Broncos Journal: An easy way to break four-year playoff drought? More takeaways.

Way back on Aug. 14, Bron­cos safe­ty Trey Mar­shall and cor­ner­backs Bryce Calla­han and Michael Oje­mu­dia opened train­ing camp with interceptions.

The Bron­cos should hope that estab­lished the foun­da­tion for take­away improve­ment. Last year, only five NFL teams had few­er than the Bron­cos’ 17 take­aways. Among their sev­en inter­cep­tions, only one was by a full-time cor­ner­back (Chris Har­ris, who is now with the Chargers).

Last sea­son fell off the rails when the defense pro­duced no take­aways, which meant no short fields for a strug­gling offense, no momen­tum swings and no wins (0–4 start).

Enter­ing Mon­day night’s open­er against Ten­nessee, the Bron­cos are count­ing on improved cor­ner­back play, the return of out­side line­backer Bradley Chubb from a torn ACL and a more con­sis­tent run defense (which leads to pass­ing downs) to equal more take­away opportunities.

“It’s one of the things that we preach,” safe­ty Kareem Jack­son said. “We didn’t do a great job at cre­at­ing turnovers last year so we’ve def­i­nite­ly placed a lot of empha­sis on get­ting the ball and cre­at­ing some more oppor­tu­ni­ties for our offense with the weapons those guys have.

“It’s all about get­ting the ball. If we can get the ball, we feel like we can be a pret­ty good group.”

Sev­en of the top eight teams in turnover ratio last year reached the play­offs; the Bron­cos were plus‑1 (tied for 13th). Nine of their 17 take­aways came in three games.

A plus turnover ratio leads to win­ning, period.

Bron­cos coach Vic Fan­gio has been a defen­sive play-caller for 15 years and his teams are 104–29‑1 (reg­u­lar sea­son-play­offs) when win­ning the turnover bat­tle — a rate of 77.6%.

Car­oli­na (1995–98): The Pan­thers were 18–3, includ­ing 8–0 in ’96.

Indi­anapo­lis (1999–2001): The Colts were 19–3, includ­ing 0–2 in the playoffs.

Hous­ton (2002–05): The Tex­ans were 13–7.

San Fran­cis­co (2011–14): The 49ers were 37–5‑1, includ­ing 4–0 in the playoffs.

Chica­go (2015–18): The Bears were, gulp, 13–9, includ­ing 0–1 in the playoffs.

Bron­cos (2019): The Bron­cos were 4–2.

So what’s the solution?

“I think just anoth­er year in the sys­tem will help the guys that were here last year,” Fan­gio said. “We’ve added some play­ers that could help in that area, also, in A.J. (Bouye) and Jur­rell (Casey). Bradley return­ing to the line­up will help.

“If we can get in the lead more in the sec­ond half of games, that will also help.”

Thing is, the Bron­cos had a plus-48 point dif­fer­en­tial in the first half last year (eighth-best), but were minus-82 in the sec­ond half (third-worst).

The Bron­cos lost games in which they had half­time leads of 17–6 (Jack­sonville), 6–3 (at Indi­anapo­lis) and 20–0 (at Min­neso­ta). They went 6–3 when lead­ing at halftime.

Plan A was to have Chubb and Von Miller, reunit­ed after com­bin­ing for 26 1/2 sacks in 2018, dom­i­nat­ing off the edge. Miller, though, sus­tained an ankle injury last Tues­day that could keep him out the entire season.

“On third down, Vic tries to bring those five-man pres­sures with Chubb and Miller and make sure they’re sin­gled up,” an NFL play­er said dur­ing the off­sea­son. “It’s not like it’s a hard scheme to fig­ure out. He’s a Cov­er 4 base guy, but he has some third down stuff that is kind of unique. But he real­ly relies on his defen­sive line.”

Enter Casey, who arrives from Ten­nessee to pro­vide an inte­ri­or pass rush. There is also high expec­ta­tions for sec­ond-year defen­sive end Dre’Mont Jones. The pres­sure is on every play­er on defense to do more. It all must come togeth­er … quickly.

“There are many ways to make turnovers,” Bouye said. “Cov­er­age, sacks, strip-sack­ing. Being top-five in turnovers is going to help our team get to where we need to be and that’s one of our goals.”

(Vis­it­ed 1 times, 1 vis­its today)



Tags: suchen suche search tag anzeigen besucherzahl brows­er design domain inhalt jahr karpfen kon­to prob­lem inhalt schal­ten mod­ell­bahn spiele­max spiel tag web­seite preise werbung 

Ein Reichsmarschall von Adolf Hitler hatte auch Märklin Modelleisenbahn Modelle > read more

Schreibe einen Kommentar