Through the first five games of the Denver Broncos’ season, first-string tight end Julius Thomas was on pace to make some serious revisions to the NFL’s all-time record book. With 277 yards and nine touchdown receptions up to that point, Thomas was on pace to catch 28 touchdowns on the season. To put that number in perspective: not only would that far surpass Rob Gronkowski’s 17-touchdown season in 2011, the most ever by a tight end, but it would also beat out Randy Moss’ all-time record of 23 touchdowns in a season. Last season, only seven quarterbacks managed to complete 28 touchdown passes, period!

To rub salt in his opponents’ wounds, Thomas has adopted a particularly insulting catchphrase: “It’s so [doggone] easy!”

Oddly, though the Broncos have handily won their last two games, scoring 42 and 35 points, respectively, they’ve done so without a single touchdown catch from Thomas. With just 50 combined receiving yards in those two contests, Thomas has gone from superstar to just another one of many productive weapons in Peyton Manning’s arsenal.

Despite the slow down in production, Thomas is still tied for the most touchdown receptions in the league, and he is still on pace for an incredible 20 touchdowns. Let’s take a look at how Manning and the Broncos have connected so easily with Thomas before, and what, if anything, has changed in these last two games:

Lining Up Out Wide

On five of Thomas’ nine touchdown catches this year, he’s been lined up as a wide receiver, and as the only receiver on his side of the field. In the compressed space of the red zone, there is no deep part of the field for safeties to patrol. As the defense concentrates their manpower in the box, lining up Thomas as a wide receiver creates a one-on-one matchup, and with no obvious help for the defender in sight:

When the Broncos are a bit further off the goal line, they can line up in this devious formation that forces the secondary to pick their poison. I do not envy Arizona Cardinals safety Rashad Johnson in the play below. Johnson must respect both Thomas on the right side of the formation, and also the three-headed monster of Sanders, Demaryius Thomas, and Wes Welker on the left side of the formation:

Johnson, understandably, is confused, doing his best to follow Manning’s eyes — you can see the safety breaking towards Thomas’ side of the field as Peyton’s head turns, well before the throw is released:

But, as you can see from this image of the moment Thomas corrals the pass, Johnson is still too far away to make an impact:

It’s not necessarily Johnson’s fault — the Broncos approached the line of scrimmage in hopes that he would be momentarily frozen in the middle of the field.

Embracing Contact

It’s unlikely that the larger Thomas could beat the cornerbacks who cover him in a race of straight-line speed. That’s the beauty of waiting until the red zone to line him out wide: with the end of the field so close, there’s no need for Thomas to outdistance anybody. Opposing secondaries are at a noted size disadvantage when Thomas uses his imposing size to initiate contact and create separation.

Thomas has the strength to muscle through contact from lineman as well. For his first touchdown catch of the year, Week 1 against the Colts, Thomas had to work through this contact from linebacker Jerrell Freeman:

On Thomas’ third touchdown catch (!) in the same game, here he is creating separation from LaRon Landry with a quick stiff-arm:

Fast-forward to Week 4 against the Cardinals, who tried a different strategy by playing their corner well off of Thomas:

And, yeah, that didn’t turn out so well for Arizona (note the defender on the ground):

So What’s Changed

Perhaps the biggest reason that Thomas has 0 touchdown catches in the last two games — after 1.8 per game in the first five — is that the Broncos have not been in the red zone very often. That might sound like a bizarre thing to say for a team that has scored 77 points over those two games, but consider this: Manning has thrown touchdown passes of 39, 40, and 31 yards, all to other receivers, and Ronnie Hillman also busted out for a 37-yard touchdown run. By scoring the ball so often before arriving in Thomas’ wheelhouse, the red zone, there haven’t been nearly as many plays where the Broncos have lined up with Julius as their clear #1 option.

While Thomas did drop a pass from the 1 yard line in the game against San Francisco (in his defense, the pass was a bit behind him), there are other, more random reasons that he hasn’t received end zone targets. On this play against the Niners, Emmanuel Sanders’ man, Dontae Johnson, is tripped up by a referee:

For individual players in great offenses, it’s often small and unforeseeable things that affect an that player’s production — or in Thomas’ case, his perceived production. Thomas may or may not actually break Gronkowski’s TD record. What’s more important, and more probable, though, is that the Broncos maintain that absurd 32 points-per-game production and remain the class of the AFC.