Stat Snip: Week 3 Broncos-Texans

Another week, another game to review, another chance to dig into the game and see what statistics stand out as helpful to understanding the game or may be a trend that will affect future games. Now this is just a short article, like the title suggests, this won't be indepth or intense, just something that is, hopefully, interesting.

Onto this week's Stat Snip:

Broncos Drop Issues:
- Demaryius Thomas: 4 Drops on 20 Catchable Targets, Drop Rate of 20%
- This is 1st Among All Wide Receivers and Tight Ends in the NFL

So we all knew drops were an issue for the Broncos, but there is no player that has a bigger issue than Demaryius Thomas. He currently is the worst among NFL players with five or more receptions and the next closest player has a drop rate nearly 4% below DT with 16.7%. Eric Decker's drop rate if 5% below that of Thomas. The Broncos as a whole don't really have to big of a drop problem, they rank 17th as a team in drops per target, below average but not horrible. The main issue, both in the short term and long term, are focused on Demaryius Thomas.

Now the drops are an immediate issue because they can impact the game, obviously, but they also have longer term effects between Manning and DT. We saw that by the 4th quarter Manning pretty much threw only too Brandon Stokley and Eric Decker, because at that point, they were the more reliable receivers. On the last drop of the game the camera switched back to Manning who was very obviously upset and yelling at Thomas. If this trend continues, while Thomas will still be a big part of the offense, history says, if you drop the ball, Peyton Manning will ignore you.

This offense is not talented to ignore one of it's most physical players, so these drops are even more important in the long term, if DT can't fix his drop problems, which extent back to last year as well, then when Manning doesn't target him as often, this offense won't be able to be as explosive and the team will struggle.

So while drops have an impact the moment they happen, we need to consider the impact two, three, four games from now as well.