How do you even go about writing a stock up/stock down article for this matchup between the Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs.

It’s like writing a stock report for fruit vs. blender or fly vs. windshield.

Sure, the fly got smeared and spread into an ooze-like substance, but that wasn’t necessarily a surprise, so it’s hard to say that the fly’s stock price diminished, or that the car’s stock price was inflated.

However, the Broncos game didn’t go that way this week. After looking like they didn’t even belong on the field with the Chiefs, Denver got up off the mat, and made sure the game remained in doubt up until the final whistle. It was a truly remarkable burst.

With that in mind, which performances — from this game we would all like to instantly erase from our minds — are actually worth dwelling on? Let’s take a look.

Denver Broncos Stock Up

Denver Broncos wide receiver Jerry Jeudy (10) reacts to his third touchdown reception of the game in the fourth quarter against the Kansas City Chiefs at Empower Field at Mile High.

Dec 11, 2022; Denver, Colorado, USA; Denver Broncos wide receiver Jerry Jeudy (10) reacts to his third touchdown reception of the game in the fourth quarter against the Kansas City Chiefs at Empower Field at Mile High. Mandatory Credit: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports

Jerry Jeudy

Hopefully Broncos Country has finally taken notice of Jerry Jeudy this season, as he has emerged as a game-wrecking force against man coverage.

Since 2014, there hasn’t been anyone who is even close to Jeudy’s level of dominance vs. man coverage in 2022.

When facing man coverage, Jeudy is averaging more than six yards per play. That’s not six yards per target. That’s not six yards per reception. That’s six yards, on average, every single time the opposing defense decides to cover Jeudy man-to-man, which demonstrates just how crazy his production is when he actually does get targeted vs. man. No one has done better over the past nine seasons of NFL football.

And the Denver Broncos delivered a beautiful demonstration to illustrate that point today.

When Jeudy wasn’t being targeted, the Broncos’ offense looked lost. When Jeudy finally started seeing man coverage, he started getting open, seeing targets, and producing as a result.

During the first 28 minutes of the game, which featured 28 offensive plays for the Broncos, they targeted Jeudy just once. That was a critical factor in the offense gaining just 68 yards (2.43 yards per play) during that stretch, as failing to utilize your best weapon will often stifle the offense. Then, they finally decided to start looking Jeudy’s way, and the offense took off.

Over the final 32 minutes of game time, Jeudy was targeted eight times, and made seven receptions for 70 yards and three touchdowns. The offense also averaged 6.15 yards per play over that stretch.

Solely crediting Jeudy for that explosion is silly, just like refusing to give him any credit for that outburst is also silly.

At no point was Jeudy’s value more evident that the two-minute warning of the first half, which is right where that prime meridian happens to fall.

The Broncos had two drives inside the two-minute warning, and both ended with touchdowns from Jeudy, as he made three receptions for 40 yards, and the aforementioned two scores. Making him responsible for more than 40 percent of Denver’s offensive production during that seismic end-of-half shift.

Now, some might be upset over the flaring emotions we saw from Jeudy during the first half, but after seeing what he produced post-outburst, it’s kinda hard to not see his point. He was right, to an extent, even if he clearly went overboard.

His three-touchdown performance was the first since Demaryius Thomas, on a day where the Broncos honored the late franchise legend

To close, here’s a plea for Broncos Country.

No, Jerry Jeudy isn’t Justin Jefferson, or even CeeDee Lamb. The No. 15 pick will always look like too high a slot. But let that go. His draft status is deep into the past now. Stop letting ancient history color the lens you’re viewing Jeudy through. Jeudy is an amazing player, with sterling strengths. He’s just also far from flawless, and those flaws and mistakes are often loud and obvious. That doesn’t mean he isn’t a good player though. Please start giving Jeudy his well-deserved flowers.

Josey Jewell

There was a certain level of beauty and poetic justice to Josey Jewell having the performance he did against the Kansas City Chiefs and Travis Kelce.

Ever since Jewell entered the Denver Broncos’ starting lineup, he’s been knocked as a liability in coverage, although the tape and the advanced metrics don’t support that conclusion. So much of that perception is the product of him, on occasion, being absolutely torched by Kelce in man-to-man coverage.

Guess what? 99.9 percent of NFL linebackers are getting flambéed by Kelce in one-on-one coverage. The inability to put the clamps on Kelce doesn’t indicate poor linebacker play. The ability to put the clamps on Kelce, though, would indicated elite linebacker play.

Now, considering that Kelce still wound up with 71 yards, it’d be hard to say he was clamped, but Jewell did have an amazing day in coverage.

He made two interceptions while roaming the middle of the field — the region where Kelce has so frequently made Jewell’s life hell.

