Andy Benoit's Review of the 2010 Broncos

about 1 year ago bradley 17 comments 11 recs |

Comments

It's refreshing to read some objective analysis that is not trying to pander to the MSM or the uninformed masses

Benoit argues that the D-line was average and because the ILBs were not the attacking type, they were the worst unit on the defensive side of the ball. He also correctly said:

“The Broncos did not get marched all over like a typical bad defense. Rather, it was big plays — often resulting from simple missed tackles — that killed them.”

"All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses." Friedrich Nietzsche
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by Horsepower on May 12, 2011 6:52 AM MDT reply actions

Those were my favorite parts

I also liked his positive statements about M. Thomas. Maybe he and Big Vick will be enough to hold down the tackle positions in a 4-3 without needing to trade or sign a big name this year. I’m starting to love our draft more and more every day.

None of us go out and play for stats. You just do whatever you can to help the team out. -- Eddie Royal

by Poster_Formerly_Known_As_Royal_Fan on May 12, 2011 8:54 AM MDT up reply actions

excellent analysis

by Adam Manter on May 12, 2011 6:58 AM MDT reply actions

Andy Benoit

is one of the best analysts out there. He writes mostly for nfltouchdown.com. Occasionally he does a piece for the NY Times. He’s doing a detailed film review of all the NFL teams, division by division. He hasn’t done the AFC West yet.

Religious wars are fought to determine who has the best imaginary friend.

by bradley on May 12, 2011 7:58 AM MDT up reply actions

Thanks for the find Brad

Maybe our D- line isnt in shambles. I remember Fox saying something to the effect of the cupboard isnt bare

"It's all over fat man!"
-Tom Jackson

by Calikula on May 12, 2011 10:21 AM MDT reply actions

Great stuff

My admitedly lay perspective attributed more of our internal failures to the D-line compared to ILBs (hard to be a good ILB when you’re being bulldozed by a lineman 50lbs heavier than you… IMO the DLine needs to keep them more clean by demanding more double-teams), but I can understand coming to a different conclusion. Eitherway, the interior DEF wasn’t working.

Also agree completely that our achilles heel was passrush and big plays. Missed tackle big plays are just unforgiveable, but also fixable with new personnel/coaching… we’ll see if Fox can get better performance.

Our Passrush was brutal, but Mr.Benoit ignored the injuries that contributed to its weakness…. Doom and Reid were 2 of our best in ‘09, and both were unexpectantly lost for the whole season. Ayers was hoped to step up, and looked solid for a few games, then got hurt. J.Green was supposed to improve on/replace Holliday inside, but couldn’t even make it out of camp. J.Moss sucked in too many otherways to contribute. Perhaps a better D-Coord/Coach could’ve been more creative with the blitzes to generate something, but who knows given the lack of healthy talent.

So did we lack passrush depth? Sure… but a little health would’ve gone a long ways too. We were a team in transition, and just didn’t have the depth a more established team might’ve… thats not necessarily somthing that is realistically fixable by a 2nd year coach.

But those are minor critiques, and otherwise I agree with most everything here. Mr. Benoit does good work.

by cjfarls on May 12, 2011 12:05 PM MDT reply actions

re: DL failures and rush defense

“- My admittedly lay perspective attributed more of our internal failures to the D-line compared to ILBs (hard to be a good ILB when you’re being bulldozed by a lineman 50lbs heavier than you… IMO the DLine needs to keep them more clean by demanding more double-teams), but I can understand coming to a different conclusion. Eitherway, the interior DEF wasn’t working. …-”

I think McDaniels had it right when he said that it takes all eleven guys on run defense, and it’s only a mildly cliched statement. I find it extremely difficult to analyze breakdowns unless I have tape to watch over and over again.

What I’m suggesting — (and I had only intended to make a comment on something else when I found your post) — is that the belief that our DL was the entire problem in run defense is flawed. Badly flawed. And I’m not claiming that our DL was stellar, far from it. The difficulty that I have finding good game film which also shows an entire field view (none of it does, only the teams see that), tells me that most people have succumbed to social pressures in forming their attitudes. After all, every single Broncos fan has been begging for a DL draftee for three years now, it’s not surprising that we’d focus on the DL, especially since there is ‘some’ fault to be found there.

******* It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. – Jiddu Krishnamurti

by Colinski on May 16, 2011 3:39 PM MDT up reply actions

Agree completely

I mean, another overlooked area I think many folks haven’t considered is how much Hill/Dawk’s lack of speed also contributed to a poor run DEF… because they had to be very careful about not getting beat deep, it was likely difficult for them to fully commit to the run, even when we brought the 8th guy (Dawk) down into the box. So even when we stacked against the run, we were still limited. Ad some missed tackles (probably the biggest problem) and it was a recipe for disaster.

