The Broncos have very quickly found themselves at something of a crossroads in the 2025 season.

Denver is 1-1 with all manner of possibilities still resting on the horizon, even after a gut-punch loss on the road in Week 2. Still, the Broncos will already be in at least a knee-deep hole in the AFC West if they can't rebound Sunday against the Los Angeles Chargers, a team that could move to 3-0 in division games with a victory at SoFi Stadium.

There are no must-win games this early in the season, but Sunday is close to it for the Broncos.

"This is a big-time game (against) a divisional opponent," cornerback Pat Surtain II said. "Like what Sean (Payton) said before, win this game and we are first in the division. That is a big mark that we want to hit, especially early on in the season. It's always good to win those divisional games early on to set you forward for the rest of the season."

In advance of Sunday's pivotal matchup, let's dive into some of your questions about where the Broncos stand:

Note: Submitted questions have been edited for clarity and length.

It feels like there have been many games, going back to last year, where teams beat us underneath and in the middle of the field, attacking our linebackers. Watching the Chargers win against the Raiders, and our matchups against Los Angeles last season, they're going to do the same thing Sunday. Does Dre Greenlaw's return help eliminate a lot of those plays? Is that just something Vance Joseph's scheme is OK giving up? How much are Alex Singleton and Justin Strnad to blame? -- Erick C.

Since the start of last season, the Broncos have surrendered explosive pass plays (16 yards or more) on 10.9 percent of opponent attempts. That is the sixth-stingiest figure in the NFL during that span, so some of the underneath wins against Denver's defense are a product of Joseph wanting to keep a lid on the deep part of the field. When quarterbacks are forced to abandon their deep looks and come back underneath, it takes time. That plays into Denver's pass rush, which has been arguably the league's best since the start of the 2024 season. The Broncos also have the second-best red zone defense in that same period, so there is an emphasis on not giving up explosives because Denver trusts what its unit can do in the tight part of the field.

"That's always our goal because if you win in the red zone, it keeps points to a minimum," said Joseph, who credited his unit's improved play in the second half Sunday. "That's our goal each week, but we've got to fix what went wrong in that first half. We can't duck that and we won't duck that."

The bottom line, as I wrote Thursday, is the Broncos must be situationally better against opposing tight ends and running backs who exploit that middle part of the field. You aren't going to take away everything, but the breakdowns that led to two massive plays for the Colts, in particular -- Tyler Warren's 41-yard catch in the first quarter and Jonathan Taylor's 43-yard catch and run later in the same period -- can't happen. Greenlaw should help whenever he returns -- he appears unlikely to play against the Chargers after not practicing Wednesday or Thursday -- but the issues against the Colts were more attributable to communication or schematic breakdowns than players getting beat one-on-one consistently.

Why is the defense consistently giving up chunk plays? Whether it's Jonathan Taylor leaking out of the backfield or Tyler Warren juking several Broncos linebackers out of their cleats, it seemed like the Colts' play calling had the Broncos on their heels nearly the whole game. Is Vance Joseph just being out-coached? Are there vulnerabilities with the scheme? Is it a personnel issue? And can it be fixed? This does not look like a top unit. -- Alex L.

Since I addressed some of the chunk plays in the previous question -- again, Sunday's performance was uncharacteristic when compared to how Denver has typically limited explosive plays -- let's dial into the personnel part of it. I do think the Broncos are missing an athletic punch from the linebacker spot. Obviously, Greenlaw's recovery has taken longer than anticipated. Payton called the veteran's injury -- which, the coach said in camp, includes scar tissue complications -- "nebulous" after Greenlaw didn't practice Wednesday. That certainly doesn't bode well for his availability against the Chargers, and it casts fair doubt on whether he can consistently remain on the field this season. The Broncos drafted an athletic freak in 2023 in third-round linebacker Drew Sanders, but a foot injury in training camp that landed him on IR to start the season was the latest blow to a player who missed time the previous two seasons due to injury as well.

Much can change between now and the end of the season -- or even now and the end of the month -- but as the roster picture stands, inside linebacker is a vulnerability that needs to be addressed.

Why does the team look so sloppy and undisciplined? Penalties and missed assignments were supposed to be a thing of the past due to continuity, right? -- Mike T.

The Broncos have committed 14 penalties through two games, which ranks a middle-of-the-road 15th in the league, but some of the miscues have come at very inopportune times. For example, in the fourth quarter against the Colts on Sunday, J.K. Dobbins had a 23-yard run that gave the Broncos, who were leading by 2 points with about 5 minutes left in the game, a first-and-10 at the Indianapolis 20-yard line. But Dobbins spiked the ball after the play, resulting in a 5-yard delay-of-game penalty, and Adam Trautman committed a 15-yard face-mask penalty on the very next play. Suddenly, the Broncos faced a first-and-25 at their own 40-yard line. They did well to get into field goal range after that -- a 42-yarder missed by Wil Lutz -- but the avalanche of self-inflicted mistakes poisoned what could have been a winning drive.

There's no good answer for why things like that have popped up. Two games into the season is a fair place to say teams are still working out issues, particularly with new additions. More than anything else Sunday, putting together a clean game has to be at the top of the priority list.

