Denver Broncos Week 10 snap counts and analysis

I’m skipping the game day inactives for this game. I’m fresh out of forks to give on that.

Offense

Our five starters on the offensive line played the entire game. It didn’t help much. Calvin Anderson was completely overmatched in his first NFL snaps and the Raiders routinely exploited him. There might have been one or two running plays during the game where our back was not forced to dodge a defender behind the LOS, but there can’t have been many. The scary thing here is that the Raiders front 7 is not that good, but our OL, even with Graham Glasgow back, made them look elite.

Even with their performance against us, the Raiders are currently tied for 31st in sacks with 11 on the season. They are 19th in run stopping (allowing 4.45 ypc). They are also the third worst team in the league at missing tackles with 79 on the season. Guess what. It didn’t matter against us. They held our offense to three scoring drives, “forced” five turnovers, and forced four drives where our offense went 3-and-out. Their D came into the game having forced five turnovers in eight games. They matched that season total in one game against us.

To make matters worse, their special teams (and ours) forced the Denver O to start four drives inside our own 10 (at the 3, 7, 2 and 7 yard lines). Our best starting field position for the game was our own 29. The Raiders started five drives in Denver territory.

Melvin Gordon played a decent game in his offensive snaps - he got 56 percent of them. He was credited with six broken tackles. He had seven total coming into this game. Our running backs now how 17 for the season (13 for Gordon, 3 for Phillip Lindsay and one for Royce Freeman). Lindsay was in one 30 percent of the offensive snaps but only touched the ball four times (he was targeted on one pass). His four rushing attempts gained a total of two yards. Freeman was only in on 14 percent of the snaps but he touched the ball four times (2 runs for 11 yards and 2 catches for 15 yards). Jeremy Cox played four offensive snaps.

Our decimated tight end group had Noah Fant playing a career high 85 percent of the offensive snaps. Recently re-signed Troy Fumagalli played 17 percent of the snaps and Nick Vannett played 14 percent of the snaps. This means that we rarely used two TE sets this game despite being within two touchdowns for three quarters of the game.

Generally one way to both help a struggling QB and a struggling offensive tackle is to run the ball from two TE sets. In retrospect it would appear that if we tried that, we abandoned it pretty quickly. I don’t know that it would have worked, but Melvin Gordon was one of the few things that was a plus for us offensively in this game. Maybe trying to get him and Lindsay more involved by employing two TE sets would have been helpful, but IDK. Our TEs have been below average in run blocking this year. So maybe that is why we didn’t try this approach.

Excluding Lock’s runs, our runners carried the ball 17 times and had a total of 22 yards BEFORE contact. That means that they were getting hit one yard past the LOS on average. For comparison, the Raider running backs had 37 carries and 110 yards before contact. So on average they were three yards past the LOS before they were touched by a defender.

Our wide receivers had KJ Hamler playing 87 percent of the snaps, Jerry Jeudy playing 86 percent, Tim Patrick playing 59 percent and DaeSean Hamilton playing 44 percent. Diontae Spencer played two offensive snaps.

Offensive players who were active but did not play on offense were Brett Rypien, Demar Dotson, Austin Schlottmann and Quinn Bailey.

Defense

For the first time in a long time, we only had one played on defense play every snap - Justin Simmons. We did have plenty of others play 90 percent or more though.

The defensive linemen Dre’Mont Jones, Demarcus Walker, DeShawn Williams, McTelvin Agim and Sylvester Williams playing 65, 61, 54, 29 and 43 percent respectively. For Agim this was a career high. For Walker this was a season high. This group did very little this game - combining for eleven tackles total and one QB pressure. That’s it. No passes batted down. No TFL. No QBhits. No sacks. DeShawn Williams was credited with the pressure. Our defense in total was only able to pressure Derek Carr on three (or maybe two - depending where you look) of his 25 dropbacks.

Carr’s numbers looked pedestrian, but he was hurt by two dropped TDs. According to PFR, Carr only made three “bad” throws all game. Compare that to Drew Lock who made 11 (although it seemed like much more to me).

Our outside linebackers Bradley Chubb, Malik Reed, Jeremiah Attaochu and Anthony Chickillo played 72, 65, 40 and 21 percent respectively. They combined four tackles, our lone TFL and two of our three QB pressures. In other words, our OLBs were almost invisible this game.

Our inside linebackers Alexander Johnson, Josey Jewell and Josh Watson played 93, 90 and 4 percent of the snaps. They combined for 25 tackles (and two missed tackles). Watson only played three defensive snaps and made three tackles. That is efficiency (one of those was kickoff coverage though).

From the cornerbacks Bryce Callahan, AJ Bouye, Essang Bassey and Duke Dawson played 97, 97, 60 and 7 percent of the snaps. Michael Ojemudia did not play a single defensive snap (he played on 13 not-special teams snaps). This is odd because Ojemudia played EVERY defensive snap the previous game and has played at least 73 percent in every game this season.

According to PFR, only Callahan and Kareem Jackson were good in coverage this game. Callahan had our lone pass break-up. Callahan’s man was targeted six times and he allowed three catches for nine yards. Jackson’s man was targeted three times for one catch (although that catch did gain 25 yards).

Jackson played 96 percent of the defensive snaps with Trey Marshall giving him a rest on two plays.

Defensive players who played no defensive snaps that have not been mentioned yet are PJ Locke, Austin Calitro and Davontae Harris (who was just released).