It's time to talk that talk, and we talk it like no one else. This is the stinking truth. Now, here's your host, Mark Schler. Hey guys, welcome into the Stinkin' Truth podcast. Alongside Mike Evans, I am Mark Schlereth. And today, it's a Broncos exclusive. A Broncos breakdown right here on YouTube at the Stinkin' Truth. Anywhere you get your podcasts, whether it's Apple or Spotify. And you can always listen to us on the Odyssey Radio Network. Mike, how are you, buddy? I'm great. This is awesome. I'm so glad we're doing this. This is right in our wheelhouse because we get to talk about Broncos every day. And now with training camp back, we're into the storylines of the season. And a couple that jump out at me right away. You can tell when you listen to the players what Sean Payton's message is to them behind closed doors.
And it seems to me what I'm hearing right off the bat from guys like Quinn Miners, Patrick Sertan, is the idea that they got to be careful how many close games they play in. That they played in 15 games last year where they trailed at one point. They were 11-2 during the regular season in one score games, 12-3 if you add the playoffs. And the idea being that, hey, we're tempting fate a little bit with the law of averages if we think we're going to play and win that many close games again this year. So the idea is, hey, don't play so many close games. Let's try to win more blowouts. Let's try to win more comfortably.
Do you believe that they have to do whatever it takes to avoid playing so many close games? Do you think that the Denver Broncos last year during the regular season, when they were 11 and two in one score games, when they trailed 15 different times, do you ever think they approached it and said, you know what, guys, we probably shouldn't play in so many one score games. You know what, guys, we should score more. You know what, guys, we can't lead the league in three and outs. You know what, guys, we're probably important to start faster. Like I've never been in a meeting room and I've been in a lot of meeting rooms where that coach said, you know, we're going to do this week, guys, new strategy.
We're going to lull them to sleep. Let's start slow. Let's come to that gate slow. Let's start with a couple three and outs, lull these guys to sleep, and then we're going to hit them over the head. They'll never see it coming. Nobody says that. So, yeah, of course you've got to start faster. Yeah, of course you've got to score more. Yeah, you don't want to play in a lot of one-score games. The reality of the National Football League is you play a ton of one-score games. Everybody's good. That's the reality of the league. And now because you went 14-3, because you were the number one seed in the AFC, because you did win the AFC West, you're playing a first-place schedule.
So the odds are you're going to play in a lot of one score games. How can you become more efficient? How do you not fall behind in games? Like what is tangible? What's a tangible or realistic goal, Mike, to say, well, we've got to improve upon this. And for me, it becomes efficiency, right? People always talk about converting third downs. You know how you convert third downs? By being great on first down.
Right. You're great on first down. The odds are you're going to complete or you're going to you're going to convert a lot more third downs. So how do we run the ball more effectively? How do we set up off our run game, our play action? How do we create explosives? Now, the Broncos have got a new play caller in Davis Webb. And I've talked about on this program before, sat with Davis or stood with Davis Webb on the football field and say, hey, man, I want to pair some things down. I want to have some core value plays that we're going to run that we can build our play action off of to tie those things together. Like the biggest.
I think that the guys who do the greatest job as coordinators do a phenomenal job of understanding the run game. Right. Having those core value plays in the run game and tying their passing game along with that so that you can take one formation or one concept. Right. And make it look like 14 different things to the defense. So for me, this is how you create offensive efficiency. So think about this, Mike. If we have a run play, let's call it 18 handoff. Right.
18 handoff sift. So we're going to do split flow action. And that sifter can be a tight end. It can be a fullback. We can be in strong, right? And that sifter comes back from the fullback position or it can be a tight end in wing, right? And he comes back. And so when you think about.
a run play like that. And let's say you're going to run 18 handoff, depending on success rate, you know, six to nine games during the course of, or six to nine times during the course of the game. But now let's say that sifter who's starting on the right side and coming back across the formation. One play, he's blocking the defensive end. Okay. So the tackle and the guard on that side are working in combination. Next play, the tackle stays man on that defensive end and he sifts through and he's got the weak side linebacker. The next play, he's working in combination with the guard to the weak side linebacker. Next play, he's coming up and he's taking the mic. And so for nine people,
on that particular play, we're going to run it, let's call it, six times. It's the exact same play every time. Two guys are adjusting the entry point. But for the defense, it starts looking like six different plays. And then we build a play action off of that that's identical. I think the great, like the really great coordinators, Mike, do a great job of essentially getting in formations.
