How the Broncos’ strength can play into Drake Maye’s weak spot

The Broncos do one thing better than any other team in the NFL: rush the passer. For two consecutive seasons, they’ve led the league in sacks. They followed up their franchise-record sack tally in 2024 of 63 with an increase of five this season, answering the question “Where do you go from up?” with the rare response of “even higher.”

Yet throughout the regular season, they did another thing worse than all but one team: force fumbles. Only the Indianapolis Colts forced fewer fumbles than the dozen the Broncos extracted from opponents in their 12 games, an odd dichotomy considering how aggressive Denver’s defense was throughout the year — and particularly how often they met quarterbacks, which usually leads to its share of strip-sack fumbles.

Heading into Week 18, Denver was tied for the bottom spot in the NFL with 11 before Nik Bonitto forced a fumble from Chargers understudy quarterback Trey Lance at the Los Angeles 16-yard line in the fourth quarter, setting up a field goal.

But against the Buffalo Bills last week, the Broncos forced five fumbles — including three fumbles from Bills quarterback Josh Allen, one of which was the calamitous lost fumble just before halftime that gifted Denver a field goal and sent them to intermission with a two-score lead.

Just as the Broncos’ 1-8 record in one-score games during the 2024 season and the first month of the 2025 campaign eventually flipped in the form of an ongoing 11-game winning streak in such contests, so too did the defense reap the benefits of an ascension to the mean that was inevitable.

“It’s so crazy. You look back at the film, man, we’ve been going after the ball all year. But teams have been doing a real good job of protecting the ball. It’s not really exposed and things,” defensive lineman Malcolm Roach said.

“… They [had] been doing a lot better with turnovers — but we knew that [we] could get the ball away, man.”

And now the Broncos face a quarterback who is putting the ball on the ground at one of the highest rates in the NFL over the last two seasons. Among 45 quarterbacks with at least 400 touches — pass attempts, rushing attempts, times sacked and receptions — since the start of the 2024 campaign, only three fumble the ball more often than New England’s Drake Maye, who fumbles once every 50.0 touches: Will Levis, Cooper Rush and Anthony Richardson. Not exactly the company one wants to keep.

It gets worse for Maye when looking at the last decade-plus of quarterbacks: Among 71 passers with at least 750 attempts since 2015, only Josh McCown and Justin Fields have worse fumble rates than Maye. (The best fumble rate, by the way? It belongs to Bo Nix, who fumbles just once every 185.9 touches.)

With two fumbles in the postseason so far, Maye has more fumbles in this postseason than any player in any single year of the playoffs since Terry Bradshaw in the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 1978 run to a Super Bowl XIII triumph.

And yes, hand size will enter the conversation; while Maye’s hand size is beyond the 9-inch threshold generally considered the baseline, his Combined measurement was at 9 1/8 inches. (Nix, by comparison, had a hand size of 10 1/8 inches.)

Working behind a New England offensive line that is still in the process of rebuilding, Maye is often under siege. The Houston Texans hit him seven times last Sunday; the Los Angeles Chargers 10 times a week earlier. That contributes to his high fumble rate, but by any definition, it presents a massive opportunity.

TAKEAWAYS WERE THE ONE THING MISSING FOR THE BRONCOS THIS SEASON

Denver’s 14-3 record was the second-best ever compiled by a team with a negative turnover margin, as the Broncos defied historical trends. But few teams win the Super Bowl without a positive turnover margin in the postseason; that’s why their five takeaways and plus-4 margin last Saturday were so vital.

It allowed the Broncos to overcome never forcing a punt from the Bills — although it’s quite possible that two of the series that ended in fumbles would have otherwise resulted in punts, as Buffalo finished those possessions by going backwards from the start of the drive.

Vance Joseph‘s Broncos defense didn’t dominate in terms of yardage allowed, so it didn’t live up to its No. 2 ranking in total defense, but by generating takeaways and maintaining its red-zone form — three stops in five series, leaving Buffalo with a 40-percent success rate — it found a viable formula regardless.

New England’s attack has some of the same potential to cause problems in terms of how it can spread the ball around; tight end Hunter Henry can also present a matchup issue. Thus, takeaways and red-zone stops might be vital again, just as they were against Green Bay last month, too.

That’s part of the plan.

“It’s just been a conscious effort. Every day, all day, that’s all we been talking about: attack the ball, attack the ball, attack the ball,” Roach said.

“We preaching to the DBs, man, you coming in, you come punching. They’ve been doing it all year, but like we always say, if you want to play the lottery, you gotta buy a ticket, so you gotta put them attempts on the ball, and eventually it will come.”

And based on the last two seasons — and especially the last two games — Maye could provide plenty of chances for the Broncos to scratch and win.

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