Advanced Analytics Reveal Just how Bad Broncos Were at Rushing the Passer in 2021
The 2022 offseason for the Denver Broncos revolves almost completely around what GM George Paton and his staff decide to do at the quarterback position. Possessing an ample volume of both draft capital (five picks in the top-100) and salary-cap space ($39 million, fifth-most in the NFL) the Broncos have the ability to be aggressive and flexible in an attempt to upgrade the most important singular position in the game of football.
Outside of quarterback, though, where should the Broncos be looking to spend their premium resources to improve their roster and give themselves the best chance possible to return to the playoffs for the first time since 2015?
The answer should be overwhelmingly obvious but given the demanding nature of the quarterback conversation, it has yet to be screamed from the proverbial mountain top. However, doing a quick dig into the data reveals a rather unfortunate reality for the Broncos last season; this team was not nearly good enough at stopping the run and getting after the opposing quarterback with their defensive front seven.
There is no perfect metric in football given how complicated it is to assign a number value to a player on a specific play. Due to how coordinated every player’s task is on any given play, how plays require multiple players to execute an assignment in order for a play design to work, the unknown of what specifically a player was being asked to do on any given play, and the fact that football itself is a small sample-size sport, there will never be a perfect analytic.
Statistics in football should be treated as puzzle pieces that alone cannot paint an entire picture without the context of film to complement it, but can help create a solid image of what played out on the field.
For this article, I will be examining ESPN’s 'team pass rush win rate' and 'run stuff win rate' as well as Pro Football Focus’ 'pass rush and run defense grade'. Again, without the context of the Broncos possessing a lot of talent in the secondary and another year of a punchless offense, perhaps the numbers appear more dire than they are in reality.
Regardless, looking at the advanced metrics for Denver's front seven from last season shows just how far the unit has regressed from being the elite front that was a part of the 2015 Super Bowl squad.
The good news first: the Broncos’ run defense in 2021 was not completely abhorrent. Earning a team run defense grade from PFF of 51.6 and ranking 18th in the league, Denver ranked as a slightly below-average run defense last season.
Unfortunately for Denver, that's as good as any grade it is going to get for the rest of this article. While PFF had Denver’s run defense as slightly below average, ESPN’s 'run stop win rate' (which is explained here) ranked 27th in the league last season earning an RSWR of 31%. Only the Jaguars, Steelers, Bears, Bears, Vikings, and Chiefs scored worse.
The issues for the Broncos’ run stop win rate are multifaceted. First, and perhaps most impactful, were the injuries Denver compiled at the linebacker position, both at edge and off-ball, in 2021. Losing starting duo of Josey Jewell and Alexander Johnson prior to Week 7 was always going to be an issue for Denver to overcome as it took nearly half the season for the team to get settled in at the position with a combination of Kenny Young, Baron Browning, and Jonas Griffith.
Another reason Denver likely had a lower RSWR was schematic. One of the key defensive aspects in Vic Fangio’s scheme is showing two-high safety looks pre-snap. One of the safeties might role down to a robber role in a cover 1 or cover 3 call, but showing two high before the snap is a consistent element of Fangio’s defense.
For Fangio upfront, his scheme typically relies on his defensive front players to play “gap and a half technique”. Doing so can help press gaps while also protecting a team across other gaps. In theory, this allows you to play fewer players in the box by not having a single player assigned to every gap across the offensive front.
Doing so may leave a defense more vulnerable to an opposing offense that is patient and can move the ball down the field piecemeal, but protects the defense from giving up explosive back-breaking plays. Given the emphasis on creating explosive plays in today’s NFL, there is a reason why the key principles of Fangio’s defense are spreading across the league and why the Broncos are going to attempt to run a similar style of defense next season even after firing him.
Denver could look to improve its run defense by bringing in an upgrade to nose tackle Mike Purcell in free agency or drafting one of Georgia’s Jordan Davis or Connecticut’s Travis Jones. Also, while Browning and Griffith flashed an incredible combination of height, weight, and speed at the linebacker spot, Denver should bring in a starting-caliber player prior to the draft to stabilize the room.
Another unfortunate stat for Denver’s run defense last year was Football Outsiders’ 'run stuff' rate, which is a stat that calculates the number of runs that resulted in a tackle resulting in zero or negative yards. Denver was 30th in the NFL last season with only 13% of opponents’ runs resulting in a run stuff.
Not stuffing the run at a poor rate led to the Broncos’ defense having less opportune pass-rushing situations which is one of the reasons the following data came out as poorly as it did. The Broncos’ 2021 pass-rushing metrics were terrible.
Potentially only outdone by the laughably talent-devoid defensive front of the Atlanta Falcons, the Broncos earned some of the worst marks in the entire NFL last year when it came to getting after the opposing quarterback.
According to ESPN’s 'pass rush win rate', which tabulates the percentage of plays where a team creates pressure on a quarterback in 2.5 seconds or less (the standard used by most teams in the league) the Broncos ranked 32nd, or better known as dead last, in the NFL at 31%. Of course, Denver’s pass rush was going to be poor in the wake of the Von Miller trade and with Bradley Chubb essentially being a shell of himself the entire season, but being dead-last in the NFL is a bit jarring on the surface.
While the interior defenders of Shelby Harris and Dre’Mont Jones were okay, Denver got very little consistently from its edge defenders last season. Sadly for Denver, things were equally dreary according to PFF’s pass-rush grade of 61.6, ranking 31st in the NFL (ahead of the previously mentioned Falcons). Impact and success at the edge rusher position is one that is as correlated with where a player was drafted as any in the NFL.
Given the top snap earners for the Broncos last season at the edge rusher position were undrafted free agent Malik Reed (who is one of the big reasons Denver’s run defense was poor last season), former seventh-round picks Stephen Weatherly and Jonathon Cooper, the team was always destined for failure at getting after the passer after Chubb was injured then battled back and Miller was traded.
Another reason for Denver’s poor pass-rushing metrics is because of its offense. If an opposing offense doesn't feel like it needs to be aggressive and push the envelope with more volatile slower-developing, down-the-field pass plays, then it won’t.
Denver’s offense, while it improved slightly from 2020 to 2021 based on nearly every efficiency metric, was not explosive or dynamic enough to force opposing offenses to feel like they needed to be aggressive in order to win. When a team doesn’t feel pressured to be aggressive on offense, the number of advantageous looks for the defense to create turnovers and impact pass-rush plays will be lowered drastically.
Denver not only clearly lacked the needed talent along the defensive front last season but also the pass rush was continuously put in low probability looks to win their reps. In a division where the Broncos will have to face the likes of Patrick Mahomes, Justin Herbert, and Derek Carr six times a year, a defense that creates so little pressure on the quarterback will not be good enough to get it done.
Looking over the Broncos’ defensive metrics and the questions on the front seven last year, it becomes abundantly obvious that while Fangio did not do enough as a head coach to keep his job, he was keeping a defense that had many holes afloat to the tune of the third-best scoring defense in the NFL. Scheme can only take a team so far, though, and in the end, it is indeed about the players and their talent level.
Denver’s offseason will continue to buzz around that of the quarterback position because, without a known franchise-caliber guy, your team’s Super Bowl hype train legitimately won't even leave the station. However, while having a franchise-caliber QB is still the first and most important question, it still takes a complete team to win it all.
Given the value of the pass rush and impacting the opposing quarterback, Paton and the Broncos simply cannot ignore how poor the team ranked last season upfront. If Denver cannot find a massive upgrade at the quarterback position this offseason, at the very least, it will need to focus on the defensive front and get better in the trenches for 2022 and beyond.
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