The Denver Broncos offense hasn’t found its groove yet and hasn’t established what its identity is, yet, and Sean Payton believes that it will be coming soon.
Denver Broncos offensive identity hasn’t been established yet
Through three weeks of play, the Denver Broncos offense hasn’t established an identity yet, and it’s been the story of this season.
Sean Payton says that at the end of every year, the proverbial game board gets flipped and the pieces begin to get reassembled. A large portion of the Broncos’ core on offense from last year returned — Bo Nix, the offensive line, Courtland Sutton, Marvin Mims, Troy Franklin, Adam Trautman, Nate Adkins, and Lucas Krull.
Denver’s newest faces, Evan Engram, Pat Bryant, J.K. Dobbins, and RJ Harvey, are presumably upgrades over what they had last year, but through three weeks, the offense looks like it’s regressed compared to what we saw last year, granted the offense struggled in the first four weeks of 2024 as well.
Dobbins and Harvey have both rattled off a couple of explosive runs, but overall, the Broncos’ run game hasn’t quite taken off yet. Monday’s game could see it jump-started against the Cincinnati Bengals’ defense, which has surrendered 119.0 yards per game on the ground through three games.
“It’s important, and this sums it up,” Payton said. “This is an identity relative to running and throwing the ball. This is our identity, and I would say we have yet to establish that clearly for anyone watching or ourselves. That’s us as coaches.”
Establishing that identity means that the offense has to be successful on their early downs, which has been a consistent issue for them so far this season, and it has put them in a tough spot on third down, where the Broncos offense currently ranks 27th in third-down conversion percentage.
Last Sunday, the Broncos struggled mightily on third down, converting only 2-of-13 attempts. 10 of those 13 third-down scenarios were third and long (8+), and the offense found itself behind the sticks often.
Getting the new pieces to fit is part of the process, and Payton is putting it into the universe that we’ll hopefully see that start to come together very soon in terms of the offense finding their identity.
“I think soon,” Payton said.
Monday Night in primetime would be the perfect place to start, especially with Denver having to travel next Sunday to take on the Philadelphia Eagles and defensive mastermind Vic Fangio.
