Denver Broncos: Aqib Talib pushes Jordan Norwood after muffed punt

Denver Broncos star cornerback Aqib Talib shoved teammate Jordan Norwood off the field after his second muffed punt of Sunday night’s game…

The heat of competition gets the best of us all at times, but it’s rarely as publicized as Aqib Talib’s reaction to Jordan Norwood’s second muffed punt of the night on Sunday.

Norwood, who has struggled with mental errors on special teams all season, was a huge reason the Broncos lost to the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday night, costing the team field position, time of possession, and Talib reacted.

On the one hand, I love how passionate Talib is here. He wants to win the game, and the Broncos had just come up with a huge stop defensively, and a big time change of field position. This muffed punt and turnover ended up costing the Broncos both in terms of field position and time to make a fourth-quarter comeback, but as for the final result of the game, it’s hard to really tell.

The Chiefs didn’t score any points off of it, so Norwood was off the hook for that, but the Broncos’ defense looked tired late in the fourth quarter of this game, and the additional time on the field could have contributed largely to that.

On the other hand, I don’t really like Talib shoving a teammate like that, even though myself and many others were calling for Norwood to take the first bus out of Mile High last night and never come back.

Norwood is clearly dejected here, and Talib isn’t doing anything to improve his confidence by shoving him off the field. Gary Kubiak said he thinks the situation could have been handled better.

First and foremost, the situation has to be handled better on the part of Kubiak. After Norwood struggled to cleanly field a single punt up to this point in the game, Kubiak left him in despite a muffed punt inside the Broncos’ own 10-yard line.

After this muffed punt resulting in a turnover, Kubiak still left him in the game.

It was one of many odd decisions on the night by the Broncos’ head coach, and perhaps the Broncos will look to someone else to return punts from this point forward.

There are seven wide receivers on the roster, men whose career is based on catching a football. If Norwood is the team’s best option at returning punts, a roster move must be made.

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