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Tag: Jahdae Barron

  • Broncos-Chiefs scouting report: No Patrick Mahomes. No Gardner Minshew. Hello, Chris Oladokun.

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    Broncos (12-3) at Chiefs (6-9)

    When: 6:15 p.m. Thursday

    Where: GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City, Mo.

    TV/radio: Prime Video, 850 AM/94.1 FM

    Broncos-Chiefs series: Both Denver and Kansas City know this well. The Broncos are still down all-time to the Chiefs, at 57-73-0 in 130 total matchups in the franchises’ history. But Denver has the recent upper hand, with two straight regular-season wins and a nail-biting 22-19 win over Kansas City on Nov. 16. The Broncos’ defense hasn’t been the same since that win and subsequent bye, though.

    In the spotlight: Who the Kel(ce) is Chiefs starting quarterback Chris Oladokun?

    How the mighty have fallen.

    On Christmas, the Broncos will take a short flight up to Kansas City to witness the death throes of a franchise that only has a couple of games left on the throne. The Chiefs will not win the AFC West for the first time in a decade, and they’ll finish with a losing record for the first time since the 2-14 days of Romeo Crennel in 2012. This may well be the last time that Denver sees 36-year-old future Hall of Fame tight end Travis Kelce, who will make a retirement decision after the season. They won’t see quarterback Patrick Mahomes — and might not next year, either — after Mahomes tore his ACL and LCL in Dec. 14’s 16-13 loss to the Chargers.

    To make matters worse, Kansas City’s QB stopgap Gardner Minshew hurt his knee in Sunday’s loss to the Titans. That leaves this Kansas City dynasty, for a primetime affair with the country watching on Christmas evening, turning to … Chris Oladokun.

    Who?

    Here’s what’s known on the 28-year-old Oladokun, from a national perspective. He played two seasons of FBS football as a backup at USF, from 2017-18. He transferred to FCS program Samford for a couple of years. He started at South Dakota State for one year after that, and played well enough (3,164 yards, 25 TDs) to warrant a seventh-round pick by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2022’s draft. Oladokun was waived during roster cuts that fall, signed to Kansas City’s practice squad a few days later, and has stuck there pretty much ever since.

    Now, after being promoted to the active roster after Mahomes’ injury and filling in for an injured Minshew mid-game against Tennessee — 11-for-16, 111 yards — Oladokun will make the first start of his NFL career against the current No. 1 seed in the AFC.

    “It’s something I don’t take lightly,” Oladokun told Kansas City reporters Tuesday. “These opportunities don’t come around often, and so when you get ‘em, you gotta take that and run with it. So, this is not only a big game for our team, but me personally a big game, in terms of letting the league know what I can do and letting these coaches know what I can do.”

    So what can he do? Chiefs head coach Andy Reid said this week that Oladokun has had an “easy transition” because of his knowledge of Kansas City’s offensive verbiage, but that they’d naturally ease back on specific formations without Mahomes. One obvious similarity: just 8% of Mahomes’ attempts this season have come from under center, in Kansas City’s shotgun-heavy offense. Just one of Oladokun’s 16 attempts against the Titans came from under center, too. That doesn’t seem destined to change.

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    Luca Evans

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  • LB Justin Strnad believes Broncos’ struggles to cover RBs are ‘miscommunication,’ not a lack of ability

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    Justin Strnad has seen the discourse.

    By this point, it’s no national secret that the Broncos’ current linebacker corps has produced less-than-stellar results in coverage. In two losses this season, Colts running back Jonathan Taylor and the Chargers’ Omarion Hampton left Denver’s defense dizzy on wheel routes. And the public’s assumption on such plays, Strnad acknowledges, is that it’s automatically the fault of him or fellow starting ILB Alex Singleton. Sometimes it is.

    “But then there’s also times,” Strnad told The Denver Post in the locker room Thursday, “where it’s like, I don’t really know what they’re talking about a lot of the time.”

    Remember when Taylor flared out of the backfield and whizzed away for a 43-yard gain in the Colts’ win in Week 2? Remember when Hampton got free on a fourth-quarter screen and sped for 22 yards in the Chargers’ win in Week 3? Both plays, specifically, were “100% miscommunication,” as Strnad told The Post.

