Time To Pull The Plug On Disastrous Nathaniel Hackett Hire

There are no more excuses or solutions — the Denver Broncos should fire head coach Nathaniel Hackett.

The Broncos lost their third overtime game of the season — they’re 0-3 this year in overtime games — after blowing a 10-point lead versus the Las Vegas Raiders in Week 11. It was Denver’s second consecutive blown lead of double digits and their third overall of the season.

Denver has a lot of issues, but it’s clear that Hackett is at the center of them all. To his credit, he’s admitted to his mistakes and shown a willingness to delegate duties to others who may be more qualified than him.

Earlier this season, Hackett lured veteran assistant Jerry Rosburg out of retirement to help specifically with game management. This came after Hackett’s puzzling decision to kick a 64-yard field goal with Brandon McManus, rather than go for a 4th-and-5 in the team’s season-opening loss to the Seattle Seahawks.

This past week, Hackett made another major decision — delegating offensive play-calling duties to quarterbacks coach Klint Kubiak.

And despite Hackett’s willingness to change it up and admit to his mistakes, it’s still not working. The Broncos are 3-7 and have shown an inability to close games out when it matters.

The 2022 squad looks no different than the one from previous years. Denver sports the league’s third-best defensive unit — allowing 17.1 points per game — but they’re now actually worse on offense, averaging 14.7 points per game.

To top things off on just how discouraging this season is, if the Broncos had just scored at least 18 points in all of their games this season, they’d be 9-1. The league average for points per game hovers around 22.5 points per game, with the Raiders averaging that number as the 16th-best offensive in the NFL.

During the Vic Fangio era, this was a team that not only struggled on offense, but failed to win close games. As Sean Keeler of The Denver Post pointed out in his column in December of 2021, the Broncos were 1-3 in games decided by eight points or fewer last season. During the Fangio era, they were 9-13 in those situations. During the three years prior to Fangio, they were 8-13.

What makes things worse this time around is that the Broncos were supposed to be a good team this year. After a major trade that saw Denver finally acquire their franchise quarterback in Russell Wilson and a bloated $245 million contract extension to top it offer, the Broncos were supposed to threaten the Kansas City Chiefs for AFC West supremacy.

Instead, Denver has proven to be the biggest disappointment in the league. They’re the most penalized team in the league — 83 penalties for 695 yards — and have consistently squandered games with boneheaded plays at the end of games.

With an opportunity to run the clock at least 40 seconds towards the end of regulation versus the Raiders, Wilson threw an incomplete pass on 3rd-and-10 instead of taking a sack or giving himself up. Las Vegas would go on to drive down the field and convert the game-tying field goal.

Hackett — who rarely throws his players under the bus — seemed to throw shade at Wilson following the game for his miscue.

“We called a pass — you got to keep the clock running,” Hackett said of Wilson’s incompletion. “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.”

We can also bring up how the special teams unit continues to be an absolute disaster — the Broncos’ average starting field position was at their own 21-yard-line versus the Raiders due to Montrell Washington’s puzzling decision to return on deep punts — or how the offense continues to go through inconsistent stretches during the course of a game.

This team isn’t getting any better. The losses keep piling up in the same manner and the fans continue to get fed up more and more with a franchise that hasn’t made the playoffs since winning the Super Bowl back in 2015.

The Hackett experiment isn’t working. The new ownership group (Walton family) has little allegiance to a head coach they did not personally hire.

Hackett is one of the lower-paid head coaches in the NFL, earning just $4 million a year across four seasons.

The Broncos need to cut their losses after just one season with Hackett. If they let this continue past this season, they risk alienating the fan base — they’ve already left the stadium before the end of a close game against the Indianapolis Colts — and pushing this team further into purgatory.

Hackett has tried, but it’s just not working.

Time to pull the plug, Denver.