Broncos Country should be careful when wishing for more downfield passes

There’s a popular narrative building across Broncos Country heading into the new season. Take more deep shots.

Fans want fireworks. More explosives. More chunk plays down the field.

It’s the kind of wishlist item that sounds great in theory. The Broncos add Jaylen Waddle, promote Davis Webb to play caller and suddenly the offense starts ripping off 40-yard completions that it couldn’t produce last year.

But on a recent edition of “Stokley and Evans, with Mark Schlereth” on 104.3 The Fan, Brandon Stokley made it clear that the desire for more big plays needs to be tempered by the reality of what the Broncos actually showed last season.

Stokley opened with a direct warning.

“Be careful what you wish for Broncos Country,” Stokley said.

The numbers behind the caution are difficult to argue with. On passes thrown 10 yards or more downfield, the Broncos posted just an 80.2 quarterback rating last season. Even more alarming, 10 of Bo Nix’s 11 interceptions came on throws of 10-plus yards.

That is not the profile of an offense that was simply holding back its explosive potential. That is the profile of an offense that struggled to execute when it tried to push the ball down the field.

Stokley connected the dots directly.

“‘We wanna be this explosive offense chucking it down the field a lot.’ Well Bo Nix hasn’t been very good at that, throwing a lot of interceptions,” Stokley said.

That assessment then raised a retroactive question about last year’s play calling.

“Was that one of the reasons why Sean Payton was calling so many screens, and being so conservative with certain things?” Stokley asked.

The fan base spent much of last season frustrated with Payton’s conservative tendencies. But if the data was telling the coaching staff that deep throws were producing turnovers at an alarming rate, the screen-heavy approach starts to look less like stubbornness and more like damage control.

Stokley acknowledged the simplest explanation for the inefficiency.

“They just gotta execute better. But for whatever reason, they haven’t,” he said.

The good news, however, is that the conditions for improvement are genuinely in place. Waddle gives Nix a deep threat he has never worked with. Webb’s play-calling approach may create cleaner downfield looks. And Nix himself enters year three with a deeper understanding of the offense and stronger chemistry with his receivers.

Stokley landed in a place of cautious optimism.

“But this year, you’re expecting Bo to be better. Going into his third year, letting things progress, getting the ball down the football field. I think they’ve got better talent around him. So, I’m expecting that to get better, but we shall see,” he said.

The talent is there to fix the problem. The track record, however, says the fix isn’t guaranteed.

Broncos Country wants fireworks. Stokley just wants to make sure they understand what they’re asking for, and what it actually looked like the last time the offense tried.

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