by Ben Muth

They didn't score a touchdown until the fourth quarter, but the Broncos beat the Steelers to advance to their second AFC Championship Game in three years. Their defense dominated the day, but the offense held its own (despite some horrific drops) and did just enough to eke out a win. They move on to face New England this Sunday in a game that will probably take more than one touchdown to win.

Before we get into the game and Denver's offensive line, I want to touch on something I brought up last week. If you read the column, you may remember me talking about an offensive lineman's catch hand on the outside zone. That's his back hand that he trails behind his frame in case the defensive end slants inside. If the defensive end does make a hard move inside, the hope is that the catch hand grabs him and essentially slingshots the offensive tackle into a hook block. There was a pretty good example of this technique last Sunday.

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Right tackle Michael Schofield (79) does a nice job of demonstrating the concept. His trail hand is too high (you want it lower than shoulder pads so you don't get called for holding), but it shows the effectiveness of the technique. The biggest misconception with zone blocking is that every offensive lineman has an area they block, and they just take whoever is in that area. It's actually a series of predetermined combinations based on the defense's pre-snap alignment with each offensive lineman taking generally the same footwork to block those combos. Since Schofield isn't in combination, he has to follow the defensive end even if he goes inside, thus the need to use his trail hand.

Speaking of Schofield, this was by far the best I've ever seen him play. He had a big holding call that nullified a long run in the fourth quarter, but other than that he was solid all game. It was a remarkable turnaround for a guy that got benched (very deservedly so) for Tyler fricking Polumbus in the regular season finale. If he can give Denver two more games of B-level football, it changes the dynamic of the offense. That may seem like an exaggeration -- usually a right tackle playing better can't effect the offense that much -- but Schofield was so bad for large chunks of this year he was killing two to four drives a game with negative plays (tackles for loss, sacks, and/or penalties). He had just one holding penalty in this game, which is a huge improvement.

Denver's line as a whole actually played well. I thought Ryan Harris at left tackle played about as good as Schofield (so like a B-grade overall) and both guards played better than the tackles. The only guy who I thought had a down game was center Matt Paradis, but even he was OK. The running game may not have been great, but there was decent enough room consistently, and I thought Denver did a real nice job in pass protection.

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That's great protection. Look at how aggressive Schofield is with his hands; he looks like a different guy than the one I watched all year. He takes an aggressive set, gets his hands on the defender quickly, and then bench presses him off to get some distance. Textbook way to block play-action with no help.



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I also like Ryan Harris (68) at left tackle. He steps down to double the defensive tackle with Evan Mathis (69) as they look at the linebacker (94). Once that defensive tackle disappears inside though, Harris immediately puts the brakes on to help his tight end dealing with a pinching defensive end. That's just a real firm pocket so Peyton Manning can step up and deliver a ball down the field (which was dropped).

I mentioned that center Matt Paradis struggled a bit. I don't think he played awful, but I think his biggest weakness as a player popped up a couple of times in this game. That weakness is a tendency to get knocked back into the line of scrimmage on running plays where he doesn't have guard help.

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Paradis (61) is getting it handed to him here. The nose tackle is holding his gap and drives Paradis straight into the running back's cutback lane. This happened a couple of more times, and it just kills the play when your center gets rocked backwards like this. It's something that happened a lot earlier in the season, but was becoming less frequent as the year went along. It was back to being an issue on Sunday.



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Before we move on I do want to point out right guard Louis Vasquez (65) pancaking the linebacker. The linebacker walks up to the line of scrimmage late (which is why Paradis didn't get any help on the defensive tackle), and Vasquez absolutely buries him. I love his hip pop here. Notice how it looks like his whole body tenses up right after contact? That's hip pop, where you throw your hips into the block and use all the power in your legs. That's how you treat linebackers who want to play on the line.

The last thing I want to bring up from the divisional game is that the Broncos need to do something to keep the backside edge defender from running down their outside zones. I don't think that traditional bootlegs are the answer if Manning is playing quarterback, so the Broncos need to do something else. They can run slice schemes (bringing a blocker across the formation to cut off the backside player), keep a tight end in on the backside, or run some reverses/ghost reverses. I don't know what the plan is for New England, but it was an issue on Sunday.

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The Steelers mess up the run fit on the playside and the Broncos do a decent job of blocking it. This could be a big play, but James Harrison made the tackle for a 2-yard gain because there's nothing holding him on the backside. Again, there's stuff they can do aside from running Peyton Manning on bootlegs, but they need to do something if they are going to get the most out of their base run game.