and getting in personnel groupings that they know the defense is going to play a certain defense to it. So, hey, man, I want to make this defense structurally play in a single high defensive formation, right? One safety in the middle of the football field, because now I know I'm going to get access throws to the outside. I'm going to get one on one to the outside. And I like that matchup. My guy against their guy in a one on one matchup. And they do a phenomenal job of that, of creating always or never.
They're always in this or they're never in this. And how do we structure our offense to take advantage of those situations? And that really what that to me, the efficiency with which you play, especially on first down and the way you create explosive plays based upon getting them to play exactly what you want them to play. That's what the great coordinators do. And we'll see if Davis Webb becomes a great coordinator for the Denver Broncos.
Yeah. And, you know, putting a bow on the conversation about trying to avoid playing in so many close games. So you laid out perfectly what the offense can do more to create maybe a little bit more more space about the defense. I keep coming back to. They only forced 14 turnovers last year for as good as this defense was for as much pressure as they put on the quarterback. They only forced 14 fumbles or interceptions. Let's say you let's say you improve to 24 or 26 and you get 10 or 12 more turnovers. Think about what those turnovers might look like. You might get a strip sack fumble and you recover the ball at the opposing team's 30 or you get a tip ball interception that you return to the 10. You know, then you're setting up your offense in real favorable positions to score more points and to be able to win.
create a little bit more breathing space. Right. And if you have that breathing space and you do that, right, you're instant points because you're in that scoring section of the field. You're all automatically in the red zone or close to it. And you score more points. You put more pressure on the opponent. Remember, last year, the Denver Broncos led the league in sacks with 68. They are chasing the Chicago Bears in 1985 that had, I think the record is 72 sacks, right? And they did that in spite of their offense, which struggled early in the season, which through three quarters of the season were leading the league in three and outs. Like, and they still were able to do that. I go back to something that Vaughn Miller told me. This is years ago.
when Vaughn Miller was setting a Broncos single season sack record at 18 and a half. And I'd never heard anybody say this to me before. He goes, oh, I don't sack the quarterback. I sack the ball. I don't care about hitting the quarterback.
I care about hitting the ball. Now, I play defense in college. Tom Brady might disagree with that premise, by the way. But I played defense in college, man. And, you know, I was a nose guard in DN and stuff. And when I got a chance to hit the quarterback, I didn't even think about it. I mean, I was trying to take the guy's head off. Different time, different rules, all that kind of stuff. But when you start thinking that way about creating those turnovers, you think about the pressure that the Broncos put on an opposing offense. And you think of all the different guys.
Like it's a feeding frenzy. It's like chum in the water and sharks. You've got defensive backs getting sacks. You've got safeties getting sacks. You've got linebackers getting sacks. You've got the defensive line getting sacks. They are they are feasting. And Vance Joseph does a great job of bringing pressure on an offense based on formations, based on, you know, based on where they are on the field, based on first and 10, second down and like all the different things. And so they do a great job of getting multiple guys involved in sacking the quarterback. Listen, I cannot believe that the Broncos won't take that number of 14.
and double it this year, especially if they become a little bit better on the offensive side of the ball. Well, and here's why I think this is important. And you talk about the things that this defense, which has been really, really good the last couple of years, and you think about what they can do differently. So. Let me throw some numbers at you. Tell me, all right, maybe these are just numbers and then the numbers can lie. But last two years, the Broncos have given up 18 points per game. They've been number three in scoring defense the last two years. Good numbers, right? However, coming down the stretch, tail end of the season, has there been some leakage with the defense? Has it tailed off a little bit? 2024, their last five games of the season, they gave up 32 in a game to Cleveland, 34 to the Chargers, 30 to Cincinnati, and then 31 in the playoffs to Buffalo. Last year, again, number three in scoring defense, 18 points per game. But over the last six games of the regular season, 26 against Washington, 26 against Green Bay.
