Trevor Siemian Showed Promise, but It's Still All About the Denver Defense

As is custom, the NFL opened the season with Panthers–Broncos with ratings in mind; there's no surer way to grab viewers than with a Super Bowl rematch doubling as a season kickoff. Thursday night's game in Denver, though, also served as a perfect litmus test for the defending champions. The Broncos had one of the stranger titles in recent history: in an age of downfield passing, they won with a hyperspeed defense and a Hall of Fame quarterback not only past his prime but past any sort of recognizable and still-effective post-prime. They followed that with an offseason just as strange. Peyton Manning retired, Denver looked around a bit for a new QB, and eventually Trevor Siemian, last season's third-stringer, won the job. On the one hand, it felt like a kind of rest-on-your-laurels shrug; on the other, the team had proved it didn't need a world-beating signal caller to begin with, so why not give Siemian a shot?

Denver won the opener when Carolina kicker Graham Gano's 50-yard field-goal attempt in the final seconds went left, but it had answered the night's most pressing question long before. After falling behind by scores of 7-0 and 17-7, the Broncos came back in characteristic fashion, pressuring quarterback Cam Newton, swarming in the secondary, and keeping to a modest, move-the-sticks offense. As the game went along, it became clear that no disaster was imminent. Minus Manning, the champs looked fine.

In some areas, in fact, better than fine. C.J. Anderson led a rushing attack that found footing against the excellent Carolina front, going for 92 yards and a touchdown on 20 carries. On the Broncos' first scoring drive, Anderson followed rookie fullback Andy Janovich to the left side for 28 yards; moments later, Janovich matched the yardage with his own third-down scoring dash. As impressive as the big-yardage runs, though, were the smaller but consistently available chunks. Anderson and the Denver line had a seemingly telepathic connection, the latter wedging open a gap just as the former spotted it and jump-cut through for a gain of six.

Siemian, for his part, showed promise. His throws were zippy and usually accurate, and, in the most obvious contrast to Manning, he proved athletic enough to pick up yards with his feet when he didn't see something he liked. The inevitable mistakes—two picks, other passes that could or should have been—seemed to come less from panic than plain inexperience; Northwestern, where Siemian last started a game, doesn't tend to face defenders like Luke Kuechly and Thomas Davis.

As is always the case with the Broncos, though, things centered on the defense. The secondary closed Newton's passing lanes, most spectacularly with a fourth-quarter tip-and-diving-grab interception from Chris Harris Jr., and the pass rush founds its tempo in the second half and punished Newton the rest of the night. DeMarcus Ware and Von Miller sandwiched Newton for a third-quarter sack that left him with a gimpy leg, and the two each brought him down once more on the Panthers' last drive, keeping them from a closer field-goal attempt. In the hours after the game, when video reels were put together and Newton seemed forgetful during a press conference, the Broncos' unflagged hits to the Carolina QB's head became the story. However else these hits resonate—as just a couple more grains of information-sand in a damn big bucket concerning the dangers inherent to football—they also show how often Denver defenders were close enough to Newton to cause harm.

In all, this year's Broncos look a lot like last year's. They run and hit; their inconsistent passing game now comes in the form of sometimes misguided darts instead of theoretically sound but loopy Manning lobs. They'll keep bucking the trend of big aerial yardage and, by the looks of it, hanging in with the big-yardage teams. An offseason that at times appeared orchestrated for a fall-off hasn't seemed to produce one. The champs are still here.