AFC Notes: Broncos, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Chiefs

Broncos

Broncos HC Sean Payton is happy to see the team gaining confidence and hopes to keep it rolling over the final seven games.

“I mean, we’re talking about — listen, we say it all the time: How do you have confidence? You do something,” Payton said, via Broncos Wire. “You guys become more confident when all of a sudden, you put together a few good pieces — you gain confidence, and it has to be gained through demonstrated ability. It’s nice to feel that in this locker room right now. It’s nice to feel that momentum. There’s nothing like it. There’s nothing like winning. You hear the music, and it’s hard to explain. There’s a part of it is, and I’m going to say this — after you’ve done it a while, there’s an element of relief that you don’t have to deal with, like, misery for a week, if that makes sense. It’s like one extreme to the other, but I’m happy for these guys. That’s the thing — I’m happy for these players. I’m happy to see these guys sharing in this success. Man, they had a tough season a year ago. Many of these players — and you alluded to it — have had a handful of tough seasons. I want them to win.”

Marquez Valdes-Scantling

Chiefs OC Matt Nagy said WR Marquez Valdes-Scantling often does things for the offense that don’t show up in the box score.

“There’s things that go into that. I think it’s probably everybody’s definition, I know, we all look at the numbers, and then that sort of thing,” Nagy said, via Chiefs Wire. “But there is a lot at the same point in time. He does a lot, well, that sometimes doesn’t show up on the stat sheet. And you know, for instance, you look at the touchdown catch that Travis (Kelce) had that everybody’s gonna read about in the touchdown pass from Pat (Patrick Mahomes) and the catch by Kelce. But a lot of reasons why that play worked was because of what MVS (Marquez Valdes-Scantling) did. And sometimes that doesn’t show up in the stat book. And there’s other things that he does, and these players do that, that don’t show up, that we have to make sure that they get credit for behind the scenes. And so he does a lot of that. And I think that’s a credit to him. And that can be very selfless at times, which we love.”

Nagy admitted that Valdes-Scantling hasn’t shown up as much in the box score as much as what was expected.

“Production-wise and number-wise. Yeah, he’s not where he was last year. And we do know that we have, hopefully, a bunch of (the) season left.” Nagy added. “And we want to be able to continue to keep working through these things as we have, you know, these different wide receivers, and I know similar to last year, but he’s had a great attitude this whole time, and we just got to keep staying positive.”

Chiefs

Chiefs special teams coordinator Dave Toub says he prefers Richie James as their punt return once he’s ready to be active. 

“He would have to be; we would like him to be the punt returner if he’s going to be active. If he’s going to help us at all on special teams, that’s where he would have to help us,” said Toub, via ChiefsWire.com. “Well, for me, I mean, offense, they could use him a lot of different ways. Obviously, he’s a wide receiver, but if he’s going to help me, I would use him as a punt returner. He’s not really a cover guy or gun or anything like that.”