DENVER — The Broncos had three wins heading into Sunday’s game against the Miami Dolphins.
But in those wins, the Broncos capitalized off of the opposing teams and their situations. Most weeks, the Broncos can’t rely on playing a team in chaos, a team that drops seven defenders back 10 yards from the line of scrimmage and one that pushes the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers for general incompetence.
They needed a win Sunday. They got it by a 20-13 count. But even more important, they defeated a quality foe with a sustainable game plan designed to work around a young quarterback trying to find his footing and a defense playing without its entire starting defensive line.
OFFENSE: RUN AND PLAY-ACTION BOOTLEGS
“I’ve always said a quarterback’s two best friends are a running game and a good defense and, for the most part, we had that going tonight,” Broncos coach Vic Fangio said.
Denver didn’t ditch the run after its first two attempts flat-lined. One play after a confidence-boosting third-and-10 pass from Drew Lock to K.J. Hamler got the Broncos their initial first down 7:38 into the game, Phillip Lindsay galloped off right tackle for 20 yards. He lost 2 yards on his next attempt, but the next carry saw Melvin Gordon explode off the right side for 9 yards.
This was the fifth game Lindsay and Gordon have played together from start to finish. In the previous four, they combined for 26, 14, 14 and 15 carries — an average of just 17.25 per game.
Sunday, they combined for 31 attempts. Gordon had 15 attempts for 84 yards; Lindsay notched 82 yards on 16 attempts. Both averaged more than 5.0 yards per carry.
Lindsay’s contributions went beyond the box score, Lock noted.
“You don’t really know how much Phil gets talked about in the media or if he gets pumped up or shot down, but he deserves a whole lot of credit for this run game and this offense,” Lock said. “You guys see the plays on the field but him in the locker room — him in the huddle from last year to this year —it’s a completely different Phil. I’ve been extremely impressed with how he’s progressed as a leader for this offense and just as a football player in general.”
By the end of the game, the Broncos had more runs than passes for the sixth time in the Fangio era. But perhaps the most significant note about run ratio is that they are undefeated in the 12 games Lock has played from start to finish when they run at least 45 percent of the time.
When they hit that 45-percent figure with Lock at the helm, they’re 6-0; when they don’t, they’re 1-5.
The ground game also makes the play-action game viable, opening gaps in coverage that exist because defenders must hesitate to account for the possibility of the run. Miami had to take that threat seriously given the explosive potential of both Lindsay and Gordon.
“Getting the running game going helps the boot game and having the defense play well alongside that turns it to where it’s not a game where you have to throw it every play and they can tee off on the rush,” Fangio said.
DEFENSE: RUSH-AND-COVER
When Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa looked downfield, he didn’t see the open lanes that had greeted him in his previous starts. Denver’s defensive backs plastered Miami catching targets, and with rare exceptions, the windows were narrow, liming Tagovailoa’s options and turning him into a hesitant passer who could not buy enough time for with his feet to break off their routes.
For a defense playing without Von Miller and its entire first-team defensive line, the 6-sack performance was impressive. But it would not have happened without the coverage provided by the league’s priciest secondary, which was healthy and played exactly as billed.
“A lot of [the sacks] were kind of late, meaning late in the down to where I think our coverage was good,” Fangio said.
On three of the six sacks, Broncos defenders arrived at least 4.0 seconds after the snap. Even the quickest sack took just over three seconds — 3.06, to be exact. The Broncos had an average time of 3.90 seconds to their sacks.
“They’ve got good players, they had good scheme, they pressured us, they mixed the coverages and they did a good job defensively,” Dolphins coach Brian Flores said.
SPECIAL TEAMS: PLAY THE DIRECTIONAL GAME
Special-teams coordinator Tom McMahon closed his Friday press conference via Zoom with a question to the media:
“Who’s the greatest defender of all time?”
The answer, “The sideline.”
“Players asked me to ask that, because I say that to them all the time,” McMahon said.
McMahon wants his punters to use the boundary as their friend, to avoid blasting it down the middle and force returners to operate in a limited amount of space. Or, as Sam Martin did twice in three punts Sunday, punting it out of play altogether.
Miami punt returner Jakeem Grant entered Sunday with a 14.7-yard average on 20 punt returns so far this season. He finished with just one punt return for 6 yards, as Martin’s other two punts sailed out of play.
But Martin’s punts out of bounds weren’t shanks off the foot. Instead, they were blasts. He finished with a net average of 50.0 yards on three punts of 48, 52 and 56 yards. Two of three saw hang times of at least 4.10 seconds. Two were to the right; one was to the left.
Martin’s work highlighted a day in which the Dolphins were unable to gain the special-teams advantage to which they were accustomed. They had no kickoff returns, since all of Brandon McManus’ kickoffs ended in touchbacks. The only explosive return of the day belonged to Denver’s Diontae Spencer, who logged a 22-yard punt runback.
NOW, HERE’S THE CATCH
First, it is helpful to work with a lead. For the first time since Week 7, the Broncos scored a first-half touchdown. They did not trail in the final three quarters.
It’s easy to stick with the run when you’re playing from ahead or sit behind by seven or fewer points. You’re not paralyzed by the urgency of the ticking clock, forcing you to try to accumulate points in a hurry.
But the Broncos must develop the confidence to stick with a run-and-play-action-heavy game plan, even if they fall into an early hole. Against the caliber of teams they will see in the coming weeks — with three of their next four games against the New Orleans Saints, Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills — maintaining that confidence in the face of early punches is critical.
“A balanced offense is always the best offense,” Lock said. “There are games where we start slow and we get down, the offense on the other side scores, and we’ve got to throw the ball a little more. That’s just the game of football.
“It’d be ideal to be super balanced all the time and attack and mix things up on a defense sometimes. But like I said, you get down and you’ve got to throw it more than you’d like.”
But it doesn’t have to be that way. The Broncos don’t need to ditch their quest for a balanced attack if they’re behind two scores in the second quarter — or even the third. If they have the patience to trust the potential long-term rewards of fidelity to the run, good things can happen.
The Broncos know what they have to do. They just have to commit to it.
But at least they have a viable template now — which is more than they could say before Sunday.
