No Bull Perspective: Early season woes
· Yahoo Sports
In the comments section of my most recent No Bull Review, we were talking about the offensive line play and how it has been a little subpar compared to what we saw from them last season. I think that point is worth dissecting a bit, as the media and community have been harping quite a bit on Davis Webb and Bo Nix without noticing the problem in the trenches so far this season.
It is early in the season – keep that in mind
As a fan, I think it is worth a reminder that every season there is a reset button that is hit. Teams have fewer preseason games to play, more restrictions on how much practice time the players can be involved in, and don’t really tackle that much until the season gets going.
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Tackling is a great example. Our defense looked like a bunch of noobs in Week 1 against the Chiefs. But since then, we’ve not seen anything like the level of ineptitude from the defense. They are using much smarter angles and are making sure to wrap up.
I do think some fair criticism can be laid at the feet of the coaching staff on this point, but it isn’t like Sean Payton hasn’t been mentioning these things consistently in the past few years. He and his staff are aware of these issues and know they can do a better job.
So what is the issue?
It is easy enough to look at the last game we played and say, “Wow, this Denver offense sucks in the first half.” Then talk about the big media stories of the new playcaller or how Bo Nix isn’t good, blah blah blah.
I’m sorry, but NFL football is far more nuanced than that. That offense has 11 players needing to execute in order to make plays work. 3rd downs are key, and they really have had trouble producing on those downs. If you want to really get to the root of the offense’s woes, you will need to dig a little deeper.
Is it because Webb sucks at calling plays?
He’s a new playcaller for sure. He absolutely has made mistakes in each game this season. I haven’t liked some of his play calls for sure as well (not that that matters…what Dragonslayer69 thinks in his Mom’s basement eating Cheetos and drinking Mountain Dew means about as much as Chris Collinsworth’s takes on pass interference calls).
Do you know who else consistently made mistakes calling plays? Sean Payton in every game I’ve watched since he joined the Broncos. Sean calls way too many screens. He also gets away from the run way too quickly and forgets to go back to it. He is also one of the best play callers this league has ever seen, with stones the size of boulders.
Always keep in mind our human brains are designed to hold onto negative things and ignore things that are going well. So yeah, you might kinda think Davis Webb sucks because of a number of play calls you can recall that were bad. But let’s dig a little deeper and be better analysts out here in Broncos Country. Remember the good stuff Webb has called. He’s had far more good calls than bad and is likely to only get better with experience.
The offensive line has work to do
Many of the problems we’re seeing from this team early in games have to do with how the offensive line is executing. We’ve seen right tackle Mike McGlinchey get owned quite a few times early, costing the offense undue pressure.
We’ve seen the line also be fairly poor at run blocking. At the end of last season, I was harping on how often I saw huge holes for our backs who either didn’t see them or couldn’t get past an arm tackle to use them to any great effect. I’m not seeing those same huge holes so far this season. I also recall that I didn’t see much of them early last season either.
It takes good blocking from the line and good running from the backs for the run game to really have an impact.
The running backs don’t look good
We’ve honestly had some poor luck with injuries early this season in the running back room. Jonah Coleman has a high ankle sprain, JK Dobbins had a hip and hamstring issue, and RJ Harvey also had a hamstring issue. Thankfully, none of these are major.
That being said, Dobbins looked like a shell of his normal self running last week. I do not think he was anywhere close to 100%.
We already know RJ Harvey isn’t the back you treat like a bell cow and run between the tackles on repeat. That’s not his forte.
I’m really excited about Coleman, but that ankle is keeping him from being the guy to step in and help get the offense on track.
Without a good run game, the pass game gets extra pressure
Until this team sorts out how to effectively run the ball, they are going to have trouble passing well when they need to early in games.
In each game, your team usually scripts a bunch of plays. All of these help inform the offense about how the opponent is going to play them. So early in football games, there are a lot more questions for your playcaller and quarterback. They don’t have as many reads on what to expect, so the play call, pre-snap reads, and post-snap read time needed all get tougher.
But a run game peeling off 4-6 yards a pop solves all some of those problems. It forces defenses to get out of their 2-high shells and bring down help to stop the run. For some opponents, this will also mean more man looks in the passing game. That makes reads easier. That makes completing passes easier if we get mismatches (which we do quite often and consistently…thank you, Payton and Webb).
The No Bull Solutions
The first thing the team needs to do is address the run-blocking woes the same way they addressed the poor tackling earlier this season: drill it. Spend time during your week doing the boring work of blocking up your run plays and coaching up techniques.
Don’t force it, but get your backs healthy. This is a no-brainer step and one you can’t really do much to speed up. Our training staff is one of the best in the league, so I know they are all over getting our guys right.
Finally, shake up the early game plan a bit. Too often, the early calls are passes 5 yards deep at most. We’re running on first down in predictable personnel groups. Let’s design some intermediate quick throws as our early plays to help set up the run. Quick outs and slants come to mind here. Play action on some of those early downs that teams are keying in on as runs.
What does Broncos Country think?
Hit up the comments and let us know what you think the issues are. Does Bo Nix kinda just suck early? Do we have the right backs? Should we just all go out of the gate not giving any hoots, like Smokin Jay Cutler?