Stop Making Excuses for the Broncos' Defense
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There is no doubt that the 2022 Denver Broncos' offense is atrocious. In fact, it is historically bad for the once-great franchise.
The defense, however, started out the season doing incredibly well and kept the team in each game. That is until Week 10, when the defense started to show signs of collapse.
It begs the question: Is the defense physically tired of carrying the Broncos? Not likely.
Many have analyzed the old adage that an offense has to sustain drives, or the defense will suffer. They say that the defense is 'gassed' because the offense cannot stay on the field.
I used to believe that was true. But it's a fallacy to ease the minds of those who've had to endure watching a lead wither away. It has been disproven many times, including in this analysis I conducted a few seasons back.
Plotting the number of plays per drive by a team’s offense with points allowed and/or yards allowed by that same team’s defense has zero correlation. It doesn’t matter how you slice it.
It's true even when blowouts are removed, and we factor only the games where the score is within seven points at the end of the third quarter. It holds true when looking at points allowed and/or yards allowed in only the fourth quarter or overtime. There is just no evidence to support that long-held belief.
Once the realization sets in that this is someone's bogus take that simply caught on, likely from social media, it starts to make sense. The notion that a defense is 'gassed' as a result of an offense's inability to provide complementary points might sound rational.
After all, these are highly athletic players in peak condition, but the tired excuse doesn’t hold water. All the players, offense and defense, exert energy for short bursts, only to rest longer than the amount of time they were exerting that energy to recover. A play from snap to whistle lasts only a few seconds, and then players rest, for the most part, for about four times as long as they exerted the energy.
Also, why is it that only the defense would be tired, but not the offense when they are on the field exerting energy for usually the same amount of time? Offensive linemen are of a similar build as defensive linemen, and both exert significant energy on each play.
Action versus reaction does come into play, but the defensive line is rotated regularly, whereas the offensive line is not. Linebackers exert similar energy as running backs, and I would argue that receivers run farther on each play than defensive backs.
Again, by approaching a different mindset instead of making excuses for why a defense cannot make a play when it matters, fans and analysts can understand the real reason a unit fails.
The Broncos' defense is tired in one sense — they're tired of losing. Their hearts are no longer fully in the process.
When a defense is getting steamrolled by an opponent's running game, that is a lack of “want to” on gameday. Secondly, the defense has lost key players to injury and trade.
Randy Gregory, Denver's high-priced free-agent acquisition, hasn’t been on the field since Week 4. Starters like Ronald Darby and Jonas Griffith are on injured reserve, along with key backup safety Caden Sterns. Several other Broncos defenders have missed significant time due to injury.
Then there is the mid-season trade of the Broncos' defensive stand-out Bradley Chubb to consider. For two seasons in a row, GM George Paton has seen fit to jettison a star pass rusher for a less than 50/50 chance of getting a contributor in the draft.
Losing key players either via trade or due to injury adds up. At some point, the war of attrition begins to take its toll.
That's what is really happening with the Broncos' defense. It's beginning to fold.
Even the best player on the team, Patrick Surtain II, has been getting beaten like a rug over the past two games. Nothing is going right for the Broncos, and the defense just doesn’t have ‘it’ in them any longer.
There is no doubt that the offense has not held up its end of the bargain, but the defense can’t blame fatigue. A defense is either great or it isn't.
The great defenses make a play to seal the win, while the lesser units fold. The Broncos' 2015 defense was the former, while the team's 2022 counterpart is the latter.
The Broncos' 2022 defense has been good for half the season, but it is obvious that it's no longer up to the task.
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