Broncos full season snap count review

So it is done. The Denver Broncos season and the Vance Joseph era are both now mercifully finished. The game-day inactives list for the season tells an interesting story for those willing to listen.

Elijah Wilkinson began the season as a game-day inactive after spending most of 2017 on the practice squad. By mid-year, he was a full-time starter at guard for us. Brendan Langley started the year on the practice squad and then was signed to active roster in November. Despite all of our injuries at CB, he took exactly zero defensive snaps. DeMarcus Walker had almost as many games where he was inactive (13) as he had defensive snaps (21). We’ll discuss that more later. The game 16 inactives are notable in that we didn’t play Shane Ray, Su’a Cravens or Demarcus Walker, but the other guys who were inactive in the final game of the season were signed to what were ostensibly futures contracts.

Offensive snap percentages for the second half of the season

Full season offensive snap counts and percentages:

By playing Sam Jones in the final two games of the season, it meant that the Broncos played every healthy drafted player that we selected in 2018 with the exception of David Williams (who was signed by the Jags off of our practice squad in October). We drafted 10 players and eight of them took offensive or defensive snaps for us in 2018. Four of them were active for all 16 games this season (Bradley Chubb, Josey Jewell, Courtland Sutton and Keishawn Bierria). That is a big departure from the days when John Fox was loathe to play rookies as our head coach. Part of this was from necessity due to injury, but some has to be seen as improved talent evaluation in the draft. Hopefully we can have another extremely productive draft in 2019.

As much as I maligned our coaching staff in 2018, I have to praise the offensive line coaches for the job that they did. We had a guard playing center (Connor McGovern) and two tackles playing guard (Wilkinson and Billy Turner) and we still had a functional offense (until the final three games of the season). Also note that the offensive line was able to keep our starting QB healthy and playing for all 16 regular season games - something that they were not able to do in the previous two seasons. 2015 doesn’t count because Peyton Manning’s foot injury was actually suffered during the 2014 season.

Defensive snap percentages from the second half of the season

Just like injuries were the story on the offensive side of the ball, they were also the story on the defensive side of the ball. In every position group we had significant contributors miss extended periods of time with injury and/or get placed on the IR. We also had a player see his skills evaporate in Darian Stewart. This caused Justin Simmons to try and pick up his slack leading to deterioration in his play relative to 2017. I will note that Simmons was the only player on the team to play every defensive (or offensive) snap this season.

Key points to take away from our player utilization/development in 2018

1. Brendan Langley is officially a bust. The Broncos were literally scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as CB talent was concerned and Langley got exactly zero defensive snaps this season. Langley has to be one of the worst reaches in franchise history rivaling our use of a 4th round pick on Maurice Clarrett.
2. DeMarcus Walker is an enigma. I have no explanation for why he was kept as a game-day inactive for the final meaningless two games of the season or for why has got a grand total of 21 defensive snaps this season. We are now two full seasons into his NFL career and we have seen less defensive playing time from him than we saw from Zaire Anderson in 2017. Walker now has 121 career defensive snaps. Anderson got 135 in 2017. Keep in mind that Brendan Langley got 108 defensive snaps in 2017. I wish somebody in Dove Valley could explain their actions regarding Walker. We might have to accept the the possibility that he is a bust (although he played well in the preseason and he was effective in the very limited snaps he got this year).
3. We apparently can develop offensive lineman - now. Max Garcia prior to his injury was playing at his highest level so far in the NFL. Connor McGovern looks like a legitimate starter at both guard and center. Elijah Wilkinson was not an embarrassment at guard despite not playing there since high school. Billy Turner looked serviceable at guard. Even the much-maligned Garett Bolles improved this season relative to his rookie year (despite the high number of holding penalties).
4. We have some good young talent on this team that might make it easier to move on from some of the veterans who are either free agents in 2019 (e.g. Matt Paradis, Max Garcia, Jared Veldheer and Domata Peko) or who have big cap hits (Brandon Marshall, Derek Wolfe, Emmanuel Sanders, Ronald Leary and Darian Stewart). I would not be the least bit surprised if none of those players listed above were on the team in 2019 - I would be unhappy about a few of them, but not surprised.

Definitely let me know your thoughts on how we used and/or misused our talent this season?