When you ask yourself whether or not the Denver Broncos offense can get any worse than it has, it’s hard at this point of the season to believe that it can, but it has and it did after Sunday’s loss to the Baltimore Ravens.
The same issues plague the Denver Broncos’ offense on a weekly basis
Since Week 1, the Broncos’ offense has encountered the same problems on a weekly basis. Poor execution, failure to score points, poor third down efficiency, and many losses. As the Broncos enter Week 14 preparing to take on the Kansas City Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes, the theme has continued to plague Denver deep into the season.
This past Sunday, the Broncos were 2 of 12 on third down despite having several third and short opportunities. With Sunday’s performance, the Broncos third down efficiency sits at the bottom of the NFL, having converted 46 of 168 attempts on third down, equating to an abysmal 27.4%. Opposing defenses continue to make adjustments against Russell Wilson and company, but Denver’s adjustments on offense haven’t seemed to work according to Broncos head coach Nathaniel Hackett.
“I don’t think those numbers are good for even the first half,” Hackett said on Monday regarding Denver’s inability to score points and what opposing defenses are doing to them. “To me, we should be more efficient across the board. We should be better at running the ball, throwing the ball, everything. Unfortunately, I continue to say this, but it does come down to the third down. Look at what stalls our drives, especially this past game when we had manageable third downs. We have to find a way to convert those, whether we have to take off and run, whether we have to do completely different schemes, whether we have to get all kinds of—we have to evaluate everything and try to find a way to convert to continue those drives to be able to get points.”
In Sunday’s loss to the Ravens, Denver attempted to get the run game going early on, and an injury to Courtland Sutton impacted how the Broncos used their personnel for the remainder of the game.
“We definitely went in wanting to run the ball,” Hackett said on Broncos emphasis on playing small ball against the Ravens. “I don’t think we ever go in with the mindset of wanting to win and not score a lot of points. We’ve been efficient in some of our bigger packages, whether it be 12 [personnel] or 21 [personnel] when [FB/TE Andrew] Beck was there. Our 13 [personnel] package has been very efficient with [TE Greg] Dulcich playing a little bit more of a wide receiver role. We thought we had some better advantages versus this defense, which is a very, very good defense. Instead of spreading them out and opening up the pressure looks with our 11 personnel package, we wanted to be able to kind of condense it and work the play-pass and the run action, hoping we were going to get explosive plays, which we got a couple.
The Denver offense has struggled mightily this season and it doesn’t appear that they’ll improve with five games remaining considering how they’ve trended through 14 weeks of play. While third-down efficiency is an issue, so is first and second-down execution.
With no bandaid solution in sight, it appears the Denver Broncos will ride the season out how they’ve done consistently enough the entire season.