Plenty of blame to go around, and plenty of holes to fix. Saying it was solely any one thing just doesn’t make sense.

by cjfarls on May 17, 2011 9:12 AM MDT up reply actions

where I focus

I like Haggan but he and DJ aren’t run stoppers of the caliber as, say, Ray Lewis. I’m not saying they should measure up to a very high standard but Lewis is a best case example that helps illustrate the idea. We should expect that our ILBs are able to mirror (I can’t think of a good word here but the idea of running parallel to the LOS and moving in for the tackle when the RB accelerates through the hole). I’m no longer convinced that DJ has the instincts to play MLB/ILB. And I’m not convinced that Haggan has the lateral speed, although I haven’t given up on him as a contributer, perhaps at SAM.

The LBs are ‘cleaning up’ the RBs who get by the DL, and the DL was mostly tying up blockers and allowing the LBs to take on the RB one-on-one. This was a general area of weakness for us, which isn’t that surprising since neither DJ nor Mario are prototypical ILBs. Mays had become the starter at MIKE by late in the season but injury ended what seemed to be the solution to the problem.

The “spine” problem, which I refer to below, includes Jamal Williams, who was somewhat immovable but easy to run around, and Safety. And the exacerbating factor is pass rush, which I left out but clearly impacts how you play the run.

We were focused on S & MIKE ‘back when’ (~2008), when the M&Ms and Webster drew our ire but the intervening controversies, scheme change and FA additions have drawn our attention away from these areas as problems. What doing roster analysis reveals to me is that these areas decayed and were never rebuilt. The years 2006, 2008 & 2010 were good snapshots of the process of decline, although 2010 represents a different solution which was inadequate under the circumstances (i.e., Dumervil injury, Goodman injury, etc.). Also, note that 2005’s defense was ranked at #3, which was attributable to a solid overall construction. Here’s the decline — (2005): #3, (2006): #8, (2008): #30, (2010): #32.

I loved the idea of drafting a centerfielder, i.e., CB/S hybrid, which we did in 2009 (McBath) and again this year, 2011, because it would allow us to turn our attention back to pressuring the QB and putting more men in the box in order to counter the run. The run blitz (or 5-2) strategy was effective initially in 2009 but injuries and offensive counter-strategies led to our being burned when we stacked the box. I strongly support this as a general strategy but we weren’t effective at implementing it as the season wore on. Our eventual defensive standing was #18 but we led the league or were close to leading in the opening win skein.

I’ve read the posts regarding the change away from the run blitz during 2009 but it’s a counterproductive strategy when not executed effectively. Dumervil’s sack total was impressive but we failed to deliver much pressure otherwise. The point here is not that run blitz is bad, since I’d dearly love to see more of it, but it can become a counterproductive move if you lack the talent to execute. Moreover, you need adequate coverage from the DBs, particularly the Ss. We began to leak, and this was partly a LB coverage problem, too. The current draftees should help us shore up the aforementioned weaknesses.

******* It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. – Jiddu Krishnamurti

by Colinski on May 17, 2011 9:00 PM MDT up reply actions

This is a solid review.

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You can be an a$$hole... that's ok! There are many of these as well.
Unfortunately you cannot be both...
Ok... prove me wrong.

by BeachBronco on May 12, 2011 2:26 PM MDT reply actions

Very good and honest evaluation.

I have long been one of those in the “We need better LB’s” side of thinking for quite some time now.. I think Mr. Benoit made a very good point about the running game being a huge need for improvement. Most of this was attributed to injury and growing pains among the line, but I am very much looking forward to seeing Fox’s new running system installed to improve this problem. Love this analysis.

"If we cannot find a way, we will make one." -Hannibal

by AvalancheRescueDog on May 12, 2011 3:17 PM MDT reply actions

quote

The Broncos did not get marched all over like a typical bad defense. Rather, it was big plays — often resulting from simple missed tackles — that killed them.

To me, this screams scheme, not personnel. Which means a coaching change. And I don’t think McD would have been able to attract Dennis Allen like Fox did.

by tunesmith on May 12, 2011 4:09 PM MDT reply actions

Missed tackles = scheme?

I’m not following you.

I saw many big plays given up due to missed tackles and overpursuit. Go back and watch the big runs we gave up last season. A large number of them are counters and misdirections. Teams knew our team would overpursue.

