ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — For roughly six minutes Thursday night, Denver Broncos coach Sean Payton looked like he was ready to use the run game to grind past the Los Angeles Chargers.
The Broncos called runs on seven of the 10 plays on their opening drive at SoFi Stadium. Those seven rushes accounted for 43 of the 72 yards on the march. It was culminated by a 3-yard touchdown run by rookie Audric Estime and provided the kind of muscle-up pace Payton has said he has been searching for from the Broncos’ rushing attack.
“The first drive is the rhythm we wanted, the tempo we wanted,” Payton said.
But the dedication to the run was gone quickly, repeating a season-long pattern. The Broncos ran the ball only 14 times after that opening drive, including just eight times in the second half. This came on a night when the Amazon Prime broadcast had zeroed in on the hand-written “Run It!,” jotted in block letters across the top of Payton’s play sheet.
The Broncos eventually squandered an 11-point lead in a 34-27 loss that prevented them from clinching their first playoff spot since the 2015 season (when they won Super Bowl 50). It also dropped the 9-6 Broncos to the No. 7 spot in the AFC playoff standings behind the 9-6 Chargers, who hold the head-to-head tiebreaker with Denver.
With two games remaining to snag a postseason spot — Saturday at the Cincinnati Bengals and the regular-season finale against the Kansas City Chiefs on Jan. 5 — Payton is still searching for a way to consistently incorporate the run game he regularly says the Broncos need to have.
“I don’t like the fact the network TV cameras feel like they can zoom into our call sheets, but it is what it is,” Payton said. “I thought we ran real well early in the game. … Second half, there were two series I kind of kick myself … we had ample opportunities in that second half.”
The oddity of games like Thursday night, when Payton seems to shut off the run-game tap, is that the Broncos are 13th in the league in run plays of 10 or more yards. But they haven’t had 30 running plays in a game since their Week 9 loss to Baltimore, averaging 24.2 running plays per game since then. They had a running back exceed nine carries just once in the past five games — Jaleel McLaughlin had 14 carries for 84 yards in Week 13.
Payton has often said a good run game is one of a quarterback’s best “allies,” especially with a young signal-caller like rookie Bo Nix. But the coach has admitted to not finding an effective way to use the three running backs in the lineup with enough rhythm, carries and production.
“There are guys when the game ends, I’m like, ‘I have to get him more touches,'” Payton said. “That’s a challenge. I think there’s certainly a pitch count for all those guys. I’ve said this before: Two is easy, three — it’s just hard to feed three.”
The three backs in the rotation have mostly been Javonte Williams, McLaughlin and Estime. Despite leading the Broncos with nine carries for 48 yards, Estime only played 13 snaps on Thursday. Williams played the most snaps against the Chargers (33), which is normal due to his reliability as a pass protector. He ran four times for 24 yards and caught seven passes for 29 more.
McLaughlin did not play Thursday night due to a thigh injury, so the Broncos inserted undrafted rookie Blake Watson, who got 10 snaps and four carries in his first game action after being elevated from the practice squad. Receiver Marvin Mims Jr. also lined up in the backfield on six snaps against the Chargers and has 35 backfield snaps this season.
“They played really well in the first half, gave us a spark, especially on the first drive,” Nix said of Estime and Watson. “They both had a few good runs, and it’s just good to see those guys.”
The Broncos’ most common personnel group is shotgun with three wide receivers, which they line up in on 64.9% of their offensive plays. That means more time for Williams, who has played 55% of the Broncos’ offensive snaps this season. But the fourth-year back has averaged one yard less per rush (3.6) than Estime en route to 485 yards and four touchdowns on 134 carries. Williams has had eight games this season when he’s averaged fewer than three yards per carry, including two in which he’s averaged less than one yard per rush.
Payton said last week he didn’t think his decision to increase their percentage of shotgun plays — the Broncos have lined up in shotgun on 70% of their plays the past four games, including 71.4% on Thursday — had impacted Denver’s ability to run the ball. But with two games left in the regular season, the Broncos are still searching for a consistent commitment to their ground attack.
“I think it’s all of us,” Mims said. “We started out hot [Thursday], and didn’t keep it going. We’ve got to do better — we got in some long third downs, didn’t execute. As a group, we’ve got to do better. … When you have a fast start, you have to carry it the rest of the game.”
