The Broncos pass rush is operating at maximum efficiency

Jonathon Cooper has the big contract. Nik Bonitto is on pace to easily become the Broncos’ first player with a double-digit sack total in 6 years — although Cooper is also on that pace, too.

And Patrick Mahomes absorbed 4 sacks from the Broncos’ pass-rushing crew on Sunday, finding out what other passers have learned this season: that defensive coordinator Vance Joseph’s commitment to a simplified, aggressive scheme is bringing out the best in his players.

Perhaps no one has surged more than Bonitto, a third-year veteran whose emergence helped make Baron Browning expendable last week.

“He’s certainly made the leap,” Broncos coach Sean Payton said. “He’s getting more snaps. He’s getting more pass-rush snaps.”

A crucial aspect of Bonitto emerging was proving that he could handle runs in his direction, allowing him to be viable as an every-down edge rusher.

“He’s a guy that plays with real good bend,” Payton said. “He can bend and torque his body. He has a lot in the tank relative to his pass rush, and what he wants to do and how to set somebody up. He’s really helped us.”

But as noted earlier, he’s far from the only front-seven player to be quite helpful.

4

Players on the Broncos with at least 5 sacks so far this season. Nik Bonitto (7.0), Jonathon Cooper (6.5), Zach Allen (5.0) and John Franklin-Myers (5.0) all reached that tally.

This is the first time in Broncos history that they’ve had four players in the first 10 games of the regular season accumulate at least 5 sacks apiece. On three previous occasions in club annals — 1991, 1998 and 2003 — Denver had three defenders reach 5 sacks by the 10th game.

It’s also worth noting that all three of those teams made the postseason, winning 12, 14 and 10 games in those regular seasons, respectively.

With 35 total sacks through 10 games, these Broncos matched the 2012 team for the most sacks in the opening 10 games of a season since 1986, when the Broncos had 39 sacks through their first 10 contests en route to the club’s second AFC championship and Super Bowl appearance.

PLUS-18

Difference so far this season between sacks allowed and sacks recorded, with Denver accumulating 35 total sacks while allowing just 17. That is the Broncos’ largest sack differential through 10 games since 2012, and the third-largest to this point in the season in team history, behind only 2012 and 1998.

These Broncos won’t reach the regular-season heights of those two editions; the 2012 and 1998 teams lost a combined 5 games.

But it represents the marked contrast with last season, when the Broncos had a minus-13 sack differential through 10 games that was the third-worst in team history since sacks became an official statistic in 1982 — and the worst for a Broncos team to that point in a season since 1994.

The Broncos have the same record as they did at this point last year. But how they got there could scarcely be more different.

2

Touchdowns scored by Kansas City in its last three games against the Broncos dating back to a 19-8 Chiefs win over Denver in Week 6 of the 2023 season.

During the last three seasons — including two Chiefs Super Bowl wins and this year’s 9-0 start — Kansas City has been held to 1 or zero offensive touchdowns just five times. In one of them, Patrick Mahomes didn’t play — the regular-season finale at the Los Angeles Chargers last Dec. 7. That leaves four games in the last three seasons with Mahomes at quarterback in which the Chiefs failed to score more than a single offensive touchdown — and three of them were against the Payton- and-Vance Joseph-guided Broncos.

In the last three seasons, Kansas City has averaged 2.74 offensive touchdowns per game. Their 3-game tally against the Broncos doesn’t even reach their single-game average since 2022.