Offensive Breakdown: Analysis of The Denver Broncos Offense

The Denver Broncos have been struggling on offense this year. They have an excellent coach in Hackett and an all pro qb but haven't been able to put it together. They have been seeing a ton of man coverage on both early downs and also on 3rd down. Thus they are at 30% 3rd down efficiency. On 3rd down vs the Colts they were 0-13 on 3rd and 3 or more which is not very good. That leads to poor 1st down % as they have a 4th worst 29% at getting first downs. There are several reasons the offense has been off schedule which I highlight below. 

Why the struggles:

1. They don't score TD. 6 Td's in 5 games is not very good. Lowest in the league. They are terrible in the red zone as well, ranking last in the league.   They are averaging .6 touchdowns per game in the red zon.

2. The wr don't get separation and are not very good at working the middle of the field. There are times when they have openings vs zone coverage but I don't think the wr take advantage of it. 

Here vs. The Texans they run a good concept vs cover 2, but the spacing is a little off and Russ makes a poor read. They high low the will and both lb's play the shallow and you have the dig/in route behind it. 

Another example.

Look at the #2 wr and the easy route adjustment he could make vs the coverage the Texans are in. He bends it he's wide open.  Like this is bad imo. Easy adjustment to make.

Also, to me it's single high cover 3 presnap, as a qb I would work the top side route concept. Lot of room to operate on the tops side of this formation.

Here vs the Texans, should hit the dig for a 20 yard gain. Run a route. It's slow motion. Seems like this should be an easy completion for a nice chunk of yardage.

3.  Defenses have been effective playing their outside wr in man coverage while playing underneath concepts on early downs. This has effected their boot, vertical passing game as wr have not been able to get open on some vertical concepts. Really has effected their play action downfield passing game on 1st and 2nd down. Texans did a great job against them using this concept. The Broncos won 16-9 but the Texans had a really good game plan.

vs Texans 

Here is a similar situation vs the Chargers. They run boot but no one is open vertically down the field.

Here are 2 examples in the chargers game.  They run boot with the crossing route and their is no place to go with the ball. The Chargers do a nice job matching the coverage.

4. They also have been a little predictable, like running this little flip play vs the Colts. They ran the same play several times against the raiders and you can see the Colts adjusting to the formation. No body is fooled and it's a 3 yard loss on the play. I'm not spending 40 hours on film breaking it down but teams have seen some things and game planned effectively.  Take it out of the playbook or run a compliment because every team has sniffed it out. 

5. They get themselves into some long 3rd down situations because of their inefficiency on early downs.  Too many 3rd and 10+ situations has really handcuffed the offense. 

6. On 3rd down they are near the bottom at 30% efficiency. Their struggles were evident last week as they were 30% efficient vs the Colts. 

7. Often times they have wr and qb not on the same page. A wr may run a slant and RW things its a hitch. He throws a fade and the wr runs a hitch. Russell has made some very bad decisions in games and has been slow to process. Really surprised by some of his decisions.

Here's another example where Russ has an easy check down but forces the issue downfield. Take what they give you. LB runs with the wheel, throw to the rb. Easy concept.

These are just some of the struggles and I'm excited to see the adjustments for their future games.