If Garett Bolles isn’t voted to the Pro Bowl, there needs to be a recount. Or six. Fifteen. Thirty. However dang many it takes. Call Rudy.
Did you see him out there, leading Melvin Gordon, raging off the edge like some ornery elephant, looking to knock some defensive back into 2021? They’re still scooping pieces of Dolphins safety Brandon Jones up off the turf. Did anybody get the number of that truck?
Sure did, pal. No. 72.
“You guys see Garett Bolles out there?” Broncos tailback Phillip Lindsay said of his left tackle after Denver slugged its way to a 20-13 win over Miami on Sunday. “The stuff he’s doing is Pro Bowl.”
#ProBolles, actually.
Ain’t it something? In a year that 98% of us can’t stuff into the fireplace fast enough, Bolles keeps piling on to the best season of his NFL career.
That pancake, late in the third quarter at the Denver 43, set up nine of the Broncos’ 189 team yards on the ground. Quarterback Drew Lock flung it around 30 times, against a top six defense, and wasn’t sacked.
“Garrett was out there being a bouncer, bulldozing guys over,” Gordon gushed afterward. “He was making some really great lanes for us, and then all we had to do was a make a couple guys miss.”
He’s making it look easy, making his skill guys look good and making his doubters — this joker included — look like absolute clowns. Maybe it’s the lack of fans, the absence of hecklers and distractions. Maybe it’s the NFL’s public commitment this fall — partly due to the pandemic, partly for aesthetics — to have the refs ease up on “ticky tack” calls.
No calls are as ticky or tacky as the ones for holding. If this is the new strike zone, Bolles went from Mitch Williams to Greg Maddux.
According to the wonks at Pro Football Focus, No. 72 hadn’t given up a sack in the Broncos’ first eight tilts. A few weeks back, Bolles was tapped by PFF for its midseason All-Pro team. He rolled into the Dolphins tussle with Denver’s highest PFF season grade (90.3) of 2020.
Now, we’ll grant you that the pool of breakout stars is small, given Lock’s second-season schizophrenia and offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur’s maddening reluctance to lean on the two Pro Bowl tailbacks this offense was supposed to be built around. (This past Sunday was several steps forward on that front, and yes, Pat, we know: Having a lead helps.)
This is what happens when a punchline punches back. We’d mocked the flags, because there were too many. We’d cringed when the competitor’s mouth wrote checks that logic couldn’t cash. (Declaring “I think we’re neck-and-neck” with the Chiefs right after said Chiefs just tire-ironed you at home was hardly No. 72’s finest moment, dark comedy aside.)
But progress is progress. And it’s been tangible — tangible and sweet — to both eyeballs and metrics alike. NFLPenalties.com says No. 72 drew whistles six times in his first nine games, three times for holding. After nine contests in 2019, he’d been flagged a whopping 11 times, with 10 holding calls.
“I think (Bolles has) validated the beliefs that I had in the offseason and indicated to you guys in the various times I’ve talked to you,” Broncos coach Vic Fangio noted earlier this month. “I’ve had belief in him from the start. Although obviously he’s had some rocky times, I just think that he’s one of those guys that needs time to develop … the only way you get better is to play.”
It’s not the only way, but in this case, it almost certainly helped. So did time. Patience. Trust. Offensive line coach/hog-whisperer Mike Munchak.
And, let’s be real, the spectre of a contract year.
When GM John Elway declined Bolles’ fifth-year option back in May, making the big lug a free agent after this fall, it slapped a message across the sky:
Prove it.
Of course, now that he has, Elway might have to return the gesture in kind. Or play nice with Justin Simmons and stick that franchise tag on No. 72, daring Bolles to prove it again.
Either that, or your 2020 offensive MVP walks. Which is a migraine nobody needs right now, given the likelihood of a shrinking salary cap and a roster, health-wise, that’s trying to crawl back from a 12-car pile-up.
The Vonster’s been on the mend throughout. No Courtland Sutton after Week 2. No Jurrell Casey after Week 3. No Mike Purcell after Week 7. COVID chasing Shelby Harris the way Shelby Harris usually chases everything else.
It goes back to that availability thing, doesn’t it? In this league, especially during The Age of the Coronavirus, more than half the battle is showing up.
Bolles already did that part better than anybody. It’s the rest of it, the franchise left tackle stuff, that’s finally, beautifully, catching up. And taking names.