34 and a loss to Jacksonville. And then in the playoffs again against Buffalo, another 30. Are you concerned at all that for all the great things that this defense has done the last two years, that they still have to answer the question of why do you tail off a little bit at the end of the season? Yeah, I mean, that's easy for me because offensively you haven't like the nature of football. And, you know, people roll their eyes about this, but complimentary football is 100 percent true. And I'll go back to something that Herm Edwards told me. Great coach. And he was a great defensive coach back in. You played win the game? No, something else he told me that I thought was really interesting statistically.
They did a whole breakdown. He was a DB coach for Tony Dungy, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had this great, great defense back in the day. And he was like, listen, man, our cutoff point as a defense was 60, I think it was 63 plays. And after 63 plays, our yard per play average goes up like almost, it was some dramatic number, like almost three or four yards per play more. So playing defense just takes a lot more.
It's harder than playing offense. It just is. I mean, you got to react. You got to fly around. You got like when we run the ball and the ball breaks out, I just stop as an offensive lineman and watch.
I hope he goes for a touchdown, right? Defense, you got to chase it. Otherwise you get ridiculed on film and everything else, but you don't have to on offense. So it's just tougher. You know where you're going on offense. You don't, you got to react on defense. It's harder to play defense, right? And so the number was after a certain number of plays, I think it was 63. We start giving up instead of four yards per play. We're getting up seven, seven and a half yards per play because guys just wear out. And I think with the Denver Broncos, their lack of offensive production, especially early in games and early in the season, lends itself to attrition on the defensive side of the ball. So if you fix offensively, what has,
Just ailed them. The slow starts, the three and outs, all the things that they haven't done well, not converting the deep ball early. Like if you fix those things and become more efficient offensively, I don't think those end of the season woes will affect this defense like it has over the last two seasons. And, you know, to your point, the complimentary nature to me, it's not it's not even like, well, they got to score more. Of course, you got to have more drives where you end points. It's these three and outs to kill you.
It's these three and outs. And if you could just avoid so many three and outs, I mean, you can still pump the ball away. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. But, you know, stay on the field a little bit longer. Have a six, have a seven play drive. Maybe it sputters out, but at least you're not putting that constant wear and tear on your defense. One of the things I get all the time, and I got it from you, and I was like, I'm surprised you asked me this question. Like, have you not learned anything with me or from me over the last 10 years? Because you asked me, why don't we just get an uptempo all the time? Why don't we just run two minutes? Because the Broncos have been really good in two minutes. And I was like, Mike.
Have you got that? You've learned nothing. Like what? I actually have listened. I do know the answer. Right. But, you know, a lot of people bring that up. Well, I was brought up with Davis Webb taking over. Right. He bring this. This will you bring up tempo and up tempo is great in.
in situations, right? Sometimes it's great just to get an up-tempo. Like, hey, once we get our first first down, we're going to lock them in a personnel grouping and we're going to keep this up-tempo pace going for, let's call it four or five plays, whatever it is, right? And I think that's great. Oftentimes, where up-tempo is successful is when the defense is basically playing what we call sticks, right? They're giving you the underneath throws. They're trading yardage.
for time on the clock. So they're playing on the sideline. They're funneling everything in. They're making sure you can't get out of bounds. They're letting you complete the ball. And you go down as an offense, you know, right down the field. And all of a sudden you make it a one score game because you kick a field goal or you score a touchdown. But essentially, if you get the ball back, you get it back with 12 seconds, you know, that type of thing. And so the defense is saying, we'll give up a score here as long as we can rip off, you know, a minute 12 on the clock. And so.
there's this false sense of security of why uptempo is successful. The issue with uptempo is if you do go three and out, you have an incomplete pass, the clock stops. You do go three and out, and the next thing you know, you've used 28 seconds, and now your defense has to roll back out there. So again, it goes back to the complimentary football conversation we're having. Yeah, but while I may have listened to you over the years, and I did hear what you said, it's not going to stop me from pushing back on you, because we see this all the time. Coaches are more concerned about what could go wrong rather than what could go right. And instead of saying, hey, maybe by going uptempo or no huddle here,
We catch the defense off guard or we take advantage of this or that. They worry about, well, if we go three and out, what will it mean for our defense? Yeah. Well, hey, OK, maybe if the Broncos go up tempo and they go three and out, they'll have to drive over in 34 seconds. How much worse is that from all those three outs we saw last year when they'd be three and out in maybe a minute 12? Is it that big of a difference? I'd say it's worth to try to do some of these things at times. At times I completely agree with you, but you can't live. And I'll go back to I'll go back to when Chip Kelly took over, was going to revolutionize football when he was coaching the Philadelphia Eagles. Right.
