The Broncos have a massive matchup on Sunday against the Colts with heavy playoff implications on the line (how I’ve longed to say that), and they should be primed for a breakout in the ground game.
The Indianapolis rushing defense is filled with different vulnerabilities and has been exposed by many teams through its first 13 games. And there have been issues that have consistently harmed them week to week.
Sean Payton and staff have had plenty of time to figure out how they can get their rushing attack going early and often against the Colts, and here are the plays I think they’ll be putting near the top of the play sheet come Sunday.
Stat crunch
The Colts have the second-worst run defense in the league heading into Week 15, giving up an average of 147 yards on the ground per game. They trail only the Panthers, who give up 170.1 yards per game.
The Colts have given up 100+ rushing yards in 10 games this year, with three of those games giving up 200+ yards.
The team with the most rushing yards against the Colts this season is the Packers, who put up 261 yards in Week 2. The Texans also put up 213 yards in Week 1 and the Patriots put up 200 in Week 13.
Week 1 also featured the most yards rushed against the Colts by a single player when Joe Mixon up up 159 of the 213 yards. The Colts have given up four 100+ yard rushers this season.
The highest yards per carry against the Colts was in Week 13 when the Patriots averaged 6.5 yards per carry.
And I might be making up this stat, but I wanted to take a look at the yards rushed by a team when they played the Colts compared to their average yards per game on the season. I’m calling this Yards Above Average (YAA). The team with the highest margin of YAA is the Packers with 116.3 YAA. The Texans, Dolphins, and Patriots all rushed for 80+ YAA.
The team with the lowest of this margin is the Bears when they rushed for a mere 63 yards in Week 3 for -42.8 YAA.
In general
My breakdown consists of primarily looking at what the Packers, Texans, and Patriots did against the Colts. I wish I had the time to look at every game Indy has played this year, but that isn’t practical. So instead I took the two games with the most rushing yards and then the most recent game (which still happened to be the game with the third-most rushing yards).
I figured a small sample size should include what worked best, and since those two game were the first ones of the season, I wanted to take a look at the most recent one to see if the Colts have fixed anything since then.
And if you want to extend the recency of the sample size, in Week’s 10, 11, and 12 the Bills, Jets, and Lions put up 137, 91, and 135 yards, respectively. So teams were still rolling against the Colts leading up to the Pats game.
Moving on.
The most productive plays against the Colts tend to be Duo (including Y Wham), Counter, Trap (Inside and Wide), and Toss Lead. And most of these big gains were run to the left side. And most of these plays are out of formations that Denver already runs a large amount of the time.
Most plays came out of Singleback and Offset Gun, and these mostly set up the Duos.
Most of the successful Counters run against the Colts were run out of Split Gun, while just one of them that I noted was out of Offset Gun.
The Packers got after the defense with a heavy dose of that Offset Gun with plenty of motions. And they ran a lot of Tight Bunch out of the Singleback, which is something you’ll see a lot in the Payton offense.
The plays that burned the Colts defense the most included Counter, Toss Lead, Duo, and Trap.
Sine we already know that the Broncos love running Duo, it is a very safe assumption to make that Payton is planning on a heavy dose of it come Sunday. The Broncos already do a solid job of executing that play and the Colts defense is susceptible to getting washed laterally, which is the main goal of Duo.
The other three plays aren’t ones that the Broncos run often, but should be highly considered when putting together the game plan for this week.
The Split Gun Counter can make great use of speedy guys like Jaleel McLaughlin and Marvin Mims as it will get the defense flowing, opening up cutback lanes, or it could open up some space for Mims on the boundary (I’ll be getting into why that might happen). This is a bit of the same logic as to why the Broncos have the right kind of personnel for Toss Lead, while throwing in that their FB and TEs do a solid job of blocking.
And the Trap plays that have gashed the Colts feature both an Inside and Wide Trap. We’ll be taking a look at the Wide Trap that the Patriots ran as that shows a similar look that Denver showed earlier this year with the same play.
The specifics
Split Gun Counter
This is a play I would love for the Broncos to show off a couple of times on Sunday. This is such a fun and tricky look that the Broncos have the personnel for, and it will help set up a few other plays.
Counter is meant to be run to the weak side, and the Packers also set up the belief that it’ll be a sweep by running the Counter into the boundary side. Teams rarely run an outside run like a sweep into the boundary. The strong side OG kicks out the end man on the line of scrimmage, the TE follows and pulls up through the gap to a backer, and the play side of the offensive line down blocks. The motion gets the defense leaning and then you run the Counter underneath them.
The Broncos can run this with a few different personnel options. You can fake the sweep to Mims and have McLaughlin or Audric Estime run the Counter, or you can fake the sweep to McLaughlin and have Estime run the Counter.
And you can even run this with a motion thrown in from the weak side if Payton wants to increase the attempted level of deception even more.
Running this would also open up the playbook for the HB and WR Sweep if done correctly.
I Formation Toss Lead
Singleback Toss Lead
Two different formations for the same play, and multiple options for how the Broncos can keep the Colts guessing.
The Broncos have not run many plays out of I Formation this year, but Payton has shown a tendency to run out of Strong or Weak. This is when you line up under center but there is a fullback offset from the line of the QB and RB about two yards and is about three yards in the backfield. They can absolutely run the Toss Lead out of either of those.
More than likely, though, an easier way for them to work in the Toss Lead is shown out of Singleback, a formation that they run plenty of plays out of already. They’d just send Nate Adkins or Adam Trautman across the formation to lead.
Singleback TE Influenced Long Trap
This play is very similar to one the Broncos have shown off a few times this season, but not one that I can remember them running for at least four weeks now. If you can recall, Payton liked the wrinkle that was OG Influenced Inside Trap.
The Patriots line up in an unbalanced formation and then motion to the weak side to force the linebackers to shift, making the upcoming down blocks a little easier to get to (a nice detail).
The entire play side down blocks, but the inner-most tight end fakes like he is going to block the DE and then continues on to the nearest backer. The backside OG pulls to kick out the DE while the backside OT secures the B gap and blocks out.
This is a great way to get the defense into a situation where they are outnumbered on the edge and a speedy guy like McLaughlin, who has shown his new ability to run between the tackles, can pull this one off. All he has to do is make one or two guys miss and he is off to the endzone.
Final thoughts
There are plenty of ways to attack the Colts’ defense on the ground, and Sean Payton has both the playbook and personnel to do so. There is little reason why the Broncos would be unable to manage their first 100-yard rusher in 30 games on Sunday, and I think McLaughlin will be the guy to do it.
I would love if the Broncos threw in just one of these plays this week, mostly the Split Gun Counter. I really enjoy the strain that the play puts on a defense and the multiple plays that it sets up.
We’ll see in just a handful of days.