In a bright orange shirt and a hat to match, Wade Phillips shined like a warning Friday at Dove Valley. The man in charge of the Broncos’ defense is growing, well, defensive.
“If you’re wondering about my outfit, I’m going hunting right after this,” he said, joking. “Or I just broke out of prison, one or the other.”
In six games this season, Denver’s defense is allowing just 18.0 points per game. And that’s an improvement. Last season, on the way to winning a Super Bowl with one of the best defenses seen this century, the Broncos allowed 18.5 points on average over 16 games.
But in a two-game losing skid within five days last week, small fractures opened up in Denver’s defense enough for quarterbacks Matt Ryan and Philip Rivers to sneak through victories. Ryan’s Atlanta Falcons scored only 23 points and Rivers and the Chargers just 21.
The problem, though, was how those teams did it. They were working from the same blueprint: attack the Broncos in the middle of the field using quick running backs and tight ends in messy matchups with Denver’s inside linebackers. Denver, in its two losses, is allowing nearly twice as many receiving yards to running backs and tight ends as it did in its four victories.
This led Jon Gruden, ESPN’s NFL analyst for “Monday Night Football” and a Super Bowl-winning coach, to suggest last week that Phillips and the Broncos should use more zone coverage to stop the trend.
“Well, Jon Gruden hasn’t coached in a while, has he?” Phillips said. “We were playing zone on quite a few of those plays. We haven’t played as well as we wanted to, obviously, because we didn’t win. But we’re still the best pass defense in the National Football League and against a lot of top quarterbacks.”
The Broncos last season raced to a 7-0 start while allowing just 16.0 points per game. On their way to winning a championship, Denver’s defense set a new bar for man-to-man coverage. Between cornerbacks Chris Harris and Aqib Talib and safety T.J. Ward, among others, they nicknamed themselves the “No-Fly Zone,” and deservedly. They were the No. 1 pass defense in the NFL.
The Broncos, though, are not about to give in to Gruden’s suggestion and change their stripes. They are a man-to-man team, through and through.
“That’s who we are. Our system is straight man. We just happen to be really good at it,” Harris said. “We won a Super Bowl playing man and doing what we do. So we just have to know how teams are attacking us and try to win our one-on-one battles. We’re never going to change. We’re the No. 1 pass defense.”
Harris has a point. The Broncos remain the best pass defense in the league. But the Falcons, behind offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan, avoided that man coverage altogether, instead sending athletic running backs underneath trying to pick on Denver inside linebackers Todd Davis and Brandon Marshall. Atlanta running back Tevin Coleman had 132 yards receiving. The Chargers copied the idea using their tight ends. Rookie Hunter Henry, looking like some modern-day Elroy “Crazy Legs” Hirsch, led San Diego with 83 yards receiving.
“It’s not hard for teams to scout us,” Harris said. “They already know what we’re in. We’re not tricking anybody. If other teams could play man-to-man like us, if they had the corners like us, they would do it too.”
That still leaves the linebackers at issue. In their first four games, the Broncos allowed 81.5 yards receiving on average to opposing running backs and tight ends. In Denver’s past two losses, that number jumped to 151.0.
“Everybody is going to have their opinion,” Davis said. “For me, I just need to play technique better.”
Davis explained that in the past two games, offenses grew creative against the Broncos, using more empty backfields and varied picks with running backs, and in-routes with tight ends, in order to streak through the middle of the field.
“Teams are definitely scheming against us now,” Davis said. “They got exotic. It’s nothing crazy or anything we can’t handle.”
Phillips, who returned to Denver last year as defensive coordinator and set in motion an athletic and aggressive unit that carried the Broncos to the Super Bowl, remains devoted to his defense. A two-game losing streak, he said, was the result of not playing well enough. It is not, he said, a crisis of identity.
As he walked away Friday, Phillips said, sarcastically: “I’m gonna go hunting for a victory — or some coverage down the middle, I guess.”
