Stat hurts: Bronco stat discussion for game 1

The Denver Broncos have now lost seven straight games to the Raiders. The last time the Broncos beat the Las Vegas Raiders was Dec 29th of 2019. Keep in mind that the Broncos beat the Raiders eight straight times from 2011 to 2015. Of course the Broncos have lost fifteen straight to Chiefs. For both of those losing streaks to end the Broncos are going to need to score more than 16 points. Dating back to the 2016 season the Broncos have only 61 games in which the team has scored more than sixteen points and only eleven games with 30 or more points. That’s eleven games of 30 or more points in seven seasons plus one game.

In that same time-span the Chiefs have 55 games with 30 or more points. The Raiders have 33 and the Chargers have 32. So the rest of the AFC West has either three or five times as many 30 point games since the Broncos won the Super Bowl as the Denver Broncos.

The Bronco offense in 2022 scored 30 or more points just once and only topped 25 points twice. That 31 point effort was in the final game of the season.

The one point loss was the Broncos third one point loss in the last eighteen games. You might remember that the 2022 season began with a 17-16 loss as well. This century the Broncos now have ten one point losses. Only the Giants (13), Ravens (12) and Falcons (11) have more. Oddly enough the Seahawks only have one and the Steelers have none. The last time the Steelers last by one point was a 15-16 loss to the Browns in 1999. The Steelers only have sixteen one-point losses in franchise history. The Broncos only have 22, but half of those have happened this century.

The franchise with the most one-point losses is the Chiefs with 35. The current franchise with the fewest is the Texans with four. The Seahawks, which have existed significantly longer than the Texans, have only seven in franchise history.

While the offense continued to struggle in game one, the defense seemingly played well, only allowing seventeen points and forcing the game’s only turnover. However, the pass rush was almost non-existent.

The defense recorded no sacks and only had three QB hits. This was despite trying to generate pressure with the blitz (41% of passing plays). The pressure rate quoted above would mean that the Broncos had only 3 QB pressures. That is similar to how feckless our pass rush was at the end of the 2022 season.

The Broncos actually had three games last season with 3 or fewer QB pressures: games 11 (loss to CAR), 15 (loss to LAR) and 17 (win over LAC). Of course in that last game we scored our season high 31 points which helped to off-set the lack of a pass rush.

The Bronco offense was able to generate 22 first downs, but only 260 yards of total offense. The Broncos now have 46 games this century with 260 or fewer total yards of offense. With Sunday’s loss, the franchise is now 13-33 in those 46 games.

Oddly enough, the defense allowed one more point than the offense produced and one more yard than the offense produced.

Will Lutz did not earn many fans in Denver with his missed extra point. He can be forgiven for missing the 55-yard attempt, but that extra point could have cost us the game. However, the Raiders didn’t need to kick a FG at the end, because the defense could not stop them on that final drive.