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The Denver Broncos, through the written words of Mike Klis, appear to be attempting to sway public opinion in favor of Garett Bolles after a few weeks of mostly error free play. While I appreciate the attempt, I’ll remain cautiously skeptical for now due in large part of this being quite the normal pattern for Bolles through his three seasons in the NFL.
As Andrew Mason pointed out on Wednesday, this isn’t the first time Bolles has gone a few games without racking up the penalties.
Starting in 2017 as a rookie, here is how Bolles proves he has streaks of good and bad. Through 45 games, he has 41 total penalties and, unlike Klis, I am counting the ones that were declined or offset.
- Games 1-4: 2 penalties
- Games 5-9: 8 penalties
- Games 10-11: 0 penalties
- Games 12-15: 5 penalties
- Games 16-17: 0 penalties
- Games 18-24: 8 penalties
- Games 25-29: 0 penalties
- Games 30-34: 9 penalties
- Games 35-37: 0 penalties
- Games 38-43: 8 penalties
- Games 44-45: 1 penalty
Source: https://www.nflpenalties.com/player/g-bolles-denver-broncos (2017-2019)
Currently, Bolles’ longest streak without a penalties is five games in 2018. The point of this exercise is to show that nothing has really changed here, despite what Mike Klis tried to claim in his recent post.
Until we get a larger sample size of games where Bolles isn’t having lapses in play that cost the team big chunks of yards in back-to-back kind of situations, I’ll remain skeptical.
As it stands, left tackle is at or near the top of my 2020 NFL Draft board for the Broncos and it should be on yours too.