And they're going to go up tempo the whole time. They're going to throw the ball and do all those things. And I did a breakdown of a four game, like a four game sample of the number of plays the defense had to play. And if an average game is about 65 plays, they were averaging something like 80 something. Right. And so for every four games that the Philadelphia Eagles played, their defense played five games. So in a 16 game schedule at the time, their defense played 20 games.
In the battle of attrition, you cannot do that on the defensive side. And it's not college football. You don't have 85 guys, right? I mean, you don't. You have limited rosters. And so those are the things that will end up just costing you in the long run. There is a place for it. I think it's valuable. I think having up-tempo is great at times. But there also is that aspect of let's just get big. Let's be physical. Let's wear this team out. Let's beat them up in the run game. All those things. So there is that fine balance that you have to strike. And I think that's very important.
Well, to your point about being physical and controlling the line of scrimmage, you can do that with a really good running game. And there's a lot of optimism that, hey, boy, if J.K., we've seen enough now of J.K. Dobbins that if if if the monster of all ifs, but if he can stay healthy, what this guy would mean to the offense. Quinn Miners the other day was talking about the idea of how happy as an offensive line they are to have J.K. Dobbins back. Here's my question to you, because I think there's two schools of thought when it comes to how to use J.K. Dobbins. OK, do you do you.
Be aware of his injury history. And do you do you take it easy with him? Do you stretch out J.K. Dobbins usage so that you increase the odds that he can be healthy by the end of the season? And oh, by the way, you get the added benefit early on of giving R.J. Harvey more looks, giving Jonah Coleman more looks while keeping J.K. Dobbins' workload down. The other school of thought being, hey, it's J.K. Dobbins. He's going to get hurt at some point. It's inevitable. You might as well ride him as hard as you can, as often as you can, right from the start of the season. How do you look at it? Yeah, I think that J.K. Dobbins last year averaged about 16 carries per game. He's got to be in that realm.
and you just got to hope for the best. There's no question. I think there's a couple of interesting things about J.K. Dobbins. Like, J.K. Dobbins is not a good running back. He's a great running back. He really is. But he just has not been able to ever stay healthy over the course of his career. But you got to give him those opportunities. Now, here's the interesting thing. This is what's going to change about this offense.
When you look at a Sean Payton called offense, and we did this several times last year, we'll do more of this on the podcast, right? We do a thing we call Telestrator Tuesday where I'll take pieces of the game based on the coach's film and I'll break down these telestrators, you know, like I'll break down the coach's film on certain things. And one of the things that drove me crazy last year was in any given game, you would look at consistently about eight or nine different. run plays that they would run, right? Concepts that they would run. And so instead of saying, hey man, we're going to run four things with one kind of adjunct play to it that every week that's going to be a scheme play, right? Hey, this team has really struggled against inside trap. We're going to put it in today and we're going to put a play action in on it and we'll run it twice.
Right. We'll run the inside trap twice just so we can run the play action once and that'll be it. And then we'll just live in what we do. So Davis Webb had told me, man, I'm going to I'm going to pare this down to our four or five core base runs. So now all of a sudden that 16, like those 16 reps, if you're running the same kind of play on a consistent basis, as opposed to running, you know, nine different runs. Right. You're going to have a little bit more of the same run over and over, which to me.
allows you to get that feel as an offensive line as a run. You go back to the sideline and say, hey, man, they're really like they're really pinching. They're really pirate stunting on this. So I'm going to run this a little bit tighter, you know, take away that inside. But make sure you press, make sure you press that hole because they're pirating and there's going to be a seam in there. So you have those conversations on the sideline. So instead of instead of only, you know, instead of taking four or five and then you're on to the next concept. Now we can start having more success earlier in games. Help me out with this one, because for all the.
