Denver Bronco game 7 snap review 2022

Offense

I know you don’t expect the backup QB to come in and light up a good defense even with a week of reps with the first team, but Brett Rypien was not very good in this game. For once the offensive line did a decent job of keeping pressure off of him. Accodring to PFR he was only pressured on 10.4 percent of his dropbacks (5 of 47). He was only sacked once. Compare that to Zach Wilson who was pressured on 28.1 percent of his dropbacks and sacked three times. Wilson also avoided three or four more sacks barely.

When a QB is kept relatively clean, you expect better than 24/46 for 225 and 1 INT. There have now been 27 games started by backup quarterbacks in the NFL this season. If we exclude the used-to-be-starters: Andy Dalton, Jimmy Garoppolo, Joe Flacco and Taylor Heinicke, that still leaves 14 starts by QBs who are comparable to Rypien. By passer rating Rypien’s start on Sunday was the second worst of the 14. The only start that was worse was Cooper Rush’ start against the Eagles on October 16th.

So our offense is getting less the has been historically produced from our starting QB, AND less than has been normal from a comparable backup QB. That’s not a good look for the offensive coaches. I also wanted to see if those other poor starts from backup QBs happened when those QBs were pressured or well-protected like Rypien was on Sunday.

Here are the pressure rates for those other starts where the QB had a passer rating less than 75:

• Rush vs PHI 10/16/22 - 10.5% pressure rate
• Kenny Pickett vs MIA 10/23/22 - 12.2%
• PJ Walker vs LAR 10/16/22 - 11.1%
• Pickett vs BUF 10/9/22 - 14.3%

So it would appear that it’s normal for inexperienced backup QBs to struggle even when they are relatively well protected. Currently the best team in the league at protecting the QB, the Bills, is only allowing pressure on 12.2 percent of dropbacks. The Bears are an outlier on the other end of the spectrum allowing pressure on a crazy 34.8 percent. The second worst offensive line in the league, Tennessee, is only allowing pressure on 28.8 percent. It should comes as a surprise to no one that the Bears also lead the league in scrambles with 33 so far this season. The Texans and the Bucs both have exactly one so far.

For once the offensive line not seem to be the problem. While the Broncos only ran for 105 yards, the vast majority of those yards were before contact (83 of them). That’s a huge improvement over the first loss in this string of losses, vs LV, when the Broncos runners other than Russell Wilson, had 11 total rushing yards before contact. The offensive line is very different now than it was vs the Raiders.

Billy Turner and Quinn Meinerz are now starting on the right side (and played every snap on Sunday) while Cameron Fleming has moved over to LT. Fleming played 80% of the snaps on Sunday and Calvin Anderson played 16 snaps when Fleming was dinged up.

Greg Dulcich continued to show that he can be a weapon on offense even as a rookie TE. Rookie TEs, even highly drafted ones, in the NFL generally don’t produce that much. Dulcich played 59 percent of the snaps while our blocking TE, Eric Tomlinson, played 44 percent due to the injury to Eric Saubert (15 snaps). Tomlinson now has three catches on five targets this season to bring his career reception total to 21. He’s been in the NFL since 2015. Andrew Beck played 25 percent of the offensive snaps.

Melvin Gordon got the most snaps in the RB group with 40 (51 percent) while Latavius Murray got 31 and Mike Boone got 9 before he got hurt.

Courtland Sutton and Jerry Jeudy played about the same amount (72 and 70 snaps) while KJ Hamler played 46. Kendall Hinton played seven and Montrell Washington played 3. Washington did get the ball on jet sweep (for two yards) on one of his three snaps. Washington had to break a tackle to even gain two on the play. When an offensive player is used sparingly and only on jet sweeps and bubble screens, it negates his effectiveness because the defense is primed to stop that when that player enters the game. Our coaching staff needs to realize that if they want Trell to be an effective weapon on offense, they are going to have to put him in the game more when he is NOT going to be getting the ball.

Trell’s broken tackle was the only broken tackle by a Bronco offensive player on Sunday. Javonte Williams still leads the team in broken tackles with 8 despite only playing in 3.5 games this season. The rest of the team has 15 total with Melvin Gordon accounting for 6. No other Bronco has more than two right now.

So far this season he has 39 offensive snaps, 3 targets (2 catches) and 3 carries. NFL offenses can’t have tells like that. NFL defensive coaches watch too much tape to not catch tendencies.

Offensive players who were game-day active but did not play on offense were Graham Glasgow, Luke Wattenberg, and Tyrie Cleveland.

Defense

The defense had four players play all 59 defensive snaps: Alex Singleton, Damarri Mathis, Patrick Surtain and Justin Simmons. Kareem Jackson came off the field for one defensive play.

One the defensive line Dre’Mont Jones played 38 snaps, DeShawn Williams 33, DJ Jones 32, Matt Henningsen 16 and Eyioma Uwazurike 15.

Bradley Chubb played 43 snaps (73 percent), Baron Browning played 22 before he got hurt. Jonathan Cooper got 24 while Nik Bonitto got 15.

At inside linebacker besides Singleton, Jonas Griffith played 49 snaps. Justin Strnad continued his run of games with zero defensive snaps.

Our nickel CB, K’Waun Williams, played 33 snaps. No other CB played defensive snaps this game. PJ Locke played four snaps on defense. We played very few snaps with six defensive backs on the field against the Jets.

Delarrin Turner-Yell, Michael Ojemudia and Darius Phillips did not play on defense.

Ojemudia, who started eleven games at CB for the Broncos in 2020, has played exactly one defensive snap this season. The Broncos used the 77th overall pick in the draft in 2020 on him. He played quite well last season once he came back from injury, but it was in very limited snaps (85 total). The being said he only allowed a passer rating of 61.4 when his man was targeted in 2021.

Getting Caden Sterns back this season would be nice. According to PFR, receivers that he has covered have only caught 5 of 17 targets for 84 yards. He also has team leading two interceptions. Combining those two you find that he has allowed a passing rating of 8.1 when his man has been targeted this season. That is literally the best in the league right now.