BSN Breakdown: Denver Broncos' imbalance not necessarily a fatal flaw

 

As you may have heard on talk radio or gleaned from watching the games from the authoritative vantage point of your 15-year-old couch, the Denver Broncos are quite the unbalanced bunch entering their bye week.

The Orange & Blue came out of Week 6 possessing the league’s fourth-ranked defense at 17 points allowed per game and ranked 13^th offensively at 23.6 points per contest. When it comes to the yardage metrics, the Broncos’ balance is even more out of whack, ranking second defensively with 281.3 yards surrendered and 29^th offensively at 325.8.

Credit that to an opportunistic defense which has produced a league-leading four return scores in six games and kicker Brandon McManus who led the league in scoring after six weeks with 61 points. For you non-math majors, the defense and the kicker have accounted for 85 – or a whopping 61.1 percent – of the Broncos’ 139 points.

Yikes.

So will Denver’s imbalance exist all season, and if it does – or doesn’t get that much better from here – will it be a fatal flaw come playoff time?

The answer to the first question is a flat-out TBD (to be determined).

As for the second query, not necessarily. And this is where we digress.

NFL history shows us the surest and safest path to the Lombardi Trophy is having a dominant unit – be it offense or defense – on one side of the ball.

Examining the last 25 Super Bowl winners – a list that dates back through the 1990 New York Giants – we find that only the 2007 champion Giants didn’t have an offense or defense ranked in the league’s top 10 in terms of points scored or allowed during their respective regular seasons. For the record, Tom Coughlin’s crew ranked 14^th offensively (23.3 points) and 17^th on D (21.9 points).

Moreover, only four of the last 25 Super Bowl champs – the 2012 Ravens (10^th offensively and 12^th defensively), 2011 Giants (ninth and 25^th), 2001 Patriots (sixth and sixth) and those ’07 Giants – didn’t have a top-five ranked unit on either side of the ball.

Still with Von Miller and Co. wreaking havoc, the 2015 Broncos appear to have the dominant-defense angle covered, provided they manage to hold their own against a formidable crop of opposing quarterbacks – including Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady and Philip Rivers (twice) – awaiting after the bye.

Meanwhile, 15 of the past 25 Big Game winners had both a top-10 scoring offense and a top-10 defense and seven possessed a pair of top-five-ranked units – with the 2004 Patriots (fourth and second) being the most recent.

Overall, 23 of the last 25 champs have finished with a regular-season point differential of more than a field goal (3.1 points) per game while 19 of those 23 outscored the opposition by more than a TD per game on average.

The Broncos’ average margin of victory so far this season has been 6.2 points per outing, and applying the same logic as above, it would jump to 9.2 points in taking away the three pick-sixes Peyton Manning has thrown.

The overriding point, though, is that while the Broncos’ imbalance isn’t exactly ideal, it doesn’t look to be an insurmountable barrier, either, if the team’s numbers more or less fall within the same ranges at season’s end.

To that end, seven of the last 25 teams to hoist the Lombardi Trophy were as imbalanced – or even more so – than current Broncos. That list starts with the 1990 Giants (first in points allowed, 15^th in points scored) and continues with the 2000 Ravens (first in PA, 14^th PS), ’02 Buccaneers (first PA, 18^th PS), ’06 Colts (second PS, 23rd PA), ’08 Steelers (first PA, 20^th PS), ’09 Saints (first Ps, 20^th PA) and ’11 Giants (ninth PS, 25^th PA). To narrow it down, that’s a full six of the last 15 NFL champs who had less-than-ideal balance, including that ’06 Indy squad piloted by a certain QB.

Even when we switch back to yardage figures, inequitable examples such as the ’11 Giants (eighth in total yards per game, 27^th in yards per game allowed), ’09 Saints (first offense, 25^th defense) and ’02 Bucs (first defense, 24^th offense) immediately jump off the list of recent Roman Numeral Game winners.

Now, ideally, the Broncos will show some offensive improvement and cut down on their giveaways over the final 10 games. Meanwhile, there’s room for some defensive slippage – to account for the step up in competition the Orange & Blue will be facing – and still have the unit easily finish the season as a top-10 D.

The Broncos’ two Super Bowl-winning squads of 1997 and ’98 were fairly well balanced (first offensively, seventh defensively and second offensively, ninth defensively in scoring, respectively) and so were the last two champs, the 2013 Seahawks (first points allowed, eighth points scored) and last year’s Patriots (fourth PS, eighth PA).

Still, that doesn’t mean the 2015 Broncos can’t ride an imbalanced road all the way to the top this coming February.

But that, of course, remains TBD …