John Elway hired a new member of the Denver Broncos organization to start a new position with the team. Mitch Tanney will be the director of football analytics. The team announced the move on Friday.
According to the team, Tanney’s position will be responsible for “developing methods to analyze data that supports evaluations and situational decisions made by personnel staff and coaches.”
The new position and its role in the grand scheme of things certainly highlights some of the Broncos failures of the recent past. In the previous three seasons in particular, albeit under John Fox and his staff, the Broncos have made several baffling decisions in close contests. From the 2012 playoff loss to the Baltimore Ravens to Peyton Manning and Fox getting into a heated argument on the sidelines at halftime of the St. Louis Rams loss in 2014, it has been evident that when some game-changing situations occur the Broncos have failed.
Tanney will clearly be in charge of dissecting the new staff’s use of game clock and situational football in order to improve as a whole. Elway once again is trying to improve the organization in every facet of its operation. Analytics can help the Broncos determine what has worked consistently in certain situations and be better prepared when those instances inevitably arise.
Tanney worked in a similar capacity with the Chicago Bears last season after working as a manager of sports analytics at STATS LLC, a sports data and content company.
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