Bradley Chubb’s return from injury will help Broncos against Chiefs

Bradley Chubb’s return from injury will help the Broncos’ ability to compete with Chiefs.

The Denver Broncos never got to enjoy Bradley Chubb‘s breakout season.

Instead of seeing the leap from his rookie campaign to his sophomore season, the Broncos spent most of the 2019 season scrambling to fill the void after losing Chubb for the majority of the year after suffering a torn ACL in a late September loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars. The loss of Chubb to such a devastating injury at one pass rusher spot also neutered the effectiveness of fellow rusher Von Miller and the rest of the front seven.

Given that the Kansas City Chiefs played Denver both at midseason and late in the year, the Broncos were forced to compete against their division rival and the eventual Super Bowl champs without one of their biggest pieces on defense. That’s not to say that Denver would have won any of those games, but they would certainly have been more competitive than the embarrassing effort they put up against K.C. in 2019.

The good news out of Denver this week, however, is that Chubb is back. Broncos defensive coordinator Ed Donatell recently spoke to the media giving updates on a few injured players and noted the following regarding Chubb:

"“We’ve seen him running on tape, and he’s full speed and ready to go,” Donatell said. “You’ll see a really good year from him.”"

A good year from Chubb is definitely what the Broncos need after missing him so much in 2019. Chubb had only one sack in the first four games of last season, but he had 6 quarterback hits in that time, which shows he was successfully disrupting the pocket. Chubb had 12 sacks and 21 quarterback hits in his first tour of the league in 2018, and expectations remain sky-high for the former top five pick in the draft.

In his career against the Chiefs (two games), Chubb has 6 tackles, 3 hits on Patrick Mahomes, and one half sack. It will likely take some time for Chubb to get back into game shape, but he won’t see the Chiefs until Week 7 which means the Broncos could be firing on all cylinders defensively by that time. New additions like A.J. Bouye in the secondary and Jurrell Casey up front will only help Denver in their hopes to rebound in 2019.

Then again, every team, including the Broncos, will need everyone performing at their best if they’re going to slow the Chiefs offense enough to put up a victory.