Offense — D

By the time the Bron­cos’ offense woke up, it was too late and there would be no sec­ond con­sec­u­tive mir­a­cle come­back. The first-half woes per­sist. The Bron­cos trailed 20–3 at half­time and the offense was 1‑of‑5 on third down and tail­backs Phillip Lind­say and Melvin Gor­don com­bined for 10 yards on six car­ries. Drew Lock’s inter­cep­tion was care­less — under pres­sure, threw off his back foot and air­mailed Jer­ry Jeudy — but Lock kept fight­ing and end­ed up with 313 yards pass­ing (215 in the sec­ond half). Jeudy took anoth­er for­ward step in his devel­op­ment with a sea­son-high 125 yards. Unless this offense finds a way to start bet­ter, it will have to scrap the game plan at half­time like the last two weeks.

Defense — D

Play­ing with­out top cor­ner­backs A.J. Bouye (con­cus­sion) and Bryce Calla­han (ankle) was expect­ed to be a chore … and it was. But Atlanta shouldn’t have made it look that easy. Quar­ter­back Matt Ryan sliced and diced his way to 284 yards pass­ing (25-of-35) and three touch­downs. The only error he made was the inter­cep­tion by safe­ty Justin Sim­mons in the third quar­ter that gave the Bron­cos a momen­tary glim­mer of hope. We didn’t hear Bradley Chubb’s num­ber called until he was called for a sec­ond-half penal­ty. The run defense, minus Shel­by Har­ris, held up, allow­ing only 2.9 yards per car­ry and Dre’Mont Jones and DeMar­cus Walk­er had sacks. But they need Bouye and Calla­han back … quickly.

Special teams — B

It was an even­tu­al day for rook­ie Tyrie Cleve­land, who returned five kick­offs for a 24.2‑yard aver­age and he made good deci­sions on pick­ing which lanes to try and work through. Punter Sam Mar­tin aver­aged 45 yards on six punts. Coach Vic Fan­gio thought about send­ing Bran­don McManus out for a 58- or 59-yard field goal on the Bron­cos’ first pos­ses­sion, but called time­out and stuck with Mar­tin after he said he was talked out of it by spe­cial teams coor­di­na­tor Tom McMa­hon. Minus Dion­tae Spencer and Calla­han, the Bron­cos turned to rook­ie KJ Ham­ler to return punts (two fair catch­es and an eight-yard return).

Coaching — D

Next time, Fan­gio needs to trust his gut and send McManus out for the field goal instead of punt­ing and try­ing to play field posi­tion foot­ball. The con­di­tions appeared to be fine for a long attempt. Offen­sive coor­di­na­tor Pat Shur­mur made a good call on Hamler’s end-around that gained 15 yards (sec­ond-longest car­ry of the game) and mak­ing Jeudy’s cross­ing route a reg­u­lar part of the game plan reaped imme­di­ate ben­e­fits. Fan­gio fell on his sword, say­ing he need­ed to call a bet­ter game on defense, but he was call­ing it left-hand­ed with­out three starters (Bouye, Calla­han and Har­ris). We would have liked Fan­gio to try and steal a pos­ses­sion at some point in the first three quar­ters because that was the only way to slow down Atlanta’s offense.