Fangio on Broncos Making Personnel Changes on Offense: 'We're Going to Stick with Them'
After their impotent showing on Sunday Night Football — outside of Javonte Williams' Herculean effort — the Denver Broncos are now the 23rd-ranked scoring offense while ranking No. 20 in total yards per game.
Drill down to Denver's efficiency on third down and in the red zone and... trust me, you don't want to know. But you need to know.
On third down, the Broncos are converting 36.8% of their tries, ranking them No. 24 in the NFL and in the red zone, they're ranked 27th by converting only 52.5% of drives inside the 20-yard line into touchdowns.
At quarterback, Teddy Bridgewater is poised to put up career highs across the board but that's not saying much considering this is only the fourth season in his career that he's started 12 games or more. His career-high in touchdown passes and yardage came in 2015 with 15 and 3,733 passing yards. In Kansas City on Sunday night, Bridgewater was as complicit in the Broncos' loss as any other one player.
With five games left to go and sitting at 6-6, you'd think head coach Vic Fangio would be exploring the possibility of making some changes to the offense in order to maximize the stretch run. But you'd be wrong.
“No, not really," Fangio said on Monday on the topic of making any personnel changes on offense. "Our starters and the guys we’re playing, are the guys that we have. We’re going to stick with them.”
That's not true, is it, Coach? NFL rosters aren't comprised of 22 players. They're constructed with 53 active players plus a 16-man practice squad.
You don't want to just swap starters out willy-nilly, I get that. You do it strategically. Find the guys who aren't answering the bell, and make a change.
For example:
- Quarterback: Sit Teddy down and play Drew Lock. Lock sparked the Broncos to a 4-1 finish as a rookie in 2019.
- Running back: Melvin Gordon should take a back seat to Williams. The rookie showed on national television that he's the spark that fires the Broncos' engine up.
- Left guard: Sit Dalton Risner down and pay Netane Muti. Risner has been a liability all year long.
Those three tweaks could have a big effect on the Broncos' offense. And, ultimately, the team's 2021 destiny.
Alas, Fangio isn't going to change the offensive personnel because the man wants to keep his job and the truth is, the guys he's playing right now are the guys he feels present the least risk to him. It's a classic 'coaching not to lose' mentality.
That's what Fangio hung his hat on when he tapped Bridgewater over Lock and the Broncos have paid the price for it all season long. Such frightened, short-sighted decisions almost always backfire on the coach in question.
Is there any doubt that the 2021 campaign, when it's all said and done, will be viewed as one that blew up in Fangio's face? The only way to forestall that is to swing for the fences. Even that, at this point, might be a day late and a dollar short.
Hey, at least Fangio has the presence of mind to recognize that something's got to change in order to score more points and give the Broncos a better chance to compete. That something, however, being personnel changes? Fangio hasn't the foggiest.
“We’ve got to figure out a way to score more points," Fangio said. "We’re in the bottom third of the league in that, and we’ve got to do better scoring points—no doubt about it. We didn’t have any rhythm last night in our passing game. It says that we had 250 yards passing, I believe, but 34 of it came on that last play of the first half, and then a bunch came on the last two drives. We just never got into a good rhythm in the passing game last night.”
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