The Denver Broncos offense was inconsistent last year, and it's up to Davis Webb to solve the problem.
Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix has a ton of talent, but getting him to show it consistently isn’t always easy. Nix has the ability to rise to the occasion in clutch situations, but he also frustrates Broncos fans with his tendency to go three-and-out on multiple possessions while looking terrible along the way.
That’s the problem being faced by new Broncos offensve coordinator Davis Webb, but the good news is that Webb does have a plan to address Nix’s tendency toward erratic performances. The answer is to get him in rhythm, according to Nick Kosmider of The Athletic, but there’s a lot more to it than that.
“We’ll grow and adapt as the season goes,” Webb said. “We have a pretty good idea of where we’ve been with Bo the last couple of years and what’s been successful.”
One approach that worked was playing what coach Sean Payton called “playing street ball.” Payton did this in last year’s division round win over the Buffalo Bills last year, and it wound up working.
“Bo wants to play street ball,” Payton said in the lead-up to the game. “So I’m going to create some street ball.”
The Broncos proceeded to turn the game into a track meet that they wound up winning, 33-30, as Nix outgunned Buffalo quarterback Josh Allen. But Webb will take a more systematic approach this time around, based on the offseason work he did to break down Nix’s game more thoroughly.
“We started in February as a coaching staff (saying), ‘Hey, let’s look at the last two years since Bo’s taken over,” Webb explained. “What are we good at? What do we need to look at? What’s going on around the league? Who do we play?’ It’s been a combination of a lot of things. It’s been some new ideas, especially in the spring, to kind of get (the offense) off the ground and see where everything is at.”
That led to a focus on scripting the first 15 plays of the game, which is a common formula for nearly every NFL coach. What Broncos fans wound up seeing last year was multiple long drives that often stalled in the red zone, with the subsequent field goal setting the stage for close games that got wild at the end.
Nix is on board with the idea of changing that, and Denver added receiver Jaylen Waddle to become more explosive. Hopefully that will help lead to a more varied approach that will allow the Broncos to have different ways to succeed as they set about repeating in the AFC West.
“I think we’ll have a lot of different tempos,” Nix said. “I think we’ll try to play fast; I think we’ll try to slow it down. Sort of feel it out as we go through training camp, as we get through a couple of games and just sort of see what we’re good at and play from there.”