    Would free-agent add Dre Greenlaw — stuck on injured reserve until at least Week 7 — be great to have right now, heading into this matchup with the Eagles and reigning NFL Offensive Player of the Year Saquon Barkley? Of course. But Denver’s dropped coverages on running backs are more a matter of overall defensive communication, Strnad believes, than a lack of ability in current ILB personnel.

    “You get people get wrapped in like, ‘Oh, he’s this in coverage, he’s that in coverage,’” Strnad told The Post. “Like you said, I think Dre was great — has been great in his career all-around, as a player. But I think all our ‘backers can cover, to be honest with you.

    “A lot of the stuff that you see on TV where a guy’s wide open, that might be more communication (than) it is to someone’s coverage ability.”

    Regardless of the reason, the fact remains: There were back-to-back losses where head coach Sean Payton pointed to coverage breakdowns against running backs. The result was a combined 109 receiving yards for Taylor and Hampton across two weeks. Denver can’t afford such mistakes against Barkley, who didn’t feature heavily as a pass-catcher in his first season in Philadelphia but has caught 14 balls through four weeks in 2025.

    The Broncos cleaned up their underneath coverages against a thoroughly inept Bengals offense in Week 4. Still, Bengals back Chase Brown had three catches for 31 yards. Sunday’s matchup against Philadelphia could be a major precedent-setter for the Broncos’ ability to shadow a mismatch back, one of a specific few phases that’s vital to Denver’s improvement.

    “I don’t even think it’s anything about ability of the DBs, linebackers,” outside linebacker Nik Bonitto told The Post in late September. “I feel like it’s more of just mental errors of them being open, more than us having to actually guard them.

    “So I feel like that’s just something we gotta look at the film room and see, and just being able to correct those type of things. Because obviously, more and more teams are going to start doing it if we don’t have an answer for it.”

    The answer, as Strnad broke down, is simple in concept and complicated in execution. Some defenses rely heavily on spot drop coverages, a type of zone where defenders backtrack to a specific area and read the quarterback’s eyes. Vance Joseph’s defense in Denver, though, contains heavy doses of match coverage — a blend of zone and man-to-man — where defenders match to specific skill players in their areas. It’s key for defenders to communicate motion by opposing offenses, Strnad explained, and to tag over mid-play on receivers.

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    Luca Evans

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  • Broncos CB Pat Surtain II checks in at No. 10 on NFL’s countdown of best players

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    If Pat Surtain II were choosing, he’d have been nine spots higher.

    As it stands, though the Broncos’ star corner and reigning defensive player of the year is in heady company.

    Surtain checked in at No. 10 on the NFL’s countdown of the best players in the league.

    “If I had to write a text book on cornerback play, it’d be Pat Surtain,” Baltimore cornerback and fellow 2024 Associated Press first-team All-Pro Marlon Humphrey said of Surtain in a video published by the NFL. “… There’s very few people that move that smoothly at his height, his size. It’s like poetry in motion. It’s honestly beautiful to see when he’s in press man, which is what he’s best at. It’s really impressive.”

    Surtain was ranked No. 52 last year by fellow NFL players and vaulted up the list after putting together as dominant a season as a corner can author. Surtain regularly shut down opposing teams’ top receiving options and likely cemented his grip on the DPOY award when he went toe-to-toe with Cincinnati’s Ja’Marr Chase and held him in check while guarding him in a late-December matchup.

    “Having a guy that you can go out there and put on any receiver and you don’t hear about them the rest of the game, that does wonders for a D-line,” teammate Nik Bonitto, who himself was ranked No. 38 on the countdown, said in the video.

    Surtain’s part of a deep and talented Broncos secondary that added first-round pick Jahdae Barron and safety Talanoa Hufanga this offseason.

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    Parker Gabriel

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  • No. 5 Georgia knocks off No. 1 Texas 30-15; Travis Etienne runs for 3 TDs

    No. 5 Georgia knocks off No. 1 Texas 30-15; Travis Etienne runs for 3 TDs

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    AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Trevor Etienne ran for three touchdowns, the first two set up by cornerback Daylen Everette’s takeaways, and fifth-ranked Georgia went on to beat Quinn Ewers and No. 1 Texas 30-15 on Saturday night.

