Hey Parker, curious if you have a sense on how the Broncos dominant D may switch up their schemes this year to keep offenses off balance?
– Anthony, Denver
Hey Anthony, thanks for writing in and getting us going this week. We’re finally almost there. There’s actual football to be played, though not until Monday for the Broncos and Chiefs.
That will also provide us with our first glimpse at what changes Vance Joseph and company make defensively. They won’t be wholesale, most likely, considering all of the success Denver’s had defensively over the past two years. Whatap interesting, though, is that Joseph hinted at a couple of the things he and his group think they’ve learned over the course of the preseason. Teams don’t do a full scout and full gameplan for you in August, of course, but nonetheless Joseph said recently he thought he sensed a pattern.
He thinks teams are going to try to use his group’s speed and aggressiveness against them with misdirection, boot action and more. That also helps quarterbacks — particularly fairly mobile ones — get out of the pocket and maybe stand a little bit more of a chance against the Broncos’ withering pass rush.
Joseph also thinks teams are going to try to dink and dunk on early downs rather than take big shots down the field.
“They’re trying to get four yards,” Joseph said a couple weeks ago. “They don’t want to be in second-and-7-plus or 8-plus, because thatap obviously a pass-rush down. I thought last year we did a great job of basically playing third down twice. Most of our sacks came on second down. Third down is where they practiced their protection plans and slid to] Nik (Bonitto) or chipped (Jonathon Cooper). Second down is where we made our hay as far as the pass rush.”
Now, Joseph said, he thinks teams will try to be more conscious of setting up second-and-manageable and third-and-short,
“We have to understand how teams see us and adjust how we play third down and to continue to win first down,” Joseph said. “Thatap important for us.”
How exactly Joseph wants to go about that remains to be seen. One thing thatap interesting: Every time the topic of creating more takeaways was brought to Joseph by reporters — and it happened literally almost every time Joseph talked — he’d acknowledge that Broncos want more but also would always also talk about playing good football. That seems to indicate that he doesn’t feel the need to make many changes to the overall way he deploys coverage — heavy match-and-man principles — and pressure. Part of generating interceptions in general is having eyes on the quarterback, but Joseph doesn’t seem inclined to suddenly start playing a ton of shells and zones just to do that and take away what he sees as this group’s stinger.
Regarding the NFL’s bye weeks, spreading them out over 8 weeks can be unfair for teams that have to wait until Week 14 for their bye week. While those teams that get an early bye, say in week 5, have to then play out the remainder of the season. Why can’t the NFL implement each bye week with 8 teams instead of 4? That way, weeks 8, 9, 10 and 11 would be more reasonable as it’s more in the middle of the season.
– Dan Dorn, Phoenix
Hey Dan, interesting question. The bottom line is itap about television inventory. The league doesn’t have exactly even sets of bye weeks, either. Most weeks in the middle of the season, four teams are off, but one week, six are. Everybody plays the week of Thanksgiving. Only two teams have Week 14 byes.
But, yeah, to your point, four is kind of the standard number. If you have eight teams on byes plus Thursday night, Sunday night and Monday night games and maybe an early morning international game, that really hollows out the rest of Sunday in terms of programming options. The league is already stretched some on that front as it continues to expand to more Wednesdays, more streaming platforms and more standalone windows generally.
The Broncos have actually benefited from the late bye the past couple of years because it has allowed a week to get healthy and refreshed for the stretch run of the postseason. Itap hard to complain about the middle of the season like they have this year, though.
Teams continue to figure out how to squeeze rest out of different pockets, too. Denver’s got the mini-bye after its Week 6 Thursday night game. The bye week is Week 10. Short weeks are tough in the lead-up, but the Broncos will welcome the rest that comes after their pair of holiday Friday games — Black Friday and Christmas Day — which come with a weekend off on the back end.
If the NFL goes to an 18-game schedule sometime in the near- to mid-term future, one point of interest is the idea of teams getting two bye weeks. That part would be good for players, though some of it will likely get chewed up by an expanding international slate and more and more standalone windows, odd days and so on.
What are you liking or disliking about this current Broncos roster as opposed to previous years?
– Ed Helinski, Auburn, N.Y.
Hey Ed, thanks for writing in as always.
