Denver Broncos (1-0) @ Indianapolis Colts (1-0)
Sunday, September 14, 4:05 PM ET
This is a hilarious matchup of 1-0 teams who were the polar opposites (in many ways) of what people expected them to be going into the start of the season.
Let’s start with the biggest surprise of Week 1, which was Daniel Jones and the Indianapolis Colts. Jones was lights out in his debut with the Colts, looking like a rejuvenated player under head coach Shane “The QB Whisperer” Steichen. Although things haven’t worked out with Anthony Richardson at this point, the Colts would gladly take a resurgence from Jones after his ugly ending with the Giants last season.
The Colts dominated the Dolphins as they honored the life of the late owner Jim Irsay, but they’ve now got a problem coming to town in Week 2. The Denver Broncos’ defense brings waves of pass rush, and they had one of the highest pressure rates of any team in Week 1. They got after Titans rookie QB Cam Ward, and it only figures that they’ll find a way to speed up Daniel Jones’s clock as well in Week 2.
The expectation for the Denver Broncos was that they would be much improved offensively, but we saw some of the same struggles from them as last year. Bo Nix was too careless with the football, the running game took a long time to get going, and this Broncos team needed some huge plays defensively to fend off the Titans at home in Week 1.
I’m banking on that Denver defense coming through in a big way this week on the road against the Colts, even though the Colts looked so good offensively this past week. The Broncos are early 2.5-point road favorites. That defense of Denver’s is championship-caliber.
Prediction: Broncos win 24-15