Denver Post Broncos writer Parker Gabriel posts his Broncos Mailbag weekly during the season and periodically during the offseason. Click here to submit a question.
Should Sean Payton win coach of the year?
And what’s impressed you the most about this season?
— Ed Helinski, Auburn, N.Y.
Remember last year when several quarterbacks including Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen and Joe Burrow had all achieved statistical accomplishments that in history had always coincided with winning the MVP? That’s kind of how this coach of the year race is.
Broncos coach Sean Payton is deserving of strong consideration. He took over a bad team and bad roster. From 5-12 in 2022, the Broncos in Payton’s three seasons went to eight wins, then 10, now 13 and counting. They’re one win from the No. 1 seed and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.
But is Payton going to win coach of the year? He is not. In fact, I saw an odds board recently that didn’t even have him listed.
Mike Vrabel pulled a remarkable one-year turnaround in New England — 4-13 last year, 13-3 and division champs over Buffalo this year. Liam Coen is a rookie head coach in Jacksonville who got Trevor Lawrence back into form, has produced a dynamic, efficient offense and also overseen a big improvement defensively. Both of those clubs will likely fall just behind Denver for the No. 1 seed, but the turnarounds have happened faster and with first-year coaches. Similar story in the NFC, where Ben Johnson took Chicago from the basement to the top of one of the league’s toughest divisions as a rookie head coach. Mike Macdonald in Seattle’s done terrific work, too, engineering one of the league’s best defenses while OC Klint Kubiak is flying high with Sam Darnold at quarterback.
For my money, though, they should all finish as worthy contenders and also just behind Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco.
The 49ers weathered an absolute barrage of injuries and haven’t just survived. They’ve thrived. The team’s won six straight and if they beat Seattle — no easy task — at home in Week 18, they’ll have the No. 1 seed in the NFC. That’s a team that was long considered basically an afterthought in the toughest division in football behind the Seahawks and Rams. Instead, there’s at least a chance that Shanahan and company could play their final five games at Levi’s Stadium: Two to finish the regular season, two in the postseason after a first-round bye and then Super Bowl 60.
In a year where there are a handful of deserving coach of the year candidates, Payton very much included, give me Shanahan by a whisker.
Broncos QB Bo Nix’s ‘Overdogs’ slogan has raised over $25,000 to combat homelessness in Denver
Our pass-rush duo of Jonathon Cooper and Nik Bonitto seem to be average these past few weeks. They combined for a total of a half-sack between them. Is it just the long haul of the season wearing them out or are opposing offenses figuring out how to slow them down?
— Marshall, Parker
The Broncos’ outside linebacker pair has definitely seen its collective output in the sack department decline in recent weeks. Bonitto has gone three straight games without a sack and Cooper has two half-sacks over the past seven games. So there might be something there, but we also have mitigating factors to consider.
The first is that Bonitto, in particular, is still generating pressure. He has 11, according to Next Gen Stats, over those three games without a sack. That comes out to an 18% pressure rate, which is elite in its own right and not far off his 19.4% pressure rate for the season.
Cooper is a slightly different story. He had three or more pressures in eight of Denver’s first 10 games and averaged 3.8 per game. Since then, he’s averaged 1.5 per game and has had two games without one. He had one pressure in 15 pass-rush attempts against the Chiefs.
Another factor to consider: The run of quarterbacks Denver has played. Payton made it clear Monday that he’s not concerned with sack numbers as much as whether the Broncos are playing to plan. In his mind, they have been. They’ve kept mobile quarterbacks mostly from hurting them outside the pocket this year.
It’s one of the things that makes Denver’s franchise record sack totals this year all the more impressive. They’ve done it without playing selfish football. Payton always says the worst place to be on the football field is behind the quarterback. Watch other games around the league and it’s a common sight. The Broncos? Not so much. There was a rep against the Chiefs where John Franklin-Myers and Zach Allen were working in tandem and Allen just barely started to get too far up the field. He retraced, sprinted and got himself back in position to keep Chris Oladokun from finding room to run up the middle. That’s playing to plan rather than for numbers.
At the same time, we know Bonitto acknowledged he wore down substantially late in the season last year. Cooper’s played a big workload. A couple of times in recent weeks, Denver has used a five-man OLB rotation to A) get rookie Que Robinson special teams work and B) take some workload off the top group. Denver has depth on the edge that rivals any in the NFL. They can put Jonah Elliss and Dondrea Tillman or Robinson on the field and feel good against just about anybody.
It’ll be interesting to see how Sunday goes against the Chargers. The best thing Denver can possibly do is, obviously, win and get everybody a week off. If they can build a big lead early and get Bonitto and Cooper a little extra rest, all the better.
Do you think the Chargers will sit their starters on Sunday? I know they’re playing for seeding, but Justin Herbert could use a week to heal that broken bone in his left hand.
