The Sports Xchange

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Denver Broncos running back C.J. Anderson refuses to blame the offensive line for the struggles of the run game.

“You have to blame yourself. I won’t put anything on those big boys (offensive line). It’s on me. That’s just how I feel personally,” he said after enduring a frustrating two weeks in which he gained just 56 yards on 24 carries and suffered a toe injury in Week 1.

But Anderson isn’t the only runner whose production is down. Backup Ronnie Hillman is averaging 3.6 yards on his 21 carries, and he has endured the same difficulty as Anderson in getting out of the backfield.

The offense’s struggles start up front, but this was to be expected. Eighty percent of the starting offensive line was not on the Broncos’ 53-man roster last year. Left tackle Ty Sambrailo and center Matt Paradis made their NFL regular-season debuts Sept. 13.

Nevertheless, Broncos head coach Gary Kubiak refuses to put the blame entirely at their feet.

“It hasn’t just been them, Kubiak said. “It’s been a lot of struggles on the offensive side of the ball. It gets back to (the fact that) I’ve got to do a better job for them. The coaches have got to do a better job for them.”

At times, the offense worked. There was the 17-play, 81-yard drive in the fourth quarter against the Baltimore Ravens that was powered by the running game. And the offense accounted for 24 points against Kansas City, although one of its touchdowns came on a short field.

“We’re clicking at desperate times when we need (big drives),” Anderson said. “I don’t want to say, ‘desperate,’ but we’re clicking at times when we need a touchdown, or when we need to put together a drive to give our defense a rest. We’re clicking at times. The thing is, we need to take that and put it in a 60-minute football game.”

And if the ground game clicks, the passing game will, as well.

“Once you get the ground game going, you’ll see more big plays,” said wide receiver Demaryius Thomas. “The past two weeks, as you know, we haven’t really had a big play in this offense.

“Usually, as a receiver, either Emmanuel (Sanders) or I have a couple of big plays and it still hasn’t happened yet. Once the guys keep coming up and trying to stop the run, and we get the safeties coming up to help, that’s when we’ll go over the top.”

And because the Broncos know that will be the natural outgrowth of a successful running game, they will continue to work at it in practice until they get it right.

“You stay committed to what you believe in,” Kubiak said. “We’re going to get to where we want to go offensively if we stay committed to something. We believe in what we’re going. Been doing it a long time. We’ve just got to get better at how we’re doing it.”

The narrative on the Broncos’ struggling offense might be completely different if quarterback Peyton Manning connected on some of the deep passes to Sanders and Thomas in the season’s first two games.

But whether it was because of an overthrow, an underthrow or a timely deflection, Manning and the offense have been forced to settle for small to intermediate chunks of yardage, with no gain longer than the 22-yard Manning-to-Thomas connection that opened the game-tying fourth-quarter drive in Kansas City on Sept. 17.

“You overthrow them in Week 1,” Manning said. “Maybe you take a little off and you underthrow them Week 2. I’d like to find that happy medium.”

The Broncos didn’t hit any deep passes late in the win over Kansas City, but they did find success going to the outside, something that largely eluded them in the first seven quarters of the season.

Perhaps the best example was on a 17-yard pass to Sanders on which he cut outside and couldn’t shake Chiefs cornerback Jamell Fleming, but made the catch anyway because Manning placed the ball in the perfect spot: at the outside shoulder near the sideline, where it couldn’t be intercepted.

That’s the kind of pass Manning must hit, and until that drive, he struggled. The entire 80-yard sprint was a building block, but that throw in particular could spark confidence.

“(The Chiefs) were sort of playing the deep ball and we were able to make that adjustment and hit a couple of them at some really good times on that last drive,” Manning said. “That’s something that you are always working and always working. … to be able to make throws that we need to hit.”

Notes: Manning received a rest day Wednesday, as was the case during offseason work and training camp. … Among others not practicing Wednesday were cornerback Aqib Talib (illness). Among those who participated on a limited basis were defensive end Kenny Anunike (knee scoped Aug. 20), safety Omar Bolden (foot), right guard Louis Vasquez (knee).