Tired of their team's poor clock management on Sunday afternoon, Broncos fans decided to help. Onlookers at Empower Field at Mile High began counting down the play clock "5, 4, 3, 2, 1..." near the end of Denver's 16-9 win over Houston.
"Yeah, I guess that was helpful if needed," quarterback Russell Wilson said, chuckling, via the team transcript. "I guess they do that in basketball sometimes -- you know I've been around some basketball players and stuff like that. You know, this crowd was amazing tonight. Once again, how they were especially when the defense was out there with the game on the line -- I know how hard that is as a quarterback hearing all of that noise and all that tenacity. That was great that our fans we're really into it and just a great football crowd for sure."
Through two weeks, the Broncos have struggled to get in and out of the huddle in a timely fashion. On Sunday, they were called for two delay-of-game penalties and three false starts, usually not an issue at home games.
"We're just going to have to be sure we evaluate everything, whether it's getting the personnel out there -- or lack thereof -- and making sure the plays are coming in nice and clean," Denver head coach Nathaniel Hackett said. "We've just got to keep talking about that. I'll talk with Russ, find out anything that I can do to help him make it better."
Hackett added: "That's inexcusable. That's on us. That's us hurting ourselves."
Broncos fans grew frustrated with the club's inability to put away the Texans. The offense struggled with Wilson completing just 45.2 percent of 31 pass attempts (a career low), and once again misfired in the red zone, going 0-2.
Boo birds rained down from Denver fans.
"I would be booing myself," Hackett said. "I was getting very frustrated. We get down to the red zone two times. Don't get another touchdown, which is unbelievably frustrating. I don't think we have scored in there yet. That's something that all of our guys have to step it up. Whether we run the ball more, whatever we're doing, we just have to execute at a higher level."
The Broncos escaped Sunday to avoid an 0-2 hole to open the season, but they'll need to play much better from the top down to have any chance of competing in the AFC West.
