Broncos’ offense full season snap review

The Broncos finished the season with 23 players on the IR. That’s one short of the “record” according to Spotrac.com. You can’t really talk about this season without bringing up the plague of injuries.

1. Garett Bolles (Leg)
2. Ronald Darby (Knee-acl)
3. Randy Gregory (Knee)
4. Tim Patrick (Knee-acl)
5. Dalton Risner (Elbow)
6. Dre’Mont Jones (Hip)
7. Tom Compton (Back)
8. Mike Boone (Ankle)
9. Javonte Williams (Knee-acl)
10. K.J. Hamler (Hamstring)
11. Lloyd Cushenberry (Groin)
12. Darius Phillips (Hamstring)
13. Greg Dulcich (Hamstring)
14. Jonas Griffith (Foot)
15. Caden Sterns (Hip)
16. Aaron Patrick (Knee-acl)
17. Jake Martin (Knee)
18. Marlon Mack (Hamstring)
19. Damarea Crockett (Knee-acl)
20. Christopher Allen (Foot)
21. Casey Tucker (Toe)
22. Dakota Allen (Hamstring)
23. Mitchell Fraboni (Undisclosed)

So I’ll start with the massive table and then follow with the graphs. Both have their drawbacks, but the table is here for those who are colorblind and can’t decipher the graphs.

Offensive line

The Denver Broncos offensive line was the most injured that it been in my memory. Five OL guys ended the season on the IR (Garett Bolles, Dalton Risner, Lloyd Cushenberry, Tom Compton and Calvin Anderson). I’m going to do a much more in-depth OL review later, but suffice it to say that Luke Wattenberg had one of the worst rookie seasons in NFL history. His play this season was reminiscent of a rookie Ty Sambrailo. Wattenberg finished the season with an overall grade of 33.7 (out of 100) from PFF and he earned 1 total point from SIS (at least he wasn’t negative like Sambrailo as a rookie who earned -5). SIS scale elite linemen earn 30+ for a season.

Twelve different men played significant offensive snaps on the OL this year. No player started every game. Risner and Cameron Fleming had the most starts with 15 each. The Broncos used nine different combinations of five starting offensive linemen in 2022. This is the same number of starting offensive lines that the Broncos used in 2021.

Starting offensive line combinations by season for the Broncos:

• 2018 - 6
• 2019 - 5
• 2020 - 5
• 2021 - 9
• 2022 - 9

The insane level of injury to our offensive linemen over the past two seasons has been a massive contributor to the ineffectiveness of the offense in general. I’ll go into much more depth on this in my OL review for the season.

Running Backs

Injuries and ineffectiveness plagued our running backs almost as much as they did our offensive line.

With eight running backs that played significant time for the Broncos, this was the most turbulent RB season for Denver in my memory. Javonte Williams, Mike Boone and Marlon Mack all ended the season on the IR. Melvin Gordon lost his job because of his inability to hold onto the ball. Our best RB was Latavius Murray who we signed off the Saints’ practice squad. Tyler Badie, who scored a touchdown for us in his first NFL touch, was a 6th round pick of the Ravens in the last draft.

Tight Ends

Amazingly we only lost one TE to injury this season and that was out best receiving TE, Greg Dulcich, who missed the first five and the last two games of the season. Despite that he finished third on the team in catches and tied for second on the team in receiving TDs.

Because of his inability to block, Albert Okwuegbunam, was benched for much of the season only playing heavily in the first two and the last two games of the season.

FB/TE Andrew Beck was only used heavily in four games. We won all four of them. 92 of 198 total snaps came in four of our five wins and he has 21 or more snaps in all four of those game. Those were his only four games with smore than 20 snaps on offense this season. The only game that we won where he did not play heavily (for him) was the game against Jacksonville when he only played 9 snaps on offense. He was almost exclusively a blocker, despite being targetted three times in the first game of the season (he caught two of them). He finished the season with seven touches, meaning that he was either blocking or running a route on the other 191 offensive snaps he played. Because of this, he might have been effective had we employed him strategically like we did with the other blocking TE, Eric Tomlinson.

Tomlinson finished the season with nine catches, but two of them were for touchdowns, which tied him for second on the team in TD catches. Tomlinson came into the season with 18 career NFL catches in six seasons in the NFL.

Wide Receivers

I was actually surprised to find that only nine WRs played offensive snaps for the Broncos this season. It felt like we used more than that. No WR played in every game. Courtland Sutton started the most of the WR group at 15 games. Tyrie Cleveland basically lost his playing time when he ran a terrible route that led to a game-losing end-zone interception against IND.

A handful of guys got the chance to be WR3 for the Broncos this season, but none kept the job for long. KJ Hamler began the season as WR3. Then Cleveland got his shot. Then Kendall Hinton. Then Brandon Johnson. Then Freddie Swain. At out point Hinton was our WR1 (based on snap counts in game 9).

Full season offensive snap table (not game by game) - positional designations from PFR.

Nose tackle Mike Purcell had one official snap on offense as a goal-line FB. He would have had two and a touchdown carry were it not for a false start by an offensive player that stopped the play where he scored.