Denver Broncos final drive failures

The Denver Broncos have now lost two games by one score (8 points or FEWER) this season. They also won their first game of the season by one score. Last season the Broncos were in seven games that ended with a one-score margin. The Broncos were 1-6 last season in those with that lone win coming in the 10-9 rain-soaked win over the Jets. A record of 2-8 in one-score games over the last 20 regular season games is not good at all.

The Bronco offense has now gone three-and-out nine times on 35 drives this season. The Colts have 1 in 3 games. With 9 the Broncos are tied with the Steelers, Buccaneers, Packer and Bears. The 35 drives for the Broncos is tied for most in the league. The Broncos have only gone 3-and-out on 25.7% of their drives, which is 19th worst. The Vikings have done so on 43% of their drives!

Part of the issue on 3rd downs, is that Bo Nix has not been very good on 3rd or 4th down so far this season.

Bo’s passer rating of 76.2 is not great, but he has been really good on 3rd or 4th and long. He’s only 5/12 for 41 yards and one interception on 3rd and 6 or fewer yards needed. That is worst in the league for QBs with 5 or more passes on 3rd and short or medium. He has a passer rating of 16.7 in this situations this year. Admittedly it is a small sample size, but YIKES!

The Broncos are currently 27th in 3rd down conversion rate at 32.4%. Oddly enough the 0-3 Dolphins are leading the league at 54.3%.

Bo Nix has been very inconsistent on throws over 10 yards beyond the LOS this season.

On passes that land less than 10 yards from the LOS, Nix is 52/70 with 1 TD and 0 INT. On passes that land 10 yards or more from the LOS, he is 9/25 for 4 TDs and 3 INTs. This data was scraped from NFL Next Gen Stats charts. Pics below

Just looking at the throw charts, it would appear that Nix was much more open to throwing deep on Sunday against the Chargers. He has three long completions in each game this season. If you draw the line at 20 yards from the LOS, Nix has four completions, three of which were TDs. Looking at the charts you can see a large number of throws at or behind the LOS as well as a high percentage of throws at or in front of the 5 yards from the LOS. Much of this has been necessary because of the lack of a consistent running game so far this season.

The Broncos have 387 rushing yards so far this season, but 91 of them have come on two runs. Our other 73 rushing attempts have gained 296 yards or 4.05 yards per carry (not removing the few kneeldowns which the league still counts as...