Courtland Sutton Compares Broncos' New Offense to 2019's Unit Under Rich Scangarello
Rich Scangarello ran the Denver Broncos' offense for only one season back in 2019 and managed to conjure four wins out of rookie quarterback Drew Lock’s five starts. It was enough to keep Scangarello gainfully employed in the NFL all the way up until 2022 when he took a job as OC for the Kentucky Wildcats.
That being said, few would think Scangarello’s influence would still resonate within the walls of Broncos HQ, but wide receiver Courtland Sutton certainly remembers. On Tuesday, Sutton compared new head coach Nathaniel Hackett’s offensive system to that of his former coordinator.
“Yeah, there are a lot of positives to the offense,” Sutton said via the team website. “One of the things I would say is it's similar(ish) to the offense we ran in ’19... I felt like we found a lot of success with—a lot of guys were able to— the ball was going all over the place and everybody was being able to make plays. That’s one thing that we are seeing with this offense, we have thousands of ways to be able to line up and get whoever the ball.”
The commonalities Sutton notices make sense. After all, Scangarello springs off the Kyle Shanahan coaching tree, who sprung off his father's, Mike Shanahan. The scheme Hackett is installing now, with the wide zone and vertical passing attack, is cut from the same Shanahan cloth.
Where the Scangarello offense worked best was by successfully spreading the ball around in order to find the open receiver. With the 2022 Broncos being blessed with an even greater number of potential game-breaking skill-position talents, aiming to involve them all would be the pragmatic approach.
Also back on the menu is allowing the juices to flow into the building and then out onto the practice fields. Just how stifling the previous regime under Vic Fangio actually was on the players is only now slowly coming to the surface.
By allowing music to play during practice, Hackett is determined to win hearts and minds in the locker room. It's an altogether more relaxed take on building team chemistry, in which the first-year head coach is taking a hands-on coaching method.
It creates an interesting blend and Sutton finds it refreshing to be hitting the practice field with a lot more juice these days.
“The music at practice is one thing that I feel like brings a lot of juice,” Sutton said. “Then just the energy that the coaches bring, it’s not just the players have to go and make plays for everyone to start feeling the juice and wanting to get everything going. As soon as the first horn blows everyone has that juice… that pep in their step.”
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