    Etienne’s last score was a 1-yard plunge on fourth down with 12:04 left. That came right after an ugly sequence when Texas fans littered the field with water bottles and other trash after referees called a pass-interference penalty that initially wiped out an interception and long return, before the flag was picked up and set up a Longhorns TD.

    “These players bring the best out of me,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. “They tried to rob us with calls in this place. And these guys are so resilient.”

    Georgia (6-1, 4-1 Southeastern Conference), which began the season at No. 1, has won three in a row since a 41-34 loss at then-No. 4 Alabama, when the Bulldogs overcame a 28-0 deficit and went ahead late during an exchange of long TD passes.

    The Bulldogs never trailed in their first trip to Austin since 1958 to take on the SEC newcomer that had gotten through the first half of its schedule pretty much unscathed.

    “Nobody gave us a chance. Everybody doubted us,” Smart said, then making a reference to ESPN’s “College GameDay” pregame show that broadcast from the Austin campus earlier in the day. “Did you watch the show this morning? I didn’t because I was in meetings, but I got 8,000 texts about it.”

    Texas (6-1, 2-1) won at reigning national champion Michigan in Week 2 and had been behind for less than four minutes all season before facing the the back-to-back national champ before the Wolverines.

    The 15-point loss was the most lopsided for a No. 1 team at home since Notre Dame’s 31-16 win at Pittsburgh in 1982, according to Sportradar, when Dan Marino was the Panthers quarterback.

    “Unfortunately, we didn’t play our best football tonight, but we were still competitive. Hopefully, we get another crack at them,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said. ‘They’ve been the standard in college football now for about five, six, seven years and we played them really well in the second half.”

    Georgia quarterback Carson Beck improved to 19-2 as a starter, including a 7-2 mark against ranked teams. He was 23 of 41 for 175 yards and finished with three interceptions, though Texas didn’t get anything out of the two he threw in the first quarter. The Longhorns had only 38 yards total when trailing 23-0 at halftime.

    Jahdae Barron’s pick and 36-yard return to the Georgia 9 late in the third quarter came after contact with Arian Smith that drew a pass interference penalty. Sarkisian was irate at officials, then went to the far corner of the field where students sit signaling for them to quit throwing things.

    As the debris was being picked up, officials were discussing the play and picked up the flag. Two plays later, Ewers threw a 17-yard touchdown to Jaydon Blue to get the Longhorns to 23-15.

    The Southeastern Conference released a statement early Sunday morning that said officials made the proper decision with their decision to not call a penalty on the play.

    Ewers completed 25 of 43 passes for 211 yards.

    Everette’s blindside sack late in the first quarter jarred loose the ball from Ewers, and the defender recovered at the Texas 13 after several of his teammates had tried to pick up the fumble. That led to Etienne’s 2-yard TD for a 7-0 lead.

    A 15-yard TD run by Etienne, with a late lunge into the end zone, made it 17-0 after Everette stepped in front of a receiver for an interception at the Texas 34.

    “We all always say that takeaways come in bunches,” Everette said. “We practice taking small details seriously.”

    Peyton Woodring kicked three field goals before halftime for Georgia, the last a 44-yarder as time expired after freshman Arch Manning, in for a second series, fumbled while being sacked.

    The takeaway

    Georgia: Smart got his 100th career win in 117 games over nine seasons. … The defense set the tone for the Dawgs, including seven sacks and forcing four turnovers that Georgia turned into 17 points.

    Texas: This was the Longhorns’ biggest test so far in the SEC, and it turned into a jarring reminder of how difficult things can be in their new league. Texas has lost its last five home games against top-five opponents, since a win over No. 3 Nebraska in 1999 when they were in the Big 12 together.

    Poll implications

    Texas will fall out of the No. 1 spot, it is just a matter of how far. Oregon (6-0) is likely to take over at the top from No. 2, but Georgia could possibly replace the Ducks there. No. 3 Penn State and No. 4 Ohio State, whose only loss was at Oregon, were both off this weekend.

    Up next

    Georgia: Faces Florida on Nov. 2 in their annual game in Jacksonville, Florida.

    Texas: At Vanderbilt on Saturday.

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