debate and scrutiny over Sean Payton's offense and the way he calls plays. He's been doing this a long time with a lot of success. So can you explain to all of us why he believes in such a varied run menu. Right. I mean, what does he see the advantages being that maybe we just don't see, don't understand? What he sees is, and I think you talk to anybody who coached for Sean Payton and they'll say, like, I've talked to Dan Campbell about this. I've talked to other coaches about this. He's brilliant when it comes to personnel groupings and formations and just personnel grouping and formation you to death to where he creates, yeah, where he creates, you know, opportunities, right?
Basically saying, hey, man, we're going to line up in this, this, this and this. And you're going to adjust. And eventually somebody's going to be out of their gap. And we're going to pop one. Right. Right. And my philosophy in the places that I played in Washington and Denver, where we're going to be such experts at running this, that we're going to wear you down. And we're just always going to be right. And you're going to be wrong. And so I think that's the difference in philosophy. And J.K. Dobbins is one of those. I will tell you, I will tell you this just about running backs in general. Like if J.K. Dobbins does have the misfortune of getting hurt again, I don't think R.J. Harvey becomes a number two back. I think he's a number two back with J.K. Dobbins healthy.
He'll be the change of pace guy. He's the guy who'll catch the ball out of the back. They'll do all that. But if J.K. Dobbins were to get hurt, Mike, I believe Jonah Coleman comes in and becomes the number one back. And the problem with guys that have extreme athleticism and can get outside and do that in college guys that have speed is most of them always err on the side of let me break one. And I think the value of the running back position in the NFL is the guy who understands first opportunity, first daylight. Let me get downhill and let me keep us on schedule for your game.
those guys survive and thrive in the national football league. The guys that go, Oh, I can bounce in here and maybe get three or four, but if I bounce out, maybe I'll get 12, maybe I'll break one. And then all of a sudden you're in second down and 11 and everybody looks at you like a dumb ass. Right. And that was RJ Harvey his first year. There's too many of those negative runs, too many of those. Let me bounce it outside and see if I can take this three yard gain and make it a 13 yard gain. And that, I mean, that automatically stops drives. And so can you learn that? Can you learn that skill? If you're RJ Harvey, I come back here too and be a much better inside runner. It's.
For me, it's, can you get better at it? Absolutely. But it's not easy. And for me, it's very much like the quarterback that's always been able to rely on athleticism to get himself out of trouble. Right? Those guys don't survive long. I want my quarterback, the default mechanism of my quarterback, I want it to be from the neck up. Meaning, I'm going to throw this ball away or like, I don't want it to be, let me run around and go make a play. And so, I mean, that's nice to have that ability. But from a longevity standpoint and keeping the offense on schedule from here up is the important part. And the running back, like when you've always been able to rely on athleticism to get you out of trouble.
In the NFL, that's not what gets you out of trouble most of the time. It gets you in more trouble. What gets you out of trouble is saying, man, put my foot in the ground. Let me go get a positive two and a half. Let me go keep us on schedule. Keep us on schedule. Keep us on schedule. And that's what RJ Harvey needs to learn to do. Can he do it? I don't know. I would assume he'll get better at it. But that's where I would say Jonah Coleman's a 4-6-5 guy. Like you watch him in college. And he was like, first opportunity to put my foot in the ground because I'm not running to the edge. I'm not beating people to the edge. I'm going to put my foot down at 5-8-2-25 or whatever he is. And I'm just going to run over people. Well, you can just imagine how much better the Broncos run game will look this year.
If J.K. Dobbins can stay healthy. Oh, my God. It's going to be. Just give me good health because we know the rest will follow. Yeah. Just give me good health. That's all. That's all you truly need. And I think I think the other thing, like if you're a Broncos fan and obviously you are, if you're listening to this, I think the big thing to me is small up, simple down. I think that's going to help this Broncos offense tremendously under Davis Webb. We'll see. But camp kicks off full time on Friday and we'll be out there this Friday and we'll give you a whole rundown during the course of training camp and let you guys know exactly what's going on. Kind of give you the play by play, the whole nine yards.
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