The Broncos defense wasted no time signaling the coming storm last season.
The group thundered out of the gates Week 1 at Seattle from the first snaps of what ultimately became a franchise record-rewriting campaign.
Play 1: Jonathan Cooper bulled through right tackle George Fant for the first of 63 Denver sacks. Play 2: D.J. Jones and company collapsed the pocket around Geno Smith and hit him as he fluttered an interception to Alex Singleton in the middle of the field.
Denver lost that day in Bo Nix’s NFL debut, but the defense authored the opening chapter of a dominant season — one that saw the Broncos top the league in pressures and sacks, tighten up against the run and restore their reputation as one of the league’s stiffest defensive tests.
As central to the group as any player: Defensive tackle Zach Allen. He, too, sent the rest of the NFL a message on the first snap of the season. He just did so in a more understated way.
He did it with an adjustment so subtle that the ultimate impact for himself and Denver’s defense — to say nothing of the ripple effect around the league — begs belief.
Allen debuted a new stance.
The change-up itself is interesting in its own right. But what its origin story reveals is a set of Allen’s true superpowers: Insistence on innovation. Endless curiosity about what might force offensive linemen three inches off-kilter or a half-step off the line. A process for and commitment to spending nearly the entire offseason and all of training camp experimenting.
The goal: Not to win every rep, but to learn enough, bank enough and plan enough to win the one that counts most late in a game and deep into a 2025 campaign Allen and his teammates believe can end with a championship.
“Self-awareness is a No. 1 trait you can have in this league,” he told The Denver Post recently. “You have to be able to understand what you’re good at, what you need to work on and just be honest with yourself.
“If you’re overconfident or you have no confidence, it does no good for you.”
Allen now knows this about himself: He’s one of the best in the world at what he does. The rest of the league knows it, too. They will have done their homework on him, which means he spent the past seven months focused not on being named second-team All-Pro or a $102 million contract extension, but on his next changeup.
Now at last, he gets to put it to work next Sunday when Denver opens its season against Tennessee.
What’s Allen got up his sleeve this time around?
“I can’t give you everything,” he said with a wry smile. “We have to save something for Week 1.”
The stance
Training camp practices are intense and closely choreographed, but there’s still downtime.
Particularly so for established veterans.
During a punt period, quarterbacks retreat to the idle field to do net drills. The starting secondary might talk through an adjustment or just shoot the breeze.
Allen rarely stops moving. He grabs whomever he can find — maybe reserve defensive lineman Jordan Jackson, backup tackle Frank Crum or pass-rush sensei and Broncos consultant BT Jordan — and keeps working.
Most of the time, he’s got an idea in his head that he needs to get out.
It could be a new move entirely, a potential counter, or an adjustment on where he wants his hands, feet or eyes.
If he thinks it might work, he starts working through his process.
“You start it from the ground stage up. You start it in walk-through,” he said. “Then, in individual drills, you try to work it full speed. Then kind of work it in a semi-live rep, so I’ll pull Jordan Jackson or somebody over to the side and get their two cents on it. Then you try a team period or a one-on-one session and feel what it is. Go back to the drawing board — this felt like this, that felt like that.
“It’s all about trying new things and staying active.”
Last year, Allen began experimenting with reversing his stance. His three-point stance normally looked like most defensive linemen: Inside hand on the ground, outside foot up the field bearing weight and ready to push off.
Allen switched it up, putting his outside hand down and loading his weight on his inside leg.
Green Bay came to town for a joint practice in mid-August last year, and Allen got off to a rough start against Packers lineman Elgton Jenkins.
He decided it was time.
“He changed up the stance, made that adjustment and ended up dominating,” Jordan told The Post. “I think that gave him a lot of confidence, and that was one of the first days that he had that confidence that he could do that (on the fly).”
State secrets are closely guarded, but this one didn’t last long. Allen and Jordan saw other rushers around the league using a similar technique within a few weeks.
“It messed up a lot of o-linemen because it messed up their timing,” Jordan said.
Zach Allen (99) of the Denver Broncos tackles Zach Charbonnet (26) of the Seattle Seahawks for a safety during the second quarter at Lumen Field in Seattle, Washington on Sunday, Sept. 8, 2024. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
Zach Allen (99) of the Denver Broncos tackles Zach Charbonnet (26) of the Seattle Seahawks for a safety during the second quarter at Lumen Field in Seattle, Washington on Sunday, Sept. 8, 2024. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
Allen deployed the reverse stance more some weeks than others, depending on the matchup and what he, Jordan and defensive line coach Jamar Cain thought would work best.
He went to it right away Week 1 at Seattle. He tormented Las Vegas rookie Jackson Powers-Johnson with it in Week 5. He seamlessly moved between normal and reverse in the most dominant game of his career — a 3.5-sack masterclass at Cincinnati in late December.
The proliferation is striking. In 2023, he almost exclusively used his normal stance and sprinkled in two out of 64 pressures out of a four-point stance, according to charting done by The Post.
Last year, he generated 31 pressures with a normal stance, 16 from a four-point and 19 using the reverse.
Then the season ended abruptly in Buffalo, and Allen got to work figuring out how to combat the inevitable adjustments to come from offenses.
‘Put your ego aside’
Allen doesn’t play much golf.
Without a true offseason pastime, his mind returns to football.
