Inside the Game: Heavy personnel hurts Broncos defense vs. run
Nov 9, 2016, 9:51 PM | Updated: Nov 18, 2016, 9:31 am
Through the first nine weeks of the season, the Denver Broncos rush defense has looked like a shadow of what it was a year ago.
In 2015, the Broncos Super Bowl caliber defense was the best in the NFL, thanks much in part to stuffing the run. Only giving up 83.4 yards per game, Denver ranked third in the league.
A year later, however, the Broncos rank 30th in the NFL, giving up 128.6 yards per game at a 4.4 yards per play clip.
And frustration bubbled over a bit on Sunday night, when Denver let hated rivals the Oakland Raiders run roughshod over its defense to the tune of 218 yards — the highest total given up thus far in 2016.
“Winning the physical battle in this league, week-in and week-out, is something that has to be important, and we’ve been pretty good at that as a football team. Last night, we were not,” head coach Gary Kubiak said Monday. “Obviously they were much better at that than we were so it’s something that has to improve.”
Latavius Murray ran for 114 yards on just 20 attempts, with Jalen Richard following with 62 and DeAndre Washington at 35.
And among the techniques Oakland employed to break through the vaunted Denver defense was to utilize a sixth lineman in big personnel, said Mark Schlereth, co-host of Sports Radio 104.3 The Fan’s “Schlereth and Evans.”
In this week’s edition of “Inside the Game,” Stink breaks down how the Raiders used a tackle power game to open up holes for Murray, Richard, and Washington — which we could see the New Orleans Saints try to replicate on Sunday.
Follow digital content producer Johnny Hart on Twitter: @JohnnyHart7.