That first interception was also a pivotal turning point in the game. Prior to making that play, the Broncos were getting trounced by Chiefs 27-0. After making that play, the Denver offense immediately went on three consecutive touchdown drives (first time all season they’ve done that), and ultimately, outscored the Chiefs 28-7 down the stretch. It just wasn’t quite enough.

That said, it probably isn’t even close without Jewell’s first interception.

Then, Jewell’s second interception gave Brett Rypien an amazing opportunity to score the game-winning touchdown. Rypien just couldn’t come through on his end of the bargain.

He also helped to make sure that more than half of Kelce’s targets fell incomplete.

Patrick Surtain II

Patrick Surtain II is, has been, and will continue to be one of the NFL’s very best cornerbacks for the foreseeable future. That conversation didn’t change for anyone basing their football takes in reality.

However, it’s fair to note that the two-game stretch between the Las Vegas Raiders and Carolina Panthers represented the worst stretch of his career, so far, and that last week’s pass interference penalty was a crushing blow.

Today, Surtain got back on track, with a stellar performance against Patrick Mahomes and the dynastic Chiefs.

In coverage, he was invulnerable, as Mahomes was unable to get anything going in Surtain’s direction. Surtain also made an amazing diving interception, which showed both next-level athleticism and some incredible hand-eye coordination.

https://twitter.com/ftbeard7/status/1602069986809610241?s=46&t=bvsvyXuh9RmS9Uh9qMX2Dw

He also was sent on multiple pressure looks by Ejiro Evero, and managed to force a Mahomes scramble with his pressure. It was an exciting flash of his versatility, and how he can be the type of franchise cornerstone you build a defense around.

While Evero was in Los Angeles, they would deploy Jalen Ramsey in different ways, based on the matchup, in order to give the Rams a competitive advantage. This week, Patrick Surtain II demonstrated some of that week-to-week game-changing, matchup-shifting ability, and it was nice to see.

Russell Wilson

Dissecting that Russell Wilson performance feels so impossible and so muddy.

To be honest, in an ideal world, he probably would be left out of this column entirely, as it’s hard to find much praise or many issues in his performance tonight, but despite this, we don’t live in an ideal world, and his showing was so noteworthy it has to be mentioned in this piece somewhere.

As a result, it lands here, in the ‘stock up’ section, but let this columnist air his qualms before he starts throwing roses at the feet of Wilson.

For the first five possessions of this game, Russell Wilson was objectively bad. He dropped back to pass 20 times, and the team gained just 49 yards, and Wilson turned the ball over, creating a defensive touchdown in the process. That’s the type of production you expect from 37-year-old Adrian Peterson on his rushing attempts.

It certainly isn’t what you expect from the league’s second-highest-paid quarterback (based on the contract’s average annual value) on their passing attempts.

Soon after that pick-six though, the offense sparked to life, as Luke Wattenberg was benched, and Jerry Jeudy was reincorporated into the offense. And, although those personnel moves played a big role, Wilson played a lot better.

He suddenly seemed unafraid to run and created multiple big plays for a desperate offense, thanks to his ability to extend plays behind the line of scrimmage, and gain yards past the line of scrimmage. It looked like the Russell Wilson of old, and was something Broncos Country thought they’d be seeing much more of this season.

If there’s one thing for Broncos fans to be excited about from this outing, it should be Wilson’s improved mobility, relative to what he had shown prior this year. It gives more credence to the idea that the sluggish play we were seeing was simply the result of the hamstring injury.

For three drives in a row, and four out of Wilson’s final six drives, the Denver Broncos offense looked like the unit we were promised all offseason.

They generated 28 points — more than they have in any complete game all season — over those six drives, and sliced through the Chiefs’ defense with ease, but we should also remember that Wilson wasn’t amazing during that stretch, even though the offensive production was.

Over those three amazing drives, Wilson cleaned up his play a ton, but also didn’t perform much elite quarterbacking.

Now, some of that might be colored by the fact this columnist is far from a Wilson believer, but did you, the reader, see many quarterbacking moments that wowed you? Where were the moments that made you say ‘wow that was special!’ Did he do anything that you felt only a select few quarterbacks could do? If so, what?

Personally, an answer has yet to be unearthed.

Wilson was good today. But the Broncos’ investment demands greatness. Good, unfortunately, will not cut it.

He put his body on the line for the team, and his gut-filled effort nearly willed the Broncos to victory, and snapped their 13-game losing streak to a division rival. At the least, it turned a blowout into one of the best battles vs. Kansas City we’ve seen from Denver in years.

Now, the first of those three-straight scoring drives was flawless. Wilson did look like an elite quarterback, as he found Kendall Hinton for a modest check-down, before finding Jeudy on two consecutive pretty passes to get the Broncos their first score of the day. The touchdown pass is comfortably one of Wilson’s most impressive throws of the season. An absolute dime. There are zero qualms there. It was a really nice drive from Wilson, and one of his best on the season.