You never know for sure until the games start, but on paper, this looks like clearly the best set of offensive skill players overall since Sean Payton has been in Denver. My tenure on the beat only goes back a year before that, but it looks like the best I’ve seen here and perhaps the best since the Manning heyday. Adding Jaylen Waddle and Jonah Coleman without losing any standout contributors and then factoring in potential growth from Pat Bryant and others makes for an explosive, well-rounded group that also looks to have real depth.
We’ve covered this in other ways, but a year ago the Broncos’ third inside linebacker and third safety were Justin Strnad and P.J. Locke, respectively. Strnad’s a deserved starter now, but Dre Greenlaw is gone and so is Locke. They both played quite a bit last year due to injuries. Do the Broncos have real replacements for them if needed? The answer isn’t necessarily no, but itap an open question at this point, whereas last year the pecking order was quite clear.
Similar on the offensive line, I think. The starting quintet is set in stone and should be really good. Alex Palczewski and Frank Crum (out at least the first four games) are trusted reserves, but neither had a standout camp. If one of them or Matt Peart had to play a long stretch at tackle, how would it look? Maybe fine. Maybe not.
Who is going to replace John Franklin Myers (7.5 sacks, constant quarterback hits, knockdowns & pressu? Is is it Tyler Onyedim, Savion Jo,nes or Jordan Jackson?
– Tim Delphia, Denver
Hey Tim, thanks for writing in. How about D) None of the above. OK, thatap overstating things a little bit. But the bet here is that most of John Franklin-Myers’ snaps from last year — predominantly in pass-rush situations — will be handled by Malcolm Roach and Eyioma Uwazurike. Franklin-Myers played 46% in 2024 and 49% in 2025. Thatap slightly more than 500 snaps per year. The other defensive linemen last year, just for reference: Zach Allen played 797 (71%), D.J. Jones 431 (46%), Uwazurike 409 (36%) and Roach 401 (36%). Denver was mostly healthy last year up front, but Roach’s numbers are a bit skewed because he missed the first five games of the season. Over the final 12, he played half of Denver’s defensive snaps.
Generally speaking, the Broncos don’t want guys playing 800-plus snaps. Allen has rare stamina, but even with him, the coaching staff has been concerned about overwork over the past couple of seasons. Still, you can see a path to Uwazurike and Roach each playing, say, 150 more snaps this year and Jones playing a fairly similar role. Thatap tilting the mix fairly heavily toward four players. Right out of the gate, the best bet for a fifth is probably Jordan Jackson, given his veteran status and that he’s played real snaps for this staff. Perhaps at some point in the season, Onyedim will get a shot, too.
Why didn’t the Broncos keep Joly on the roster and try to get Justin Joly back on the practice squad? I’m assuming neither will be playing on game days anyway, at least initially. Wouldn’t Bentley have been easier to get through waivers?
– Mike C., Santa Clarita, C.A.
Hey Mike, thanks for writing in. That certainly would have been conventional wisdom given that Justin Joly was drafted in the fifth round and Dallan Bentley in the seventh. However, the simple answer is that the Broncos must have believed the opposite to be true. Otherwise, they’d have done exactly what you suggested.
There are a couple of factors to consider beyond the baseline, which is that the Broncos were more willing to risk losing Joly than Bentley. One is considering why Denver took Bentley at No. 256 in the first place. The Broncos relished the idea of controlling the final two picks of the draft, in part because it gave them flexibility to choose between drafting players and building their undrafted free-agent class. By the time those picks arrived, the Broncos had a good feel for who they would get signed after the draft and who they wouldn’t. So they used the picks on players they wouldn’t have otherwise landed. That means Bentley was likely headed elsewhere in free agency if Denver didn’t sign him. On the other hand, they knew they’d land the likes of Tyler Miller and Gavin Ortega, so they took the free-agent route with them.
Itap no surprise that Bentley would have had other suitors in free agency post-draft, but sometimes that plays a role, too. When running back Blake Watson made the 53-man roster a couple years ago, Payton said there were a half-dozen teams trying to sign him post-draft and therefore they guessed he’d get claimed if he was waived. Turns out, they had to put him on waivers a few weeks later anyway and they snuck him through to the practice squad.
Of course, you can make the same argument about Joly in the draft. The Broncos moved up from No. 170 to 152 to pick Joly, giving up Nos. 170 and 182 to do so.
Joly goes down as a miss, either on the evaluation, the likelihood of getting him to the practice squad or both. But the only real explanation for the way it played out at the roster cutdown is that the Broncos thought Bentley was a bigger risk to lose.
