In all that was said into the wee hours Monday morning about the Broncos’ overtime playoff victory over the Steelers, not once was the word “conservative” attached to any discussion about the Broncos’ offense. Usually, when the Broncos win, a great deal of time is spent on how important it is to make things wide open, to wing the ball around. When the Broncos lose, there is roughly the same amount of time spent on the frailties of the team’s play-calling.
After a loss, the critics rail that the Broncos are far too conservative and need to throw more on first down to give quarterback Tim Tebow confidence and get the offense moving.
This just in: The Broncos ran 25 plays on first down in Sunday’s wild-card victory. They ran the ball on 23 of those plays. Or, if you prefer, they ran the ball on 92 percent of those first-down plays.
Yet, somehow Tebow overcame all those running plays to throw for 316 yards in his first postseason start, and the Broncos finished with 447 yards of offense against the NFL’s No. 1 defense.
And on a day in which Tebow averaged just more than 30 yards on his 10 completed passes, the Broncos went big and burly on offense to “open” things up.
Tebow threw a 58-yard completion out of a three-tight end look that included seven offensive linemen in the formation. He had a 40-yard completion out of another three-tight end look. And, he threw the game-winning 80-yard completion in overtime out of a two-tight end look with all 11 Steelers defenders within 4 yards of the line of scrimmage at the snap. That was the Broncos’ second first-down throw of the game.
In short, the Broncos are, at this moment in Tebow’s development, a team that must run well on early downs to make their offense work.
Asked Sunday night if he had seen anything different from the Broncos than he saw in film study, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said: “The number of (pass) attempts wasn’t surprising. The number of long completions was. … (It was) execution.”
Key matchup
The Broncos took a swing at Patriots quarterback Tom Brady less than a month ago, and it didn’t go so well. Brady threw for 320 yards and two touchdowns.
The Patriots chose to spread things out on offense, either with three wide receivers or two tight ends, but they usually kept the formation open to let Brady make decisions at the line of scrimmage on where to deploy players.
If the Broncos went small, and they did often with 55 snaps spent in their nickel packages (five defensive backs) and two snaps in dime (six defensive backs), Brady and the Patriots’ offense overwhelmed those decisions with power. New England ran for 92 of its 141 rushing yards against the Broncos’ nickel packages, and the Patriots’ tight ends combined for 13 catches for 182 yards and a touchdown.
The Broncos tried to combat a similar scenario against the Steelers on Sunday with their dime package that included three safeties — Rafael Bush, David Bruton and Quinton Carter — to go with three linebackers.
They may need another big night from that group to slow down Brady.
Comparison shopping
Three teams averaged more than 7 yards per offensive play in the wild-card round, with the Broncos leading the way at 8.1 yards per offensive play. The Lions averaged 7.8 yards per play in their loss, and the Saints averaged 7.7 yards per play in the win over Detroit.
Jeff Legwold: jlegwold@denverpost.com