On the second drive, he was pedestrian through the air. He completed three of his five attempts, gaining just 28 yards, and was bailed out on the touchdown by Jerry Jeudy. Jeudy shook his man almost immediately, on his second touchdown of the day, and then had to stand in the endzone and wait for a second before Wilson finally saw him and delivered the ball, before the corner could catch up. Now, making the full field read and finding the right receiver deserves positive marks, but the timing is a little concerning.

We’re not trying to pick nits here, but having late eyes is a bad thing for a quarterback, as it will often take an easy touchdown (like this Jeudy play) and turn it into an incompletion, a sack, or a turnover. You can see Jeudy sitting and waiting on that pass to arrive. We’ve all seen the many sacks and wasted plays Wilson has had this season. A large number of those are the result of moments like this. Margins are slim in the NFL, and the gap between the league’s second-quickest time-to-throw and the league’s second-slowest time-to-throw is 0.6 seconds. Being a split-second late matters.

On the third drive, he missed Greg Dulcich on the first play, connected with Jerry Jeudy to create a third-and-short opportunity, and then sat back as Marlon Mack took a 66-yard screen to the house. Now, there’s nothing to really knock Wilson for, but is there anything in there worth $250 million, either? It doesn’t seem like it.

It’s hard to spot any moment in that three-drive sequence where you say, ‘only a small handful of NFL quarterbacks could make that play.’

That wasn’t the nature of this performance from Wilson.

It wasn’t spellbinding. It wasn’t special.

It was someone putting together a lego set, and putting all the pieces in the right places. It was watching someone correctly follow the instruction manual.

That’s a step forward. That’s a good job. That’s what you’re supposed to do. But even still, if someone were to pat you on the back and exclaim ‘wow! That’s the best you’ve done all year!’ You’d likely feel both patronized and infantilized.

So, you’ve just read 500 words of why Wilson’s performance, when put in context, instead of just being flat numbers on a stat sheet, was relatively mediocre, and yet, you notice he’s in the stock-up section. How could that be?

Because this is where the bar is.

The Denver Broncos bet the future of their franchise on this individual, and now, when he turns in a middling performance, it demands praise, because our expectations for him are just that low.

How far the mighty have fallen.

Denver Broncos Stock Down

Denver Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson (3) is taken off the field by training staff in the fourth quarter against the Kansas City Chiefs at Empo

Dec 11, 2022; Denver, Colorado, USA; Denver Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson (3) is taken off the field by training staff in the fourth quarter against the Kansas City Chiefs at Empower Field at Mile High. Mandatory Credit: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports

Luke Wattenberg

In stock up, there were a ton of splits, because this was a very ‘night-and-day’ game for the Denver Broncos, where the team seemed to swing back and forth between extremes.

There are a lot of things you could point to there, as to why the splits were so intense.

The incorporation of Jerry Jeudy was one key factor. Russell Wilson getting hot for a quarter-and-a-half was another major factor. Josey Jewell and Patrick Surtain II’s takeaways definitely helped flip the game. But the one we haven’t discussed is Luke Wattenberg.

In the first half, Wattenberg was getting massacred at guard by Kansas City’s front. Despite playing only the first 20 minutes, Wattenberg was beaten badly for two big sacks, combining for a loss of 17 yards. Remove those sacks, and Wilson’s performance on his early dropbacks is more understandable.

Once Wattenberg was removed from the lineup, the offense began to flourish though, which certainly reflects poorly on the young offensive lineman and the coaching staff.

This staff has consistently made questionable decisions with their reserve offensive line (starting Lloyd Cushenberry III and the complete banishment of Calvin Anderson, despite him being one of the better reserves upon finally getting an opportunity, stand out as others), and that trend continued on Sunday.

Denver Broncos health

This has been the most common section in this article series, and unfortunately, that should surprise no one.

Nearly every single week the Denver Broncos have lost at least one major contributor to injury, and that was once again the case this week.

Russell Wilson exited the game with a concussion, and as a result, his status for next week is in doubt. Mike Boone, who was the only member of the Week 1 backfield still on the active roster, and who was leading the team in receiving yards at the time of his exit, was carted off the field with an ankle injury. Kendall Hinton, who’s arguably been the team’s second-best receiver in recent weeks, left the game with a hamstring injury, putting his future status in doubt. Jacob Martin, who’s sneakily been one of the team’s better edge defenders since being acquired via trade, left the game with a knee injury.

D.J. Jones also had limited availability in this game, due to a shoulder injury. Dre’Mont Jones temporarily left this game with a lower-body injury, and although he returned, it was a scary moment for Denver Broncos fans, who have lost far too many of their stars to injury this season.