A Look At the Broncos Offense Through History

The off-season has begun which means a time for reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of the past season. Today I want to study how the 2013 Denver Broncos offense compared to past Broncos seasons. We'll do this by looking at each previous year in two ways:

• How they moved the ball (How they accumulated their yards)
• How they scored (Whether they ran it in or threw for their touchdowns)

Now remember overall this isn't the most in depth study, instead it's a quick look at the trends throughout their years.

How the Broncos Have Moved the Ball Historically

So we'll look at this idea in a number of ways, here is how the table will be formatted:

• Year
• Coach that season
• Passing attempts that season
• Passing yards that season
• Yards per passing attempt
• Rushing attempts
• Rushing yards
• Yards per rushing attempt

These categories are pretty self-explanatory, they just tell us how often and how successfully teams passed and ran the ball. But there are two other sections I included.

• Ratio of passing yards to rushing yards
• Ratio of passing attempts to rushing attempts

By looking at this we can see the ratio of how often teams ran and passed the ball. So for example you have a very simplified team:

• Team A: 40 pass attempts, 300 yards. 30 rush attempts, 150 yards.

Team A has a pass/run attempt ratio of 40/30 or 1.33 pass attempts for every 1 run attempt. They had a pass/run yard ratio of 300/150 or 2 passing yards for every rushing yard. This gives a real image of how often a team runs and passes the ball, the higher the ratio, the more often they passed it compared to running it, but if the ratio drops below 1, they actually ran it more times than they passed it. To put this in context for a real team, in 1983 Reeves was the head coach, they passed the ball 499 times and ran it 471 times, so they have a ratio of 1.06 passes per run. But another factor recorded here is the yards, we see they had 3466 passing yards and 1784 rushing yards, so that would be a ratio of 1.94 passing yards to 1 rushing yard. That means that passing was 94% more often used to move the ball than running was that season. Whereas in 2003, the team had a yardage ratio of 1.13 passing yards to 1 rushing yard, a more even balance of moving the ball.

The Table:

*This is a sortable table, click on the heading to sort*

Year	Coach	Pass Attp	Pass Yards	Pass YPA	Rush Attp	Rush Yards	Rush YPA	Ratio Yards (P/R)	Ratio Attp (P/R)
1983	Reeves	499	3466	6.9	471	1784	3.8	1.94	1.06
1984	Reeves	475	3116	6.6	508	2076	4.1	1.50	0.94
1985	Reeves	617	3952	6.4	497	1851	3.7	2.14	1.24
1986	Reeves	549	3811	6.9	455	1678	3.7	2.27	1.21
1987	Reeves	530	3874	7.3	510	1970	3.9	1.97	1.04
1988	Reeves	581	3941	6.8	464	1815	3.9	2.17	1.25
1989	Reeves	474	3352	7.1	554	2092	3.8	1.60	0.86
1990	Reeves	527	3671	7.0	462	1872	4.1	1.96	1.14
1991	Reeves	459	3310	7.2	507	2015	4.0	1.64	0.91
1992	Reeves	473	3312	7.0	403	1500	3.7	2.21	1.17
Avg.	Reeves	518	3581	6.9	483	1865	3.9	1.94	1.08
1993	Phillips	553	4061	7.3	468	1693	3.6	2.40	1.18
1994	Phillips	626	4383	7.0	461	1470	3.4	2.98	1.45
Avg.	Phillips	590	4222	7.2	450	1582	3.5	2.69	1.32
1995	Shanahan	549	4260	7.8	440	1995	4.5	2.14	1.25
1996	Shanahan	536	3662	6.8	525	2362	4.5	1.55	1.02
1997	Shanahan	513	3704	7.2	520	2378	4.6	1.56	0.99
1998	Shanahan	491	3808	7.8	525	2468	4.7	1.54	0.94
1999	Shanahan	554	3419	6.2	465	1864	4.0	1.83	1.19
2000	Shanahan	569	4243	7.5	516	2311	4.5	1.84	1.10
2001	Shanahan	511	2940	5.8	481	1877	3.9	1.57	1.06
2002	Shanahan	554	3824	6.9	457	2266	5.0	1.69	1.21
2003	Shanahan	479	2969	6.2	543	2629	4.8	1.13	0.88
2004	Shanahan	521	3999	7.7	534	2333	4.4	1.71	0.98
2005	Shanahan	465	3227	6.9	542	2539	4.7	1.27	0.86
2006	Shanahan	454	2799	6.2	488	2152	4.4	1.30	0.93
2007	Shanahan	515	3584	7.0	429	1957	4.6	1.83	1.20
2008	Shanahan	620	4471	7.2	387	186	4.8	2.40	1.60
Avg.	Shanahan	524	3636	6.9	489	2214	4.5	1.72	1.08
2009	McDaniels	558	3627	6.5	440	1836	4.2	1.98	1.27
2010	McDaniels	580	4038	7.0	398	1544	3.9	2.62	1.46
Avg.	McDaniels	569	3833	6.7	419	1690	4.0	2.30	1.36
2011	Fox	429	2708	6.3	546	2632	4.8	1.03	0.79
2012	Fox	609	4534	7.4	481	1832	3.8	2.47	1.27
2013	Fox	695	5444	7.8	461	1873	4.1	2.91	1.51
Avg.	Fox	578	4229	7.3	496	2112	4.3	2.0	1.2

Thoughts:

Fox owns two of the more unbalanced pass/run offenses on both ends, the 2011 season was the most unbalanced run-heavy offense while the 2013 was the 2nd most unbalanced pass heavy offense. He and Mike McCoy really showed skill in crafting offenses that differed but succeeded.

