Today’s Broncos question comes from Rob in Trinidad. To get your question in, e-mail jlegwold@denverpost.com:
Q: I read in a Woody Paige column that the Broncos have abandoned the zone blocking scheme. For the past dozen years or so, one of the bright spots for the Broncos has been the running game. Why would (coach Josh) McDaniels abandon a scheme that seems to have been so successful?
A: Rob, every coach believes in certain things offensively and defensively, either because of their experiences calling plays or because of the system they were trained in as they moved through the coaching ranks.
For his part, McDaniels prefers bigger, more physical offensive lines playing in front of what is a one-back set, with a little bigger back occasionally in the lineup as well.
Often that one-back set is in a three-wide receiver formation, which is really the base formation of a McDaniels offense. Before, the Broncos preferred to play with one or two tight ends in the formation or out of a two-back look.
Shanahan won back-to-back Super Bowls with the smallest offensive line in the league; the Patriots — where McDaniels was trained as an NFL assistant — won three Super Bowls with one of the bigger lines in the league.
Two paths to success.
Last season, the Broncos, having mainly players up front Mike Shanahan had signed, tried to do a little of both. They used the zone scheme and tried to implement McDaniels’ more straight-ahead, man-on-man approach.
The results were mixed at best as the team consistently struggled to run the ball in important short-yardage situations on third down or near the goal line. They simply could not get the tough yards and wound up throwing the ball when a consistent running game would have taken care of business fairly easily.
In the offseason, McDaniels made a concerted effort to get the team bigger up front, and right now the Broncos figure to play two of their 2010 draft picks — center J.D. Walton and guard Zane Beadles — in the offensive line because of that transition.
McDaniels has also tried the 314-pound D’Anthony Batiste at left tackle, in place of Shanahan holdover Tyler Polumbus, as the backup to Ryan Clady.
McDaniels also lost two of the coaches who were steeped in the zone system when Rick Dennison went to Houston to be offensive coordinator — he was the Broncos’ offensive line coach under Shanahan — and running backs coach Bobby Turner was hired in Washington on Shanahan’s new staff.
And the zone system can be difficult to coach because of the discipline it takes to play it, which is why the same people, like Alex Gibbs, keep getting hired all over the league to coach it. It also takes a group of athletic linemen who are often a little smaller, also difficult to find these days when virtually all offensive linemen at the scouting combine are 300 pounds.
So, the zone scheme was certainly an effective way of doing things here, but few teams have re-created what Shanahan did with the Broncos, running for so many yards with so many different backs behind smaller offensive lines. So, here it was a combination of coaching, discipline on the part of the running backs, the intelligence of the players up front and a steadfast belief in the system that made it work.
That hasn’t happened with the scheme anywhere else over such a long period of time, and it remains to be seen if Shanahan can recreate it with the Redskins.
But McDaniels is using the system he believes in with players he has selected to play it. The results will determine whether or not that was a good choice.
Jeff Legwold: 303-954-2359 or jlegwold@denverpost.com
