Broncos snap counts and percentages Weeks 12-13

The game-day inactives for these games saw two new names - Von Miller and recently signed, Shakial Taylor. Other than that the names of the list were unchanged over the last three games with the exception of the departure of Cyrus Jones. Taylor replaced Jones, who was placed on IR without ever seeing the field as a Bronco.

DeMarcus Walker spent his fourth straight game as a healthy scratch, but with the injury to Derek Wolfe he should be active for the rest of the season unless he has been passed on the depth chart by Jonathan Harris, who played for Vic Fangio in Chicago.

Offensive Snap Analysis

The injury to Ronald Leary meant that Austin Schlottmann got the most offensive snaps (9) of his young career in the game against the Chargers. Other than that our offensive line all played the entirety of both games.

The wide receiver group saw Courtland Sutton hardly leaving the field in both games while DaeSean Hamilton and Tim Patrick essentially played the WR2/WR3 roles interchangeably. Diontae Spencer (ten percent and four percent) and Fred Brown (zero percent and two percent) hardly saw the field on offense after both having games earlier in the year where they played on 50 percent or more of the offensive snaps. Interestingly enough each WR only had one game where they were used that heavily and afterward, they were both back to being offensive afterthoughts. For Spencer it was game nine and for Brown it was game eight.

The tight end group saw a return to health of Jeff Heuerman (33 and 49 percent) and a slightly lighter load on Noah Fant (73 and 72 percent after being 86 percent in the previous two games). Andrew Beck in the hybrid FB/TE role played 16 and 28 percent of the offensive snaps in the last two games. His utilization did not go up with the season ending injury to Andy Janovich.

The running back group saw a mild change with Phillip Lindsay seeing his playing time reduced a little in the last two games relative to game ten (64 to 55 to 44 percent) while Royce Freeman has seen his usage go up (30 to 55 to 56 percent). Devontae Booker, who had been playing on tiny amount on offense starting in game ten, saw his offensive snaps reduced to zero again in game twelve as they had been in games two through nine. Booker’s roughing the kicker penalty somewhat negates the argument that he is still game-day active because he is a critical special teams contributor.

Besides Booker the only offensive player who was active but not play on offense in game twelve was Jake Rodgers. Rodgers also did not play in game eleven.

Defensive Snap Analysis

The defensive line group saw Derek Wolfe play his normal 70+ percent of the snaps (he would have in game 12 were it not for the injury). Shelby Harris was limited in his snaps against Buffalo (24 percent) but was back to his normal 55 percent against SD LA London? Dre’Mont Jones saw his normal 25-30 percent in both games while Adam Gotsis got heavy usage against the Bills (55 percent) and very limited usage against the Chargers (18 percent). Mike Purcell played 53 percent in game eleven and 48 percent in game twelve.

The OLB group saw numerous changes because of injury. Von Miller played 80 percent vs the Bills and was inactive vs the Chargers. Malik Reed played 51 percent and then 64 percent despite missing some snaps last Sunday because of injury. Justin Hollins was inactive against the Bills and then played 70% of the snaps against the Chargers - in place of Von. Jeremiah Attaochu played heavily vs Buffalo (54 percent) and LA (61 percent - a season high for him). Ahmad Gooden saw his first defensive snaps of his career getting eleven and then four in the last two games.

The inside linebacker group saw Todd Davis play 95 and 100 percent of the defensive snaps while Alexander Johnson played 81 and 100 percent. Josey Jewell got five percent vs Buffalo but did not play on defense against LA. Jewell did recover the fumble on the muffed point though, so he had a significant impact on the game. Similarly Joseph Jones, who had gotten two snaps vs Buffalo did not play against LA.

The defensive back group is where the largest changes were seen in game eleven vs game twelve. While our three stalwarts, Chris Harris, Justin Simmons, and Kareem Jackson all played 100 percent of the snaps in both games other players saw big changes in their playing time. Will Parks hardly saw the field against Buffalo (12 percent) then hardly left the field against LA (79 percent).

Davontae Harris, who had taken almost every defensive snap in games six through ten, played all of them in game eleven and then none of them in game twelve. Harris’ benching coincided with the promotion of Isaac Yiadom back into the starting line-up where he was for the first two games of the season. Yiadom played every defensive snap of game twelve after playing none of them in game eleven. In a similar manner, Parks’ utilization came at the expense of Duke Dawson’s playing time. Dawson played 66 percent of the snaps vs Buffalo and the none of them vs LA. Dawson had been playing the role of CB3 (slot CB or nickel CB) over the previous four games. Trey Marshall played four defensive snaps vs LA after not playing vs Buffalo.

The only other defensive player who has not been mentioned yet that did not get any defensive snaps was Josh Watson.