That’s not scheme. You can have any scheme you can imagine, but if the players play fundementally weak football you don’t stand a chance.

by ten_fiver on May 12, 2011 4:56 PM MDT up reply actions

one way to miss a tackle is to be out of position when attempting to make it, because the scheme put you there. Easy to miss a tackle in open space. The thought is that if the problem was chiefly the personnel, the Broncos would have gotten marched all over like a typical bad defense.

by tunesmith on May 12, 2011 11:01 PM MDT up reply actions

the Orange Crush was a 3-4

With all due respect, you’ve fallen into an all too common trap. There’s no evidence that the 3-4 defense is inherently inferior. However, there is evidence that a 3-4 ‘can’ be susceptible teams with a strong running game, and those teams generally run up the middle. The problems we suffered after the opening winning streak in 2009 were centered on the weak side, and nobody (worth listening to) has suggested that one side of 3-4 is inherently susceptible to the run, which suggests a personnel weakness.

They aren’t talking about the 3-4 being inherently weak in Green Bay, Pittsburgh or New England. The same logic would lead us to draw the opposite conclusion.

A third area is being missed here — scheme familiarity. And it also coincides with scheme, so it’s easy to conflate the two. Your argument about being out of position ‘because’ of scheme is therefore still valid — to a degree. The resulting argument would be that the players failed to execute their assignments, whether by personnel weakness or lack of understanding. No scheme is wrong, there are only tradeoffs in terms of strengths and weaknesses.

******* It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. – Jiddu Krishnamurti

by Colinski on May 16, 2011 4:07 PM MDT up reply actions

what Benoit actually said:

Regarding our defense —

Defense

The Broncos did not get marched all over like a typical bad defense. Rather, it was big plays — often resulting from simple missed tackles — that killed them.

The defensive line was average inside, and there seemed to be no pass rush whatsoever. A simple preseason glance at the personnel stocking this 3-4 front surely should have warned Denver coaches about this problem.

The mediocrity of the inside linebackers was troubling. D.J. Williams is a great athlete but not enough of an attacker. The safeties were adequate but susceptible to big mistakes. Champ Bailey performed up to his usual level, but unlike in ’09, there wasn’t a solid output from the cornerback opposite him.

My focus has always been on team speed, which was the one area where the McDaniels positional prototype seemed lacking. It’s not that the Fairbanks-Bullough version of the 3-4 we used can’t be effective under certain conditions but the ability of players to recover from mistakes is lessened. Rarely are there pure cases in which a single factor is the determining factor of success, and I won’t claim that here, but speed was deemphasized as we went big in the last two years and I can’t help but wonder if it played some role in our declining fortunes.

Most of the problems that Benoit points to are ‘old’ problems dating back to 2008 or earlier which have fallen out favor in the minds of fans. The M & Ms of 2008 (McCree & Manual) at Safety have been replaced but we’ve yet to find a true fix. And 2008’s Webster/Koutouvides duo is gone but interim solutions have hardly been a force in stopping the run, which is why the name Wilson often comes up — still. It should be apparent to everyone by now that switching schemes (in whatever direction) is hardly a cure, and that applies primarily to a situation in which the defense has already decayed, which is what had happened by 2008.

The 2008 season provides a good vantage point for looking forwards and backwards, and the contrast between 06’s backbone of Warren & Myers at DT, Gold, Wilson & DJ at LB, and Lynch & Ferguson at S and 2008’s contingent of Robertson & Thomas at DT, Winborn/Bailey, Webster & DJ at LB, and McCree & Manual at S, shows a team in transition. It’s a transition from 8th in points allowed to 30th but maybe the individual changes from Wilson to Webster or Lynch to McCree express it just as well. The 2010 contingent of J. Williams at NT, DJ, Haggan and Mays at ILB, and Dawkins, Hill, McBath, Bruton and Jones at S, fares even poorer in relative terms, at 32nd in points allowed, but it’s also clear that the backbone of the defense had not yet been repaired.

I think our 2011 draft makes even more sense if we grant that there’s a considerable amount of truth in Benoit’s analysis of the Broncos. A big part of 2010’s story is the injury to Dumervil which led to our being last in sacks, and an anemic running game which was partly the product of of youth and injuries on the OL. Goodman’s injury was another area where we were exposed. If I had to find a silver lining in all this it’s that problems are quite fixable. And we don’t need to add more than a handful of FAs to solve the problem.

******* It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. – Jiddu Krishnamurti

by Colinski on May 17, 2011 1:27 AM MDT reply actions

Weak analysis.

He doesn’t back up his opinion with any relevant facts. How many times were the Broncos forced into third and long situations due to the run?

I actually analyzed every single play through the first 10-11 weeks last year. A vast majority of the third and long situations were a direct result of two consecutive failed pass plays.

He may be correct on the defense as that is also what my eyes told me during the season, but again its just conjecture without actual quantifiable facts. This is just another example of piss poor, lazy journalism.

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by Tim Lynch on May 17, 2011 8:32 AM MDT reply actions