Mile High Report
How did Garett Bolles and Mike McGlinchey compare to their peers? Let’s dig into the data.
The 33rd team just released their list of top pass protecting offensive tackles for 2024 and both of the Denver Broncos starting offensive tackles made their list.
The only other team with both tackles in the top 10 was the Bills. Garett Bolles ranked 5th allowing pressure on 3.5% of his pass blocking snaps while Mike McGlinchey ranked 10th at 4.5%. Rookie and Fellow domer, Joe Alt, ranked 9th. This matches up fairly well with ESPN’s pass block win rate (which may not have been updated?) but that shows McGlinchey at 6th and Bolles at 7th. ESPN also has Tristan Wirfs ranked first, but because of a different minimum snap number, they have Trent Williams ranked 2nd. He didn’t have the 500 snaps needed to qualify for the above ranking.
From an individual standpoint SIS assigns all players a points value similar (but not the same) as PFR’s AV (approximate value). In their rankings Bolls was 4th with 35 points and McGlinchey was 29th with 24 points.
You might need a to zoom on this to read it.
Comparing to the Bronco LTs (which were almost all Bolles) in 2024 to the LT spot for the rest of the league, we allowed the third fewest sacks with 3, and had one of the lower blown block totals with only 21. The Chiefs LTs allowed a whopping 17 sacks, and that doesn’t count the ones they allowed in the Super Bowl. They also had a league worst 56 blown blocks and nine holding penalties.
The Bronco RTs (which includes the snaps that Matt Peart played as the 6th OL) allowed only 5 sacks while having 32 total blown blocks. The Patriots had the worst RT play in the league, with former Bronco, Demontrey Jacobs starting for them.
The other guys who took some snaps at OT for the Broncos, Alex Palczewski, Peart and Frank Crum, all played decently given their limited playing time and the limited experience from both AP and FC. AP earned 5, MP earned 3 and FC earned zero because he only played 3 snaps on offense.
By total SIS points the Broncos had the fifth best OT group in the league.
Of course, I would still like us to invest some draft capital into the OT group since the Broncos have not drafted an OT since 2017. It would be nice to have McGlinchey’s replacement on the team and ready for when the Broncos decide to move on from him after his contract is up. While AP played quite well in 2024, there is no guarantee that he will be able to play at an above average level for an entire season if/when he has to. Frankly, I’d much rather we “waste” some day three picks on OTs rather than DBs and WRs who are never going to play in the NFL.
