Both the Denver Broncos offense and defense were beset heavily with injuries this season. 30 different players played defensive snaps for the Broncos, while 36 played on offense (37 if you count Mike Purcell’s one snap as a goal-line FB). The Broncos also had seven defensive players who played on special teams but never on defense.

Unlike on offense the defense did have two players who started every game, Patrick Surtain II and Kareem Jackson. Jackson missed five defensive snaps all season - at the age of 34. His durability throughout his career has been amazing given the physicality with which he plays.

If he had played for better teams during his career he might have earned more post-season honors (Pro-Bowl appearances) and would be on pace to be a fringe Hall-of-fame player after he retires. Despite reaching the playoffs five times with the Texans, his team never advanced beyond the divisional round and twice lost in the wild card round. His talent has always been high, but he has never been mentioned when talking about the best at his position whether it was earlier in his career when he was a CB or later in his career (with Denver) when he has been a SS. I don’t know that his talent level is much below a similar guy who made the switch from CB to S late in his career, Charles Woodson, but his lack of accolades made sure that he would never sniff the Hall of Fame. Because of his higher profile coming out of college (last defensive player to win the Heisman), Woodson was an immediate Pro Bowler and 3x first team All-Pro.

KJ has never made Pro Bowl and has never received even 2nd team All-Pro honors. This is probably because he has never led the league in anything despite being close a few times (he had four interceptions in 2012 and twice had 17 passes defended in season). The league leader in INTs in 2012 had 9 (Tim Jennings) and the league leader in passes defended in both seasons had 21 and 24 (Richard Sherman and Kyle Fuller). Jackson has always been good but not great. Unless you are a running back, that doesn’t get you into the Hall of Fame. For running backs good for a really long time gets you into the HoF (Jerome Bettis, Curtis Martin and soon Frank Gore). For CBs who convert to S late in their careers, not so much.

Full Bronco game by game defensive snap table

I mentioned that many Bronco defenders had health concerns coming into this season back in September. Two of the players who concerned me the most, Ronald Darby and Randy Gregory both did not play much this season for the Broncos. Darby played 281 defensive snaps before he was lost to a torn ACL and Randy Gregory only played 189 snaps because of chronic knee problems. We also lost K’Waun Williams for three games due to injury, but he ended up battling through various ailments to finish the season with 598 defensive snaps.

Injuries allowed younger players to develop and in some cases shine. Those will be discussed as I go through the position groups.

Defensive Line

The positional designation here are my own. All of the guys above are 285 lbs are more and play with the hands in the dirt. Dre’Mont Jones was our best and most productive DL player (counting Bradley Chubb as an OLB not a DE). SIS credits him with 34 pressures (PFR credits him with only 16). His 6.5 sacks was most on the team and tied his career high. While 6.5 sacks might seem like a low number for a team leader, it’s 0.5 more than last season’s leader for the Broncos, Shelby Harris, who had 6.0. You have to go back to 2018 to find a Bronco who got double digit sacks (both Chubb and Von Miller did it in 2018).

The Broncos finished the season with 36 sacks which was tied for 24th in the league. According to PFR they also finished the season 26th in pressure rate generated on opposing QBs at 18.5%. The Falcons were league worst at 14.6% and the Eagles were league best at 25.5%. The Bronco offense finished league worst in pressure rate allowed at 27.3% meaning that our pass protection made every defense we faced play like the best pass rushing defense in the NFL.

PFR is very stingy with pressures. According to them, the Broncos leader on the season had 18 (Baron Browning). Nick Bosa led the league (according to them) with 56. SIS credits Bosa with 82 (tied with Maxx Crosby).

Both PFR and SIS agree that the Bronco pass rush in 2022 was not very good. With a minimum 50 pass rushes, our best pass rusher was Alex Singleton who had 13 pressures on 73 pass rush snaps (18.1%). If you look at players with 10 or more pass rush snaps, Jonas Griffith had our best pressure rate at 31.8% (7 pressures on 25 pass rush snaps). Among Broncos with 100 or more pass rush snaps, Dre’Mont Jones got pressure on 8.4% to lead the DL group and Randy Gregory got pressure on 16.3% to lead the OLB group.

Outside Linebackers

While our OLB groups was quite strong at the start of the season, but the middle of the year it was one of the weakest in the league. This led to an overall inability to pressure the opposing QB.

The injury to Baron Browning was also a huge blow. He was not the same once he came back from that. Of course we could have also just been fooled by his huge game against the rookie LT of the Colts. Browning had 11 of the team’s 18 in that game (game 5). He had six the next game. So 17 of his team best 35 pressures came in that two game stretch.

The Broncos will have Randy Gregory, Baron Browning, Jonathan Cooper and Nik Bonitto as the OLB group entering the 2023 season. That appears to be the weakest edge rusher group in the AFC West and one of the weaker ones in the league when you factor in the injury-risk and inexperience. Pass rush is another area that will need to be addressed in the draft or in free agency.

Inside Linebackers

Justin Strnad played zero defensive snaps. Only three guys took snaps at ILB for the 2022 Broncos: Josey Jewell, Alex Singleton and Jonas Griffith.

We had some other ILB on the roster for a hot minute, but they only played special teams if they saw the field at all.

Our defense played 1079 snaps in 2022. Our three ILBs combined to play 1934 defensive snaps. That means that on most plays we used both ILB this season (and on some we used three).

Cornerbacks

For the first time in NFL history there was a player’s only vote for All-Pro selections. Patrick Surtain was voted first team All Pro at CB by his peers.

PS2 was one of only two defensive players to start every game for the Broncos this season. KJ was the other.

Losing Ronald Darby early in the season allowed for Damarri Mathis to show that he was a steal in the 4th round. His ability to “shrug off” the bogus DPI penalties called against him in his first game was huge. While the passer rating against him when his man was targetted was not great (90.1), you have to wonder how much of that stemmed from his first heavy action. The 81 times his man was targeted was a team high, meaning that opposing QBs were “going after” him. This makes sense because PS2 and K’Waun Williams are both great in coverage.

As a team the Broncos allowed a passer rating of 83.1 on the season which was 7th best in the league. The Bengals at 80.1 were the best and Raiders at 98.8 were the worst. The league average passer rating of 89.1 was down from previous years.

Safeties

Losing Caden Sterns for the season was a huge blow for the defense. He was playing at an extremely high level when he was lost for the year. Because of his lack of total snaps, he didn’t qualify, but if he had continued playing similarly to how he had been when he got hurt, he would have been the best coverage defender in the league by passer rating allowed.

Sterns allowed a passer rating of 8.1 not 81.0 - 8.1! His man was targeted 17 times. Five of those throws were completed for 84 yards, but two of throws were picked. His completion percentage allowed of 29% would have also led the league if he had enough snaps. Chidobe Awuzie led the league with 38.0%.

Darby was also playing at a high level in terms of completion percentage allowed when he was hurt. He was at 38.9%.

Ja’Quan McMillian in his only action played quite well allowing completion on only six of twelve targets. He, along with Sterns, Darby and Lamar Jackson (surprisingly) were the only Bronco DBs to allow completion percentages of 50% or less on the season. Of course the sample size was small for all of them.

I was surprised to see that Justin Simmons was the worst Bronco DB in terms of completion percentage allowed. He allowed completions 76.6% of the time when his man was targeted. I’m not counting Darius Phillips one completion on one target.