Gary Kubiak has preached balance since his return to Denver as the 15th head coach in the history of the Broncos. His past offenses, with the Broncos and then the Houston Texans, displayed a necessity for a run game in order to exploit the opposition with the passing game. He tried his best to instill that mindset during training camp and in the first few games of the regular season, but it was Sunday in Brock Osweiler’s debut under center against the Chicago Bears that it really succeeded.
“It helped our team, not just Brock,” Kubiak said Monday of the balanced offensive attack versus the Bears. “Yesterday, we did not protect the quarterback as well as we need to. I think we had five sacks. There were a couple that Brock will learn from too. We stayed in rhythm with what we were doing. We kept our third-downs manageable. We were better as a third-down team in the game. It helped us offensively, but it helped our football team.”
In other words, a balanced attack of nearly equal run and pass attempts helps everyone involved. It holds opponents accountable for the play-action pass that worked so well Sunday, which can mask inefficiencies in pass protection and it can keep opposing offenses off the field. The Broncos sit at 8-2 and have won some excruciatingly close games. Sunday, despite the low score, showed an offense capable of keeping defenses honest. They called 34 runs to 29 passes.
Their two losses highlighted the problem of getting away from the run and what Kubiak has intended for this team all season. In the loss to the Indianapolis Colts, the Broncos ran the ball just 14 times for 35 yards, compared to 36 pass attempts. Some say they got down too much early and that skewed the numbers, but even Kubiak admitted that it hurt their chances to get a comeback win.
“Yeah, we got really out of whack there in the first half. We were aggressive, the plays were there for us to make, so we stayed aggressive and then all of the sudden we look up and we’ve thrown it 20, 21 times or something and running six times. You don’t want to do that,” he said immediately following the loss.
When the Kansas City Chiefs came to town just one week later, the Broncos again failed to maintain any balance. When it was said and done, the Broncos threw the ball 44 times to just 13 runs for 51 yards. Early turnovers cost them and put them in a bind, but it makes defenses look unstoppable when there is no threat to run. Against KC, Kubiak seemed to get away from his initial plan due to ineffectiveness, but either way it led to five interceptions.
“Today we wanted to run the ball, help our quarterback out and do that. I think we had four or five negative football runs in the first half. I don’t want to sit there and say that was a problem or this. I need to go look at the whole thing,” Kubiak said after the loss to the Chiefs.
When you look at Sunday’s game, and previous games this year in which the Broncos run and pass attempts are more balanced, good things happen. The most balanced games came versus the Minnesota Vikings, the Green Bay Packers and the Bears. Those games yielded three of the four best rushing performance as a team and each one also had a 100-yard rusher. Peyton Manning had his second-best quarterback rating of the year versus the Packers and Osweiler’s 127.1 rating Sunday was the best of the entire season.
“I just think we executed and did our job well,” C.J. Anderson said Monday of the offense’s balanced performance Sunday. “[Balance] always feels good. It came to us during the Green Bay game and it felt good after that. Then we went back down and did some other things but it always felt good.”
Owen Daniels, a player that has played under Kubiak his entire career, believes Sunday the Broncos displayed an offense that they have been feeling out since the player-personnel meshed with the scheme of the new coaching staff.
“I think it was – having been in this offense for as long as I have been in it and then being on a team that did something totally different in years past – we had to find a way to kind of mesh those things and figure out what we were doing best and what we wanted to do offensively. I think the first half of the season, we were just kind of still figuring that out.”
The next step for the offense is to get consistency in the play calling and with a young, inexperienced quarterback behind a shaky line, Kubiak not only will want to stay balanced, but he will be forced to in order to stay in games. Anderson knows that consistency is the name of the game for him and his teammates.
“Our whole things is being consistent. That is the whole thing about being in this league and staying in this league is can you be consistent? That is our next goal.”
The Broncos next task is a tough one. The New England Patriots come to town for a primetime matchup on Sunday night. Through Nov. 22, the Patriots boasted the second-best rush defense in the NFL and they will certainly look to make the Broncos one-dimensional on offense and force Osweiler into bad throws.
Daniels’ enormous impact in the win against the Bears showed what can happen when defenses have to bite on play-action fakes. He caught four passes for a team-high 69 receiving yards. He believes it was a combination of things that helped the Broncos keep the Bears off balance Sunday and that same combination will be needed versus the Patriots.
“Some good play calling, good scheme set up and the guys up front played really hard, running backs ran really hard,” Daniels said of the offenses success Sunday. “I think the two tight end, three tight end sets really helped that. Sometimes they put their nickel defense out there with the two tight ends which makes it easier to run the ball. A little bit of all those things I just mentioned [helped].”
Anderson knows from experience exactly how the Patriots plan to attack the offense Sunday and what kind of challenge that presents him and Ronnie Hillman.
“They aren’t going to do anything different. They have been playing man-to-man for years. They are going to match up man-to-man and try to stop the run. That is just how they play us.”
The Broncos are facing their toughest task of the year Sunday in Week 12. Osweiler showed he can run the balanced offense Kubiak wants and is known for. The time for experimentation and figuring out what they do best has past. Running the ball early and often has taken pressure off Manning in some games and certainly made Osweiler comfortable and, more importantly, effective in his first start. Against the Patriots and their top-ranked offense, chewing up clock and keeping their defense on the field is the only way to hand them a loss and start building the consistency Anderson and the Broncos offense so desperately needs.
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