Mile High Report
Week 18 was the first time in about three months that Ben Powers took every rep at left guard. The Broncos handled his return from the IR well, having him split reps with Alex Palczewski the last couple of weeks before fully taking back his spot against Los Angeles. And since he returned to the field a couple of weeks ago, he’s been good. He’s had a handful of poor plays, some which have put his team into bad positions, including TFLs and sacks.
But this is to be expected when you’re knocking the rust off. The real question is how did he look in his final tune-up game before the NFL Playoffs?
Let’s take a look.
The Denver offense had 56 snaps that didn’t include kneel downs. There were 24 designed run plays and 32 designed pass plays. Ben Powers played every snap.
Powers had one blown block. He gave up zero TFLs, zero pressures, zero QB hits, and one sack.
He had no penalties on Sunday.
Powers finished the game with two “Bad” blocks, four “Meh” blocks, 15 “Alright” blocks, and 35 “Good” blocks. This earned him 48.25 points out of a possible 56 for a 86.2%.
In run protection he scored 20 points out of a possible 24 (83.3%) and in pass protection he scored 28.25 points out of a possible 32 (88.3%).
Ben Powers looked as good as his grade shows. He was solid. He won most of his blocks and contributed little to any of the offensive shortcomings Denver faced on Sunday.
Some of his best plays came in the run game when he showed off his (possibly underrated) athleticism. He was moving well laterally in their Outside Zone concepts and the Broncos were able to run a handful of Gap Scheme plays, but they really just ran the same play different directions (Sean Payton kept the offense incredibly vanilla).
I think this offense is better with Powers at left guard because of the amount of plays he opens up for the offense. They’re able to get away from their typical zone-heavy run game. Some of Powers’ best work comes when he is pulling. This includes Crack Toss, Power, and Trap plays that help the Broncos hit the line of scrimmage quicker, rather than having to wait for the play to develop like it does in Zone.
When it came to pass protection, he was mostly stout. When he’s able to get his hands on the DT there usually isn’t many reps that he loses. Most of the battle comes from him attempting to get hands on. He gave up a sack when he was too late to react to a slanting DT and had a bad block where he was too slow reacting to a stunt.
But the cool part about that stunt failure is the immediate next stunt the Chargers attempt, Powers is all over it. And that is a bit of a reoccurring theme with this...
