Nik Bonitto is showing why he earned his contract extension from the Denver Broncos. And there’s a number that shows why.
39 PERCENT
That’s the pass-rush win rate for Bonitto through two games, per ESPN Analytics.
That’s the highest pass-rush win rate in the NFL through two games. Certainly, this will normalize; last year’s top edge rusher in this metric, Houston’s Danielle Hunter, finished with a win rate of 26 percent. Bonitto ranked 15th with a win rate of 17 percent.
It’s not just Bonitto, who is standing out, either. His edge-rushing complement, Jonathon Cooper, ranks No. 5 in the NFL in run-stop win rate among edge rushers through two games, per ESPN Analytics. But despite individual brilliance, there are some team-wide numbers about which the defense should be concerned.
4
That’s the number of games in the Broncos’ last eight contests in which the defense has allowed at least 450 yards of offense, doing so last Sunday and against the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals last December and in the wild-card defeat at Buffalo in January.
Prior to the last eight games, Denver had gone 25 outings without allowing at least 450 yards. Twice in the first four games of the Sean Payton/Vance Joseph era, opponents exceeded 450 yards — including the infamous 70-20 loss at Miami, when the Dolphins rampaged their way to 726 total yards.
Of particular concern has been the ability of teams to consistently control games on the ground. In five of the Broncos’ last seven games, they’ve allowed at least 115 rushing yards, including the 167 posted by the Colts on Sunday. One of the two exceptions was against the Chiefs’ backups in Week 18 of last season, so that is, for all intents and purposes, a throwaway. Against true NFL competition, here’s what the games in that span look like on the ground — not including kneeldowns.
• Indianapolis, Week 15, 2024: 32 carries, 149 yards, 4.66 yards per carry
• at Los Angeles Chargers, Week 16, 2024: 25 carries, 134 yards, 5.36 yards per carry
• at Cincinnati, Week 17, 2024: 27 carries, 116 yards, 4.30 yards per carry
• at Buffalo, Wild-Card Round, January 2025: 41 carries, 213 yards, 5.20 yards per carry
• Tennessee, Week 1, 2025: 21 carries, 71 yards, 3.38 yards per carry
• at Indianapolis, Week 2, 2025: 32 carries, 167 yards, 5.22 yards per carry
And if you struggle to stop the run, teams will keep running on you; it’s a time-tested maxim of NFL life.
0
Punts by the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday, as they became the first team in NFL history to avoid punting in their first two contests.
In a vacuum, one such game wouldn’t be a huge cause for alarm; a bad day happens every now and again — although you had to go back to the Christmas Day Debacle of 2022 for the last game in which the Broncos never forced a punt; one day later, the head coach involved in said game was canned.
But as is the case with the previous stat about allowing 450 yards, the problem is that games with few punts for Broncos opponents is becoming something familiar. Buffalo punted just once in the 31-7 wild-card loss absorbed by Denver in January. Ditto for Cincinnati 15 days earlier.
The Broncos have as many games forcing one or zero punts in their last three contests as they did in the previous 56. Prior to that Week 17 defeat at Cincinnati last December — when the Broncos didn’t force a Bengals punt until overtime — the Broncos hadn’t endured a game forcing one or fewer punts since the 70-point debacle at Miami on Sept. 24, 2023.
At one point, such games were rare; the three games with one or zero punts is as many as the team had for an entire eight-season stretch from 2012-19. Unfortunately, one of those three games was Super Bowl XLVIII.
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