“If you do the workouts right and everything like that, then the rest of the day you’re gassed,” he said. “So for me, when I’m home, I’m just chilling on the couch watching guys around the league or watching myself. Probably end of February or beginning of March was when I did some serious self-scouting.”
Allen and Jordan watched all 911 snaps he played in 2024. They saw his dominant start, with a nearly 15% pressure rate over the first six games. Then a mid-season lull. Then a surge down the stretch.
“You’re always finding new ways of thinking about ‘why did this work? Why didn’t this work? Toward the back half of the year, this was really working clean, but in the middle, what was not working?’” Allen said. “You’re getting more double-teams; figure out how to beat those. Add a new tool to your repertoire.”
That’s when the plan for 2025 started coming together. As Jordan explained, a year like Allen’s 2024 puts the league on notice.
“So we tried to get ahead of the curve and tried to figure out how guys are going to try to reset him and stop what he does,” Jordan said.
The Broncos interior defensive linemen benefit by having top-shelf competition to work against in practice. Denver right guard Quinn Meinerz is a newly minted All-Pro and left guard Ben Powers is a long-time veteran who, though soft-spoken, is a thinking man’s mauler.
Iron sharpening iron is one of sports’ most overused cliches, but the Broncos’ interior lines benefit from each other largely for one reason beyond the talent level: They’re not trying to use the practice script or familiarity with the guy across the line of scrimmage to win a rep.
“You’ve got to, I guess the right term is, put your ego aside,” Allen said. “You can’t just go for the win every single day. You have to think about, ‘Hey, I want to set this up with this, work a progression.’”
They get after each other, then reconvene.
“We’re out there battling,” Meinerz said. “And then when we’re done it’s, ‘Hey, why’d you do this? Why’d you do that?’ We’re bouncing ideas off each other.”
The payday
Allen tried and tried, poked and prodded, but could not find a way past Quenton Nelson.
In Week 15, coming off the bye and with the playoffs in sight, the Broncos defensive tackle struggled to solve Indianapolis’ three-time first-team All-Pro guard.
He tried speed to the outside, but Nelson smoothly covered him off. He tried to bull-rush, but Nelson anchored down.
“The first couple quarters, stuff that had been working against everybody in the league, I was like, ‘Oh my god, it’s not working,’ ” Allen said. “I had to go find a changeup.”
He searched for clues on a sideline iPad, thought through his repertoire and started going deeper into his mix.
Over the course of the game, Allen started gaining traction.
Particularly impressive: A rush in which Allen swiped inside with both hands only to watch Nelson recover. Then Allen flipped around and swiped outside in a flash, finally causing Nelson to stumble.
“Obviously, he’s good as they come and it was a really cool chess match,” Allen said.
The Broncos, of course, won 31-13, and Allen and Nelson found each other after it ended.
“We both kind of acknowledged, like, you were an MFer for me and I was an MFer for you,” Allen said.
Zach Allen (99) of the Denver Broncos kneels after sacking Joe Burrow (9) of the Cincinnati Bengals during the overtime period of the Bengals' 30-24 win at Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio on Saturday, Dec. 28, 2024. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
Zach Allen (99) of the Denver Broncos kneels after sacking Joe Burrow (9) of the Cincinnati Bengals during the overtime period of the Bengals’ 30-24 win at Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio on Saturday, Dec. 28, 2024. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
Consistently winning when it counts is what Allen is after this year. The same way that Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes always seems to have some late-game magic, the very best defensive players can find a play when the chips are all pushed to the middle of the table.
Perhaps the most famous example from an interior defensive lineman: Aaron Donald’s fourth-down, Super Bowl-sealing sack in February 2022 for the Los Angeles Rams.
“Every play you want to win, ideally,” Allen said. “But in big games and at certain moments, it’s like, ‘We need a play now.’ You’ve got to have the thought process of how to set up for that moment. …
“It’s easy to say, ‘Hey, we need it now, so go get it.’ But it does take special, not just physical but also mental traits to be able to get that done.”
Allen’s now paid like one of those players. The $102 million extension he signed Aug. 2 makes him the third-highest-paid interior defensive player in football.
“Zach obviously makes this thing go up front,” general manager George Paton said recently. “… Really good on the field, even better off the field. Obviously, it was a priority to get Zach done. We feel good that he’s going to be here hopefully for the rest of his career.”
The night before the deal was finalized, he called Jordan to tell him. And he had a request: He wanted to get to the facility early the next morning.
“When he got the call that the deal was done, we were in there watching film. It was like 7 a.m. watching tape,” Jordan said. “He got the call, said it’s done, he hung up the phone, and we were right back to watching tape. That was really fun.
“The money is good for him, but he really only cares about being great.”
Later that morning during practice, Allen mostly watched until he got summoned into the facility to sign paperwork.
A few minutes later, he jogged out, grabbed his helmet and went through a quick warmup with Jordan along the sideline.
When he got back onto the field, he almost immediately stoned Meinerz with one extended arm and lassoed rookie running back RJ Harvey with the other.
No time to waste in the quest to find the keys to the next level.
“I know I can do it. I’ve proven I can do it,” Allen said. “Now it’s like talking through the plan and having a plan for everything. We’re not going out there and throwing (stuff) against the wall to see what sticks.
“There’s a deliberate plan to every single step, every single hand motion, why we do everything and how we can get better at it.”
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