With a new coaching staff, fans everyone is excited for new things. From new schemes to play calling and the always interesting practices. But so much is unknown, we have an idea of what the offense and defense should look like but often things turn out differently. Players may out or under perform expectations, coaches can struggle or break out while opposing teams may surprise. With so much up in the air, making predictions is hard and saying what the team should focus on is a bit tricky. But after studying last season I found four areas I am interesting in for 2019 that should be a focus, regardless of coaching and personnel.

Penalties

Under Vance Joseph, Bill Musgrave and Joe Woods the Broncos continually struggled with penalties. Last year was the culmination of that where they surrendered a total of 985 yards to penalties. They ranked tied for 10th worst in offensive penalties, 3rd worst in defensive penalties and tied for 14th worst on special teams. This resulted in the 3rd most combined penalties in the league last year.

The biggest offensive culprit was offensive holding which the Broncos committed 36 times (6 of those times were declined which also should say something about the quality of the offense). In the same vein the defense struggled with holding, they were tied for the league lead in defensive holding calls. After those two we see two penalties that show a true lack of discipline, illegal block above the waist and defensive offsides where Denver ranked in the top 5 worst for both penalties.

Penalties cost the Broncos nearly a thousand yards last season, nearly 400 yards from combined holding penalties alone and those penalties can stall a drive or give an opponent the chance to keep their drives alive. Going forward the Broncos need to bring discipline because penalties are hard to overcome without a monumental offense or defense to keep the pace. A mediocre offense or defense with a lot of penalties won't be able to succeed. While it is ideal to just be so good that penalties don't impact you (the Chiefs had nearly 600 yards of offensive penalties, didn't bother them much) but penalties are much easier and quicker to fix.

Sustaining Drives

Removing penalties is a good start for sustaining drives but any competent offense should be able to covert 3rd downs and end drives with points, any points. Last season the Broncos ranked 28th in 3rd down conversion and 28th in drives that end with a score. No offense can score enough points to win a game unless these two criteria improve. Regardless of talent and OC changes, this team cannot take a step forward with improvements in these two areas.

Regarding 3rd down, Denver struggled at all distances. They ranked 27th in short yardage (1-4 yards) at 50.8%. In mid range 3rd downs (4-6 yards) the Broncos ranked dead last at 31.5%. When you get to a bit longer 3rd downs (7-9 yards) the Broncos were just as bad, 22.5%. Oddly enough on 3rd and long (10 and more yards) the Broncos ranked 5th where they converted 25.4%. Keenum has a reputation as someone who wouldn't go deep but the Broncos long game was on point on 3rd down. I want to make a special note of 3rd down and 7 to 9 yards to go, Keenum average a down right abysmal 2.6 yards per attempt, it gets even worse when you factor in sacks. Luckily for the Broncos they had 5 rushing attempts in that situation, of which three converted the 3rd down, thanks to two runs by Booker and one by Keenum. Keenum in general was the problem on 3rd down where he averaged 5.4 yards per attempt (the average Broncos 3rd down distance was 7.06 yards so that math wasn't great) and 3rd down was also his worst for sacks, he had 19.

The Broncos problems on 3rd down were systematic to their drive problems in general. Struggles to reach the red zone also lead the Broncos to be among the league's worst teams in making it to the red zone then having so many negative plays they move out of the red zone. This culminated in only 44 red zone visits, which ranks as the 26th worst and in perspective the Rams had 80 red zone opportunities.

Again, I am trying to stay vague with these goals since we don't know exactly what the offense or defense will look like but this should be a goal for Rich Scangarello entering the season, he and the offense won't succeed unless their is renewed focus on 3rd downs and the red zone. Improvements should focus on better passing on 3rd and medium, blocking from the OL and improved running on 3rd and short.

Special Teams

The Broncos have struggled with special teams coaching for nearly a half decade, ranging from the inconsistent Joe DeCamillis to the one year flame out who was supposed to be a poach from Toub and the disaster that was Tom McMahon last year, who was oddly retained despite a performance we are going to look into next.

