Quarterly Review: Denver Broncos snap counts

I’m going to keep the prose short and let the graphs do the talking. Here are the snap %’s by game broken down by position group.

Offensive Line

Matt Paradis and Mike Schofield have played all of our offensive snaps through 4 games. Darrion Weems apparently is not as good as Ty Sambrailo since Ty has played in place of Weems since getting healthy.

RBs and TEs

With Virgil Green out the past two games John Phillips and Jeff Heuerman have both seen there playing time increased. CJ Anderson’s workload has gradually decreased with the increased snaps for Devontae Booker. Andy Janovich has consistently gotten between 40-50% of the offensive snaps through the first four weeks.

WRs

Jordan Norwood fills a role that it appears none of the other five WRs fill, although you could look at the numbers and conclude that we have used Jordan Taylor as the slot in three WR sets when Norwood is not in there. It appears that Bennie Fowler still has a role with him quickly getting up to the same level of snaps as Cody Latimer despite the time he missed due to the elbow injury. Demaryius Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders are both studs and both have played a huge number of snaps during the first four games.

Defensive Line (DE/NT/DT)

Jared Crick and Derek Wolfe have both been taking heavy numbers of snaps steadily this year while Sylvester Williams playing time has gradually decreased. Billy Winn also appears to be fairly constantly at ~30%. The general trend for Adam Gotsis and Darius Kilgo is up.

Linebackers

For the first time in his NFL career, Shane Ray got the highest percentage of the LB snaps in a game last game. Shaq Barrett and Corey Nelson have both gotten a significant increase in snaps with DeMarcus Ware out.

Defensive Backs

We have some absolute studs in the defensive backfield. This should not surprise anyone, but you might be surprised to see that we our two starting safeties and our two starting cornerbacks have played 90% or more of the defensive snaps in all 4 games. Bradley Roby’s snaps vary from week to week depending mostly upon the offensive scheme our opponent runs - if they run a lot of three WR sets, Roby plays a bunch. Will Parks has been playing since Justin Simmons has been injured as both have shared the third safety role. The trend for Kayvon Webster has been a gradual downward one.

So are any of these numbers a surprise to you? Sound off in the comments if they are.