— Trey Miller, Golden
Hey Trey, a good and timely question since Jim Harbaugh announced Monday that the Chargers will indeed not play Justin Herbert. One thought on that: Harbaugh said the players with the most bumps and bruises also won’t play. But when you sit your star quarterback, you are not going to put other key players in harm’s way. It just doesn’t make sense.
Chargers QB Justin Herbert, others won’t play vs. Broncos in Week 18
Why aren’t the Broncos trying to sign John Franklin-Myers to an extension? He seems like a key piece to the defensive line and has been a real asset. Is it his wish to be a free agent next year?
— Anthony, Venice, Fla.
The bottom line is it comes down to the notion that you can’t pay everybody. Could Denver technically afford to sign Franklin-Myers? They could probably figure it out, but it would likely come at the expense of another player, whether that’s a free agent in the spring or somebody on the current roster.
One thing the Broncos’ front office has done is follow a plan. They didn’t just blindly rip off a bunch of in-house extensions over the past 18 months. They’ve done so with a blueprint in mind of who they’re paying, when they’re paying them and how it works in both the short term and in the longer-term as the club moves toward the day when paying Bo Nix enters the equation. That window opens after the 2026 season.
All of that is not to say that Denver couldn’t use Franklin-Myers well beyond this year. He’s a really good player. And it’s not to say that there’s no risk in letting him walk. There is. Allen is the first to point out that it’s no coincidence his production jumped when Franklin-Myers arrived. The key is being better positioned to push into the future without him than Denver was before he arrived in Denver.
Shouldn’t there have been a “defenseless player” on the pass to Pat Bryant at the end of the Jags game?
— Ross Mahoney, Northglenn
I think so, and I know plenty of people in the Broncos’ building think so. The NFL apparently does not. Jacksonville cornerback Montaric Brown, who made the hit, not only wasn’t penalized during the game but he wasn’t fined afterward.
There’s no doubt Bryant was in a defenseless position by the rule when contact was made with 31 seconds left in Denver’s loss to Jacksonville that led to Bryant’s brief hospitalization. He leapt high to try to reel in the pass and hadn’t even fully landed when Brown made contact.
Once a player is in a defenseless position, the defender can’t do any of the following: make forcible contact to the head/neck area, lower the head and make forcible contact with any part of his helmet to any part of the defenseless receiver or launch into a defenseless opponent.
Brown didn’t launch and didn’t appear to make forcible contact to the head/neck area (at least initially), but he did lower his helmet as he arrived on contact.
It’s fortunate that Bryant appears to be OK — at least to the extent that “only” having a concussion is OK.
It was an unnecessary play, an unnecessary throw and an unnecessary hit at the end of a game that was, for all intents and purposes, over.
Hi Parker, I’ve got a couple of questions for you.
1. Is it realistic to get J.K. Dobbins back for the divisional round of the playoffs?
2. How much are the passing offensive struggles Bo Nix being off target versus WRs dropping balls?
Thanks.
— Brandon Brown, Rogers, Minn.
The divisional round feels a bit soon for Dobbins, but we don’t know exactly where the running back is in his recovery.
Here are four things we do know and have reported previously:
1) When Dobbins was first injured, a source close to him indicated the most likely way in which he’d play again this season were if the Broncos made the Super Bowl. That’s, obviously, three full weeks after the divisional round.
2) Dobbins has been telling people in the building he thinks he can be back faster than that
3) Payton took a question about Drew Sanders a few weeks back and used it as an opportunity to suggest that Dobbins had a chance to be back sometime in the postseason, but didn’t say exactly what that meant
4) Dobbins was around the building last week, though reporters did not see him working on the side field during the one day that featured a viewing period before the Thursday night game.
If Dobbins is out there doing any semblance of practice work this week, that becomes quite a story. That’s just an if. If the Broncos thought he’d be back by the divisional round, they might not return him to practice this week and instead try to stealth it through a potential bye week next week and then have him back on the practice field Wednesday of the divisional round. Those at this point, however, are just hypotheticals.
As to your second question, it’s a bit of both. For my money, Nix has been a bit off the past two weeks after a month of being very accurate with the football.
Simultaneously, the Broncos have had issues with drops. It’s just one stat, but Pro Football Reference has Courtland Sutton and Evan Engram tied for sixth-most in the NFL with 10 drops and RJ Harvey tied for 15th with six.
Overall, Pro Football Reference puts the dropped throw rate for Nix’s attempts at 7.5%, second-highest in the NFL behind only Trevor Lawrence (8.8%). Those two are far ahead of Patrick Mahomes in third at 5.7%.
That same site puts Nix right about league average in bad throw percentage at 15.5% (league average 16%), though his raw volume of bad throws is No. 4 because Nix is currently tied for the most pass attempts in the NFL with Dallas’ Dak Prescott at 589.
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