Can you explain the timeout usage at the end of the Colts game? Why, when up by two and with the opponent out of field range late in the fourth quarter, are you taking timeouts? What's the goal? Had the Colts failed in their initial set of downs, now you're stuck with maximum time against an opponent with a full complement of timeouts. -- Brett S.

Let's start by providing Sean Payton's explanation when he was asked why he took those timeouts:

"That's exactly what you have to do," Payton said after the game. "So, timeout -- knowing that they're not in field goal range yet, and you're stopping the clock, you're stopping the clock. In the event that they get the first down, but they don't get it, they kick a long field goal or they don't. Then, in the event they kick a field goal, you have time to flip it. So, you would never not use them there."

Granted, it's not the clearest explanation, but I think Payton was saying that Indianapolis had a chance to reach the edge of field goal range without getting a first down. And if it had made the long field goal, the Broncos would have still given themselves time to respond. Denver called its first time out after a 4-yard run by Taylor made it second-and-6 for the Colts at the 50-yard line. Payton called another one after Taylor's run for no gain made it third-and-6 from the 50 with 1:50 left. If the Colts get 4 or 5 yards on third down, perhaps they attempt, say, a 63-yard field goal. If that theoretical kick goes in, the Broncos, trailing by one at that point, at least have time to respond. The second timeout also had the added benefit of letting Denver get into the right call for a critical third-down play, but it ultimately wasn't enough to stop Daniel Jones from hitting Alec Pierce for a first down.

Payton called a timeout after the first down, and that's the one he'd probably want back. The Broncos could have used it on the final field goal attempt when they saw that the alignment up front wasn't correct.

Appreciate the succinct question. Heck of a way to lose a game, eh? I wrote on the game-defining penalty in detail earlier this week, and you can read that here. But special teams coordinator Darren Rizzi spoke about the play for the first time Thursday, and there were a couple of interesting notes from what he said.

"From a coaching standpoint, the thing that's disappointing to me is the execution part," Rizzi said. "That's on me. As a coach, any coach, if you go out and you're not lined up correctly, didn't execute the call that was called, that's what keeps you up at night as a coach."

Rizzi said the call, which was made after Dondrea Tillman pushed off the right guard in the Colts' field goal formation and then leaped over him, was correct "by the letter of the law."

"Are there many of those throughout the year that don't get called? Yes," he added. "So I get it. Probably because the play was in an escalated situation. Again, we'll learn from it and move on."

I know it's still early in a long season, and the sample size is pretty small, but when including the preseason, do you think there might've been a little too much orange-and-blue Kool-Aid being consumed, among fans and media, regarding both the performance of Bo Nix and the team, as a whole, going into the 2025 season? Thus far, Bo is not exactly a top-tier QB, the run game and TE involvement look a lot like 2024, special teams are a mess and, going up against a decent O-line and really good back, the defense looks very suspect. Thoughts? -- Alan V.

My general thought is that I'm not ready to make any sweeping declarations about what Nix is in Year 2; how much, if any, improvement the offense has made since last year; or whether the defense is some kind of paper tiger. It's simply too early. You have already seen signs that the running game is much more capable this season. Dobbins had at least 63 rushing yards in each of his first two games. No running back on Denver's roster put up back-to-back games at that threshold all of last season. The Broncos already have two rushes of more than 20 yards from running backs, one more than all of last season. Continued improvement there is going to elevate the offense over time, if the Broncos can sustain it.

Nix was mostly sharp against a good team on the road in Week 2. He led four touchdown drives among Denver's first six possessions and led two other drives in the second half that should have ended in points -- one that ended with his interception on a pass that was tipped at the line of scrimmage; the other on Lutz's missed 42-yard field goal. The Broncos also appear to have discovered a bona fide No. 2 wide receiver in Troy Franklin, which is a development that can't be discounted given what it could ultimately open up for Denver's passing attack.

"We did some really good things, especially early," Nix said this week. "We scored points in the red zone. That was the biggest takeaway. When we got down there, we scored touchdowns instead of having to kick field goals. So that's exciting. That's something we can build on and grow. I thought our red zone plan was really good. So we'll continue to find ways to do that. Then, just in the fourth quarter, we have to find a way to get another touchdown. We had a couple of chances to put the game away, and we didn't. That's what we have to get better at."

I thought the offense's performance against the Colts was largely encouraging, but there must be growth -- and fast -- in how the Broncos finish games. They have not been able to get out of their own way in pivotal moments, whether it's a blocked field goal in Kansas City, an overtime meltdown in Cincinnati or a rare leveraging penalty in Indianapolis. That has to change.

There are valid concerns to be had. Evan Engram's slow start is concerning, and he's trending toward missing Sunday's game in Los Angeles with a back injury. The special teams units already have four significant blunders in two games: a 71-yard opponent kickoff return, a muffed punt, a missed medium-range field goal and a game-deciding penalty.

But I don't look at the whole picture and see the sky falling around the Broncos yet.

Broncos mailbag: How can defense fix middle-of-the-field issues vs. Chargers?