For the second consecutive week, the Denver Broncos snatched defeat from the jaws of victory on the road vs. a playoff contender.
The defense bounced back, but the offense slumped, and the end result — a game-losing field goal at the buzzer — was the same.
What’s plaguing the Broncos during this slow start, and who’s rising above those miscues? Let’s take a look.
Stock Up
Denver Broncos Pass Rush
The one element of this Denver Broncos team that has yet to waver this season is the pass rush.
In Week 1, they sacked Cam Ward six times, and even though the sack production wasn’t there in Week 2, Daniel Jones was one of the most pressured quarterbacks in the league.
This week, against the Chargers, the Denver Broncos pressured Justin Herbert on 54.7% of dropbacks, which is the highest rate of pressure Herbert has ever faced in his career. The Broncos also sacked Herbert five times, which is tied for the second-most sacks he’s ever suffered in a single game.
Plus, that pressure was vital to the Broncos’ ability to stifle the Bolts’ attack. When pressured, Herbert was 10-for-23 for 143 yards, one touchdown, one interception, and an underwhelming passer rating of 60.6. When unaffected by the pass rush, Herbert was 18-for-24 for 157 yards and a passer rating of 91.8.
Again, that impact is nothing new for Bonitto, Cooper, and Co. this season.
Through three weeks, the Broncos have two of the top seven edge-rushers in pass-rush win rate, with Cooper winning 26.4% of his pass-rush opportunities and Bonitto winning 25.0% of his. Denver’s edge-rusher duo has also been elite in terms of production, as they’re the only team with two players ranking among the top 12 edge-rushers in pass-rush productivity (PRP). Bonitto’s PRP of 15.6 leads the league by a wide margin, as the gap between him and second place is the same as the gap between second place and ninth place, while Cooper ranks fifth with a score of 12.5.
Even when you expand the scope past those two, the Broncos’ pass rush has been remarkable. They rank second in pressure rate and non-blitz pressure rate, fourth in sack rate, fifth in pass-rush win rate, and 12th in pressure-to-sack conversion rate. The fact that they’ve been so dominant despite only converting sacks at about a league-average rate highlights that this unit could become even more suffocating with just a small amount of improvement in that one facet.
Stock Down
Bo Nix
After a bounce-back performance in Week 2, Bo Nix cratered in Week 3, with a performance that was, in some ways, even uglier than his putrid season-opener showing.
Over all four quarters, he regularly missed wide-open pass-catchers, both with inaccurate passes and with subpar processing. The Chargers’ defense has arguably been the best in football through three weeks, and their coverage operates like a python, squeezing the life of its opponent. The Broncos had an offensive success rate below 25%, meaning less than one out of every four plays kept the team ahead of the sticks.
Explosives are going to be few and far between, but with it being so impossible to beat this defense on a down-to-down basis, you must seize the chance at a big play when the opportunity arises, and Nix failed to do so Sunday. On throws 10-plus yards downfield, Nix was 3-for-8 for 84 yards and a touchdown, and those misfires and missed open reads weighed heavily on the Broncos’ three-point defeat.
Struggling to make some of those reads against an elite Jesse Minter pass defense is more excusable, because that unit presents a stiff challenge to even the sharpest veteran QBs, let alone a year-two player in start No. 21. The inaccuracies, on the other hand, are much harder to excuse, especially because so often the reason for the poor aim is self-inflicted shoddy footwork that borders on making the throw a ‘trick shot.’
Instead of throwing the ball like a football, Nix will show off his best javelinist impression and heave a running jump ball deep downfield, only for it to narrowly sail past the outstretched mitts of his target. It’s hard not to imagine what would happen if Nix just set his feet and used his natural accuracy, instead of making the throw so much harder on himself. Those misses cost the Broncos three explosive plays, one of which would’ve been a walk-in touchdown, in a game they lost by three points.
All in all, the Broncos finished with Week 3’s 10th-worst EPA/dropback and second-worst dropback success rate. Bo Nix has to be better to get this talented roster across the finish line.
Sean Payton
Speaking of key figures who must improve, Sean Payton is another name that must be mentioned. Also, that description — him needing to improve — is the right framing of the predicament.
Payton pulled the franchise out of the tire fire it was embroiled in for nearly a decade, and he has a lengthy resume of high-end coaching. He’s not some bumbling buffoon who doesn’t know how to tie his shoes, let alone operate an offense, a la Nate Hackett.
While that’s somewhat of a defense of Payton, it’s also a justification to demand more from him and to expect better from his team, and his offense in particular.
Through three weeks, the Denver Broncos sit at 1-2 and have two heartbreaking losses marred by coaching errors. In Week 2, it was Payton’s head-scratching end-of-game clock management, and the game-losing leverage penalty, and in Week 3, it was a deluge of penalties that snuffed out Broncos drives and gave life to the Chargers’ offense. Final score aside, all three weeks have been characterized by a general sloppiness that doesn’t align with what we’ve come to expect from Payton’s teams, either in Denver or New Orleans.
Along with the buffet of slop, there’s been a heaping helping of blandness on offense, as the attack ranks 21st in EPA/play and 32nd in success rate so far this season. Some of that is the result of Bo Nix’s struggles, but Nix’s struggles have been fueled, in part, by an ineffective run game and the aforementioned sloppiness consistently setting him up in third-and-long situations.
Yet again, Payton has failed to cultivate a compelling run game. So far, the Broncos have the league’s sixth-worst rushing success rate, which means they’re constantly being put behind the sticks. The rushing attack ranks 17th in EPA per carry, thanks to its high rate of explosive carries. However, the down-to-down inefficiency has prevented them from establishing the run or leaning on their ground game, and that’s ultimately on Payton.
Now, there are 14 games left, and if there’s one thing Payton has demonstrated in his career, it’s that he knows how to turn a season around after a lackluster start, but his team’s tendency to stumble out of the gates is also a critique worth noting.
There’s plenty of reason for hope, but also plenty of reason to want more.
Payton arrived in Denver a year before Harbaugh arrived in Los Angeles, but which team seems to be doing a better job of maximizing their talent? Which job is more buttoned up and better prepared? Which team has a more clearly defined team identity? Which team is leading the AFC West despite being thought to have taken a step back this offseason, and which team is tied for last in the division despite pushing their chips in?
Pat Surtain II
Riley Moss has been the target of much of Broncos Country’s online ire after the last two disappointing losses, by Pat Surtain II has been the greater problem in the secondary.
On his 12 targets this week, Riley Moss allowed four completions for 65 yards and a touchdown, but he also had a pass breakup that led to the team’s lone interception, which translates to a passer rating of 45.5 allowed when targeted.
For comparison’s sake, Surtain was targeted five times this week and allowed three completions for 51 yards, which comes out to 10.2 yards per attempt when targeted and a passer rating allowed of 94.6 when targeted. Granted, a lot of that yardage came off the tackle miscue early in the game, but that miscue is still a disappointing and costly error that the reigning DPOY shouldn’t make.
Now, obviously, Surtain is a tremendous player, and Denver’s defense asks much more of him than it asks of Moss, or really any other defender. But that’s also why his ‘good-not-great’ performances have been so devastating to the defensive structure. Vance Joseph’s unit has been predicated on the belief that PS2’s presence changes the math for the defense on every single play, because he can single-handedly erase giant swaths or foundational offensive weapons from the equation.
If he isn’t doing that, the formula can crumble at points, and that’s happened each of the past two weeks.
