Denver Broncos Film Review: Garett Bolles vs. Buffalo Bills

It may have taken 10 years, along with plenty of strife along the way, but the heartbeat of this team, Garett Bolles, has finally played in and won his first home NFL Playoff game. If anyone on this team deserved a moment like this, it absolutely was Bolles (or maybe Courtland Sutton).

Bolles had his work cut out for him though. The Bills defense boasted a strong pressure package and had a very diverse playbook to work out (notice the past-tense for the Bills) of and there was much Bolles had to be prepared for. The burden of protecting Bo Nix’s blind side fell on Bolles’ shoulders. Just how well did he do on Saturday?

Stat crunch

Not including kneel downs, the Broncos had 66 offensive snaps against the Bills over the span of 11 drives (not including the one to end the first half that was just a field goal). 17 of those snaps were designed run plays while 49 of them were designed pass plays. Bolles played every one of those snaps.

Bolles did not have any blown blocks nor did he give up any TFLs. He gave up one pressure and two QB hits.

Bolles finished with zero penalties.

I credited him with three “Bad” blocks, three “Meh” blocks, 10 “Alright” blocks, 48 “Good” blocks, and one “Great” block. This gave Bolles a total score of 58 points out of a possible 66, scoring a 87.5%.

In run protection he had 14 out of a possible 17 points (82.4%) and in pass protection he had 45.25 out of a possible 49 points (92.3%).

In general

The Broncos relied on the arm of Bo Nix the majority of the game, so there wasn’t too much to look at in terms of run blocking film for Bolles. But on those plays Bolles mostly did well, but it might have been one of his weaker games in this department, at least if we’re going off of just his score.

On his two “Meh” run blocks it wasn’t that he did poorly or get blown backwards and give up a play, more so he didn’t win the block even if it was relatively inconsequential. For example, on one play he failed to secure the reach block on a linebacker. The linebacker didn’t make the play, but it was an unsuccessful rep nonetheless. And on the other one he got stalemated at the line. So again, not bad, just not good.

But with the one rep of him not being able to secure the reach block, there was another of him working a slick bit of hand fighting that did earn him the edge on the reach block. He had successes to balance out his mistakes on similar play calls.

Also, given the small sample size of run blocks, one poor block could really affect your score. Predominantly he was good and even had a nice highlight that we’ll take a look at later.

In pass protection, while he did...