In my first post, scoring our playmakers part 1: Defense, I offered the results of a scoring system I applied to all the defensive plays of the 2011 Denver Broncos. This post is the offensive counterpart. We are looking at offensive playmaking, in an objective way, assigning point values to the big plays.

We will examine each offensive player with the following pt system.

Points are cumulative. For example, a 12 yard first down catch on 3rd down would equal 2.2 pts for both QB and the receiver. A 50 yard TD run would be worth 7 pts. Each position will have two charts. A big one showing pts scored by game, followed by a small summary.

Quarterbacks Passing

These are only the passing stats. We saw three and a half games (SD #1, Min, Chi, Pit) where Tebow put up passing numbers that compared favorably to Orton. Clearly the KC#1 and NYJ games were won purely on the ground. As expected, Orton scored better in terms of average pts per touch passing, although he didn't offer anything on the ground which we'll look at next.

Running the ball

The stat that I think is important is the "regular season avg" which is the average number of points scored per touch (in this case rushes). First of all, in terms of playmaking while running the ball, Moreno was our worst player in terms of avg pts per touch. Looking at the numbers, I wish we'd have seen Johnson more. He produced on his limited opportunities. Our running game had a lot of carries, but few big plays. Clearly Tebow was the most productive runner on average. We need a big play running back. McGahee can get tough yards, but we need someone who gets to the second level quicker. The running game suffered a significant decline during the playoffs.

Catching the ball

First look at the RBs. Mcgahee isn't very productive catching passes. Moreno is much better but isn't productive running the ball. We need a dual threat. Again, I wonder what Johnson could have showed us? We simply didn't pass to our backs this year. I'm not sure Moreno is worth holding on to. Moreno and Ball produced in similar fashion in both rushing and receiving on average. Johnson should get a chance to show his stuff in the preseason. We need a duel threat, home run type runner.

Our WR group is pretty spotty. Royal is far and away our weakest producer. Outside of a big TD catch against Pit, he didn't do anything all year (except on ST). Willis still might have potential. Lloyd wasn't having an outstanding year, but it would be nice to get someone good to replace him. DT is going to be a beast next year.

We never utilized our TE in the passing game either. Fells was money but we couldn't figure out how to get him involved. Rosario had a couple big catches. JT & VG? We might have an elite TE receiver on our team, but we wouldn't know if we did. Bottom line is Tebow needs more weapons. This receiving core isn't as good as his college group was IMO.

In this system, 40 or more offensive points usually mean a win. The only exceptions were the GB and NE games where we had defensive meltdowns. The offense didn't play well enough to beat the Jets but the defense did. Note that during our last 7 games (Min till the end), the only games we won were games where our passing game scored better than our running game. This is exactly opposite to the first 6 Tebows starts. In other words we went from rushing to win, to passing to win. Interesting. Please comment if you have ideas explaining this. Could it be teams were figuring out how to stop our running game at that point in the season?

(Bold denotes win.)

This is a summary of how we scored on offense and defense. With only a couple exceptions, an offensive score over 40 means a win and a defensive score of 55 or more means a win. The Jets game was the only win where both conditions weren't met. All of our loses we had a flaw. The Ten and SD#1 games were lost by a lack of offensive playmaking; the GB and NE#1 games were lost by a lack of defensive playmaking; the rest were team loses. According to this imperfect method of evaluation, our weaknesses are equally shared between offense and defense. It means both need to be addressed in FA/Draft. Where do our changes happen on offense and who do we try to sign/draft in the offseason?