Mile High Report
Who played and who didn’t?
The Denver Broncos game-day inactives against the Carolina Panthers were: Zach Wilson, PJ Locke, Kris Abrams-Draine, Alex Palczewski, Greg Dulcich, Dondrea Tillman, and Eyioma Uwazurike. Both Locke and AP were inactive because of injury. The rest were healthy scratches.
Our QB and our entire OL played every snap with the exception of one kneel-down snap at the end of the game where Matt Peart, Frank Crum and Calvin Throckmorton got to play on offense. Peart had three other offensive snaps where he served as the 6th offensive lineman.
Our tight end group was quite balanced and, for the first time this year, was extremely productive as receivers. Adam Trautman, Nate Adkins, and Lucas Krull played 41, 35, and 27 snaps. With 73 total offensive snaps, that means we ran plenty of plays with two TEs on the field. We also used FB Michael Burton on 11 offensive snaps. I haven’t checked but I wouldn’t be surprised if we went super heavy (6 OL, 2TE and a FB) near the goal-line. If anyone is really curious about this, I’ll see if we have any snaps this year (at NFLgsis.com) with that player grouping.
The running back snaps went mostly to Javonte Williams who got 42 to Jaleel McLaughlin’s 23. Audric Estime got five and didn’t fumble this time around.
Courtland Sutton and LJ Humphrey dominated the WR snaps with 61 and 44 respectively. Troy Franklin, Devaughn Vele and Marvin Mims got 27, 25 and 21 snaps.
The only active offensive player who didn’t play was Jarett Stidham.
Three defensive players played every snap: Riley Moss, Cody Barton and Brandon Jones.
On the defensive line Zach Allen played almost every snap - 59 of 61. John Franklin-Myers, Jordan Jackson, Malcolm Roach, and DJ Jones played 28, 7, 26 and 23 snaps.
As the other safety, Devon Key played 56 snaps fulling in for the injured Locke. No other safety played on defense.
Justin Strnad only played 37 snaps while Kwon Alexander played 13 as the other ILBs.
Coming back from injury Patrick Surtain was given some rest snaps only played 51. Ja’Quan McMillian played 48. While Damarri Mathis played 10 and Levi Wallace got in for 6.
Our edge defenders, Jonathon Cooper, Baron Browning, Jonah Elliss, and Nik Bonitto played 33, 33, 29 and 29 snaps. That’s an amazingly balanced rotation for the edge guys. It’s good that Elliss is ready to have that heavy of a load as a rookie.
Defensive players that only played on special teams were Tremon Smith, JL Skinner, Keidron Smith, and Levelle Bailey. These guys were part of downing another punt at the one. Riley Dixon now has four of those on the season which is the most ever for a Bronco punter (PFR drive finder database only goes back to 2001). There have been 478 punts downed at the 1 this century. I’m going to do a whole article on punts downed at the one to...
