you got to keep the clock running,” Hackett said of the third-down play. “One way or the other . . . you just want to be sure the clock is running . . . but if something happened in the pocket, that’s one of those situations where you can take a sack or you can just run the ball. Obviously we want the clock running in that situation.”
The Hackett-Wilson partnership has not fulfilled any of the expectations that the Broncos had coming into this season and it will be interesting to see what course the Broncos chart for the future once this season finally reaches the finish line.