Can Vance Joseph snap the Broncos defense from its December funk?

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Vance Joseph knows he has to find answers — and find them fast.

His Denver Broncos defense, which spent the first three months among the NFL’s best, has faded in the last three games. Ranked third in the NFL in total defense through the end of November, it sits next-to-last in total yardage allowed this month.

And against the Los Angeles Chargers on Dec. 19, Denver’s coverage was pockmarked by a bushel of open receivers on intermediate routes, which allowed Justin Herbert to dissect the defense and provided the primary thrust behind three touchdown drives in a four-series span of the second half that finished off the Broncos.

Wednesday, Joseph took responsibility.

“Yeah, I would say this: As we push forward and try to play perfect defense, if it’s not perfect, it’s on me,” he said after the Broncos concluded a Christmas Day session inside the Pat Bowlen Fieldhouse. “We have to fix things.

“And as a young group, you know, we have to adjust quickly. I have to adjust quickly.”

Given that the Cincinnati Bengals feature high-powered quarterback Joe Burrow, a receiver in Ja’Marr Chase poised to win the NFL’s Triple Crown of pass catching in leading in receptions, yards and receiving touchdowns and two other receivers with at least 6 touchdown catches — a total that would lead the Broncos, to offer a comparison — this is not the ideal moment to get things right, even though the Broncos expect to have Riley Moss back from a three-game convalescence due to an MCL injury.

The Broncos contained Chase in 2021 — well, specifically, Pat Surtain II largely did the work. Given the task of covering Chase in a duel of the then-rookies, Surtain and the Broncos held Chase to the lowest single-game tallies of his career: a single catch for 3 yards.

When asked whether he’d examined that 2021 footage, Joseph said he’d looked back at “all” of the film he could find.

“[Chase] is a good player. We all know that. The numbers don’t lie, his big plays don’t lie, but the quarterback [Burrow] obviously makes it all work,” Joseph said. “The receiver runs the route, he catches the football, but the quarterback has to get the ball there, and he is obviously special, also.

“In this league, every week you have a challenge, and this week it’s our next challenge, so, we don’t look at it as something different. It’s just the next one for us.”

But the difference is that after three games in which the Broncos allowed 26.3 points — 9.5 points more than their per-game average from September through November — the challenge comes when Denver’s defense is looking to find its form again. And that per-game average this month would have been even worse had Jonathan Taylor not carelessly dropped the ball at the goal line in Week 15.

“Absolutely, I’m frustrated, but I’m trying to fix it for our guys to play cleaner, right?” Joseph said.

But in Joseph’s mind, there’s a big catch: By this point in the season, there’s a book out on every NFL defense.

“And I told our guys this about three weeks ago; We’re in week 13, 12, 13, 14, right? Every soft spot, every wart on your defense is on tape,” Joseph said. “So, it’s tough to play defense in the last month, right? So we have to adjust quickly. We have to be exact in our zones and our mans and our pressures, what we do well and we have to understand when we don’t win, the whys, so, we can fix those whys. And when we do win, why are we winning?

“So, that’s just growth. That’s my job to coach that. And moving forward, that’s a discussion every week.”

But some defenses do find a way to overcome that in December. Wednesday saw two of them with the Chiefs and Ravens holding their foes to a combined 10 offensive points. Whether Joseph can return his defense to its form of earlier in the season could determine not only whether this Broncos team makes the postseason, but so much more for the days beyond, both for him and the defense itself.

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