AFC Notes: Russell Wilson, Broncos, Chiefs

Broncos

The Denver Broncos announced the day-to-day operations of the organization will not change after the transfer of controlling owner designation from Rob Walton to son-in-law, CEO Greg Penner. 

“The NFL has approved changes to the ownership structure of the Walton-Penner group aligned with the family’s long-term vision for the Denver Broncos,” the club said in a statement, via NFL.com. “These adjustments, which include designating CEO Greg Penner as controlling owner and transferring a portion of Rob Walton’s ownership stake to the Penners’ children, will not impact the ongoing involvement of Greg, Carrie Walton Penner or Rob.”

Penner and Carrie Walton Penner, Walton’s daughter, have run the team since the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group bought the franchise in August 2022.

Russell Wilson

After experiencing one of the worst offensive performances of his career, Broncos QB Russell Wilson took the blame for the team’s loss to the Chiefs.

“We had a chance, we’ve got to play better, cleaner,” Wilson said, Via ESPN’s Jeff Legwold. “I’ve got to play better. That starts with me.”

Broncos HC Sean Payton didn’t sugarcoat the fact that the team needs to be able to throw the ball better in order to be able to keep up with the best teams.

“Offensively we struggled throwing the ball, our third-down numbers were poor,” Payton said. “We had a game where we certainly played well enough defensively, but offensively…from a third-down perspective keeping drives going we struggled until late in the game…to win in our league, you’ve got to be better throwing the ball. I don’t think the wind was that big of a factor.”

Wilson credited the Chiefs’ defense for throwing a number of different looks at him throughout the game.

“They did a lot of different things,” Wilson explained. “The first [interception] was on me, they made a great play on the ball that bounced up on [the second interception]…that’s part of the game…they made good plays tonight, they’re a good defense.”

Chiefs

Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes credited the defense for keeping the team in the game by creating turnovers and holding the Broncos to eight points.

“Luckily for us, our defense is playing great so we can go through these growing pains and try to get better and better,” Mahomes said, via ESPN’s Adam Teicher. “The talent is there. You can see it in spurts. I thought we did a great job of staying patient, getting the ball down the field, but in this league, three points and seven points is just such a big difference, and so I think if we found a way to execute in the red zone and score those touchdowns, we’d come away feeling great. Since we didn’t, we have a lot of room to improve, and so that’s just something that we’ve got to continue to work on. It’s just putting a full game together. Let’s put a full game together and see what we can do.”

Mahomes said even he was surprised with how much teams are playing back on them and making the offense drive the length of the field instead of picking up chunk plays.

“We’re getting more [deep] coverage than even I expected,” Mahomes said. “There’s a lot of deep coverages, and it’s forced us to be patient, drive the length of the field. We did a good job driving the field. We just didn’t score the touchdowns today. So the defenses are going to do that. We’ll continue to get better and better at it, and then when the opportunity arises and we get man coverage, we have to make sure we hit those deep ones.”