Mile High Report
There were 1287 sacks in the NFL last season and the Denver Broncos offensive line only allowed 9 according to SISdatahub.com. Ben Powers and Luke Wattenberg allowed no sacks. Garett Bolles, Alex Forsyth, and Alex Palczewski allowed one sack. Quinn Meinerz allowed two sacks and Mike McGlinchey allowed four sacks. The other four offensive lineman who played a snap on offense did not allow a sack.
The team allowed 23, so 14 of the sacks were blamed on a player who does not play offensive line (QB, RB, or TE). FWIW Frank Crum is listed as a TE since he played more snaps on offense as the sixth offensive lineman than he did as the fifth offensive lineman. All of the 15 OL guys that SIS has listed as TEs were primarily 6th OL guys for their team with the exception of Blake Fisher who started 10 games at tackle for the Texans. The NFL snap data doesn’t handle 6 OL very well so it assigns them as a TE since they have to report as eligible before the play.
The 23 sacks allowed by the Broncos were the fewest in the NFL. The Bronco OL also had one of the lowest percentage of sacks allowed – only 39.1% of the sacks taken by Bo Nix were the fault of the OL. The Bronco OL was also only called for six accepted holding penalties this season on passing plays. There were seasons where Bolles was called for six over the course of three games. There were 11 accepted holding penalties on the Bronco OL with no OL guy getting hit more than twice. The Broncos flagged for offensive holding the most this season were JL Skinner and Trent Sherfield. Foreknowledge of that could have won you some serious scratch if you are into prop bets.
Sorted by blown block percentage Luke Wattenberg was above average as a pass blocker in 2025. Creed Humphrey of the Chiefs was the best center in the NFL this season (this is evident when you also look at run blocking). The center for the Jets, Josh Myers, allowed seven sacks, or almost as many as the entire Bronco offensive line. Aaron Brewer, the center for the Dolphins, had as many holding calls on passing snaps as the entire Bronco OL.
I sorted the guards by sack percentage instead of pass blown blocking percentage (BPB%). Ben Powers had one of the better BPB% among starting guards in the NFL at 1.5%. Quinn Meinerz 1.8% was also good. AP’s 2.6% was about average. Powers was one of the few starting guards who did not allow a sack this season – admittedly in many fewer PB snaps relative to the the elite guards at the top of this table. I haven’t done the run blocking analysis yet, but I am curious to see how SIS graded out our guards in that aspect.
Garrett...