How the Broncos Scored Historically

This section and table will follow a similar format, but will deal with scoring:

• Year
• Coach that season
• Passing touchdowns
• Passing touchdown percentage (touchdowns divided by attempts)
• Rushing touchdowns
• Rushing touchdown percentage (touchdowns divided by attempts)
• Ratio of passing touchdowns to rushing touchdowns

As with how we studied the Broncos offense in relation to yards, this lets us see how often they passed and ran the ball into the end zone. similarly to last time by including the ratio, we can see how balanced a team was in the red zone.

To explain this we'll use the 1983 season again, the team had 17 passing touchdowns and 15 rushing touchdowns, that's a ratio of 1.13 passing touchdowns for every rushing touchdown. Another key item here is the ratio of touchdown per attempt, which is converted into a percentage. In 1983, for every passing attempt, they had a 3.41% chance of scoring a touchdown, and for every rushing attempt, they had a 3.18% chance of scoring

Now obviously there are other factors at play here, but this gives us a feel for how each season went and what parts of the team worked effectively.

The Table:

*This is a sortable table, click on the heading to sort*

Year	Coach	Pass TD's	Pass TD %	Rush TD	Rush TD %	Pass/Rush TD Ratio
1983	Reeves	17	3.41%	15	3.18%	1.13
1984	Reeves	22	4.63%	12	2.39%	1.83
1985	Reeves	23	3.73%	20	4.02%	1.15
1986	Reeves	22	4.01%	17	4.40%	1.29
1987	Reeves	24	4.53%	18	3.53%	1.33
1988	Reeves	24	4.13%	13	2.80%	1.85
1989	Reeves	21	4.43%	15	2.71%	1.40
1990	Reeves	15	2.85%	19	4.11%	0.79
1991	Reeves	13	2.83%	16	3.16%	0.81
1992	Reeves	16	3.38%	11	2.73%	1.45
Avg.	Reeves	19.7	3.79%	15.6	3.30%	1.30
1993	Phillips	27	4.88%	13	2.78%	2.08
1994	Phillips	18	2.88%	19	4.41%	0.95
Avg.	Phillips	22.5	3.88%	16	3.59%	1.51
1995	Shanahan	27	4.98%	14	3.18%	1.93
1996	Shanahan	26	4.85%	20	3.81%	1.30
1997	Shanahan	27	5.26%	18	3.46%	1.50
1998	Shanahan	32	6.52%	26	4.95%	1.23
1999	Shanahan	16	2.89%	13	2.80%	1.23
2000	Shanahan	28	4.92%	21	4.07%	1.33
2001	Shanahan	26	5.09%	7	1.46%	3.71
2002	Shanahan	21	3.79%	21	4.60%	1.00
2003	Shanahan	19	3.97%	20	3.68%	0.95
2004	Shanahan	27	5.18%	13	2.43%	2.08
2005	Shanahan	18	3.87%	25	4.61%	0.72
2006	Shanahan	20	4.41%	12	2.46%	1.67
2007	Shanahan	21	4.08%	10	2.33%	2.10
2008	Shanahan	25	4.03%	15	2.33%	1.67
Avg.	Shanahan	23.8	4.56%	16.8	3.41%	1.60
2009	McDaniels	21	3.76%	9	2.05%	2.33
2010	McDaniels	25	4.31%	13	3.27%	1.92
Avg.	McDaniels	23	4.04%	11	2.66%	2.13
2011	Fox	20	4.70%	11	2.00%	1.82
2012	Fox	37	6.08%	12	2.49%	3.08
2013	Fox	55	7.91%	16	3.47%	3.44
Avg.	Fox	37.3	6.23%	13	2.66%	2.87

Thoughts:

The Broncos have changed with each coach, Reeves using a pass heavy offense (even if we don't remember it that way), Shanahan and Phillips running more balanced offenses, and McDaniels returning to the pass heavy offense and Fox using both at times. But even within each coach's tenure there was fluctuation, as players come and go, injuries set in, teams have to change.

Fox's offenses, especially in 2013, were a bit hard to read because while their ratio was horrible, they had 16 rushing touchdowns (which is above average when compared to past Broncos seasons) and had a rushing touchdown percentage which was also above average, though his 2012 season was pretty below average in those two areas.