In 2018 the Broncos team simply wasn't very good. The kicking game was piss poor, they ranked 25th in field goal percentage, and a horrible 2 of 7 from Brandon McManus on 50+, well below the league average. In the punt game the Broncos started the season with the much hyped Marquette King as their starter but things took a turn south quickly and by the end of the season, in part to injuries and poor play and he's been released. Cody Wadman took over and didn't provide much relief. Combined the two ranked a decent 18th in yards per punt. When we look at Football Outsiders things don't look great though, when they look at weather and altitude the Broncos should have been much better and gave the Broncos the 30th ranked special teams unit.

But not all the blame is to be put on the legmen as the coaches and special team unit didn't do their part either. The Broncos allowed the 4th most yards per punt return, 10.5 yards per punt which is pretty much giving up a free set of downs. So while the punters were a bit below average, the coverage unit did King and Wadman no favors. The return men also gave the Broncos little relief. On punt returns the Broncos ranked dead last with a measly 4.4 yards per punt returned and on kick returns the Broncos did little better, ranking tied for 28th. A desire to protect, rightly so, kept Lindsay from many touches but there is no reason Hamilton and Booker shouldn't be back on almost every return as nearly everyone else struggled mightily.

The Broncos special teams were bad last year and the return of McMahon bothers me more than a little but hey, at least the returners didn't drop the ball onto the turf as often I suppose. But the Broncos can not take that next step when they rank among the worst teams in long field goal success, missed special team tackles, return yards for and against, it just won't work.

Defensive Line Play



The Bronco pass rushers rightly got a lot of praise last year but overlooked in that praise is how the defensive ends and tackles struggled last year. The issues of the Broncos interior line have been around for quite some time as the Broncos have struggled to find a true nose tackle, replace the production of Malik Jackson and the various rotational players the Broncos have let go over the years. This has lead to a few issues but the biggest two are interior pressure rates and run defense. A lot of this was masked by great outside pass rushing and linebackers who can step up and stop the run once backs get through the line.

If we examine the interior pass rush first we see a pretty clear issue. Along the defensive line the Broncos only had nine sacks the entire season. It only gets worse if we look at pressure rates with only DeMarcus Walker putting up reasonable numbers, and he only rushed the QB 16 times all season. Derek Wolfe's pressure rate was an saddening 3.5%, below Adam Gotsis and Shelby Harris. The Broncos are well known for their pass rushing tandems in recent years that they partner Von with, from Doom and Ware and no Chubb, but they will need pass rush help if this defense is to improve and try and reclaim the Wade Phillips era level of defenses.

On the topic of interior run defense we see the same issue, poor interior play hidden by another unit, this time the interior linebackers. The Broncos ranked a respectable 15th in yards per rush allowed but let us dive into a bit more. Using Football Outsiders, which has created a few unique measurements that add context to rushing stats, things aren't rose. Firstly using Adjusted Line Yards (which, for example, penalizes the offensive line for negative runs and attempts to add their impact into yards per attempt and rewards defensive line play for the same situation) the Broncos drop from 15th to 23rd. The Broncos see a similar struggle when it comes to how well they shut down opponents on 3rd/4th down in short yardage situations, the Broncos rank as the 26th worst team in those situations which carries over to tackles at or behind the line of scrimmage, coming in as the 30th worst team.

The Broncos defense has fallen far since 2015 but the inability to shore up the interior defensive line has led to a degradation of play and impacted the rest of the defense. I think coach Fangio is someone with the skills to address this but the Broncos defense will still continue to flounder if their tackles and ends aren't able to step up and do their job.

Concluding Thoughts

The Broncos have a lot to work on across all three phases of their team, from the coaches on down, and right now there are a lot of unknowns but in 2019 these are four areas I will be watching closely knowing that regardless of talent and scheme these areas can, and should, be improved. I can't predict if these will improve or not, I can only say I hope they do.