Watch the Denver Broncos (6-5) as they look to extend their five-game winning streak on the road against CJ Stroud's Houston Texans (6-5) live on Sky Sports NFL this Sunday, with coverage from 5pm ahead of kickoff at 6pm.
Thursday 30 November 2023 18:08, UK
The Denver Broncos know one or two things about great pass rushers. Future Hall of Famers have come and conquered, sacks have amassed in their hundreds. So who is getting to the quarterback for the next decade in Mile High?
Bradley Chubb had once been deemed the long-term supplier of game-wreckage, but fell short of the sustenance to which a standout rookie year might have pointed. Baron Browning have also flirted with lead candidacy. With his own chic 'made you look' ghost move off the edge, the third-year Broncos edge has cornerstone potential in his own right.
The Broncos team that shipped 70 points in a historic humiliation against the Miami Dolphins and started 1-5 have won five straight entering Sunday's clash with the Houston Texans - beating the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs that toppled Miami in Frankfurt and the Buffalo Bills side that routed Mike McDaniel's squad in Week Four. Welcome to the nonsensical 2023 NFL season.
Denver's unbeaten run has happened to coincide with the return of Browning, who made his season debut in Week Seven's victory over the Green Bay Packers having spent the first month on the Physically Unable to Perform list amid his recovery from knee surgery to repair a partially torn meniscus.
Has Browning been the chief reason for the NFL's most 'huh?!' turnaround? No. In fact, that crown goes to a league-high 22 takeaways including 15 in their last four outings. But the 2021 third-round pick has lifted the speed-to-ball a notch or two as the balance-providing bookend and time-to-throw dwindler to Vance Joseph's defense.
Since his return to the fold Browning has three sacks and two forced fumbles in five games while resurfacing his own Patches O'Houlihan-style five 'Bs' of balance, bend, bludgeon… bob and, erm, bend. With the departure of veterans Randy Gregory and Frank Clark has come a look at youthful foundations for Denver's pass rush, fronted by Browning, 2022 second-round pick Nik Bonitto (seven sacks) and 2021 seventh-rounder Jonathan Cooper (5.5 sacks). The defense as a whole has played with more fizz, more purpose, more bustle. Browning has helped set that tone.
He represents something of a beacon for the NFL's slighter-framed edgemen, sitting in the realm of 240lb pass rushers with the Haason Reddicks and Micah Parsons' of football. His path carries similarities to that of a Parsons, minus the absurd production or the elite status (yet), in that Browning had started his career at inside linebacker from his time at Ohio State - where he had played on the outside in his senior year - before transitioning full-time to the edge on the guidance of former Broncos defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero.
Joseph still occasionally taps into his off-ball roots by retreating him into coverage from simulated pressure concepts, having also lined him up in the slot against David Njoku in Sunday's win over the Cleveland Browns. Browning posted 58 tackles on the inside during his rookie year, but Evero's vision might have given Denver a next stalwart disruptor in the backfield. As much was hinted at last year when he posted five sacks in 14 games before his season stalled due to injury, with such setbacks having denied him rhythm so far in his young career.
Both Browning and Cooper had to contend with the two Bosa brothers Nick and Joey as well as San Francisco 49ers edge rusher Chase Young during their time at Ohio State. How Denver would take enormous satisfaction had they unveiled at least one talisman for the foreseeable.
The sell is the elasticity to dip off the edge having exploded out of his first step to dictate a wide-set rush with trust in his ability to flip his hips, turn the corner and scoot inside in a flash. It is the speed-to-power transition, and the first-step burst, and the maintenance of balance and leverage while arching his knees to slalom around offensive linemen without being displaced that has fuelled such lofty expectations of Denver's backfield thorn.
"Having Baron back is huge for us," said Joseph earlier this month. He's a talent. He's still growing as an outside linebacker. The talent is there, the mindset is there, and the power is there."
Denver have sought to exploit his flexibility and the lateral glide to drift across the line of scrimmage by setting up in wide alignments with gaping bubbles in which Browning and Bonitto can slide and punch. At the same time Browning's speed to skate tackles wide as a 5-tech plays into Joseph's ability to use Double A Gap mug pressures whereby he can step his linebackers to the line of scrimmage, one or both of which might then retreat at the snap or gobble on the advancing quarterback squeezed up by converging edges.
Browning's familiarity with multiple roles has played into Joseph's desire to line up in multiple fronts, which includes sending three outside linebackers in addition to a heavier down lineman, two inside linebackers and five defensive backs.
In a chapter of horizontal offense where teams are teeing up the pass with outside zone run concepts and pre-snap shifts, Browning provides an answer with the play identification, the smart gap discipline and the slick hands to shrug off engagement and kick outside to shadow ball carriers.
Among his flashpoints since returning was a strip-sack in Denver's win over the Chiefs, Browning using his long reach to plunge a straight-arm stab move into the chest of Donovan and using it to control the distancing of engagement boxer-style while rotating his body and bulldozing the left tackle into the pocket. Eventually he relinquishes the distance in order to unbalance Smith and use his free hand to swim around the outside before catching Patrick Mahomes from behind.
The one-armed stab has become a familiar trait to Browning's game, coupled with the short fleet-footed hop-steps that allow him to switch direction quickly and the Euro-step-into-spin move as a means of darting inside.
In the same game he demonstrated his play diagnosis by derailing an Andy Reid special when he refused to be fooled by Mahomes' fake jet-sweep handoff and instead stood his ground to bat down a shovel pass attempt in the red zone. Joseph later dialled up a Double A-gap linebacker stunt in which Alex Singleton and Josey Jewell switched assignments on the inside to create center-guard traffic before pressuring Mahomes after he had been forced to step up by a pocket partially-collapsed by Browning.
Browning accompanying Bonitto and/or Cooper either side of DJ Jones has heightened Joseph's license to chop-and-change the feature rusher to 3-4 under looks whereby one of his edge rushers is granted a one-on-one matchup by the double teams on the opposite side of the offensive line. That was evidenced in the plan against Browns quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson, Joseph laying traps for the rookie with under fronts from which his edge rushers would crash inside with the one-on-one matchup's progress squeezing him out of the pocket and into the path of a linebacker spy.
The numbers are modest, nor is his impact solely defining to the Broncos turnaround, which for its reliance on turnovers remains a bit of an anomaly, but Browning - while being eased back into a steady proportion of snaps - has raised the levels of physicality and direction within a defense that has elevated from catastrophic back to level-par.
He is one of the standard-bearers to a unit that has started to shirk its early-season amateurism. Denver are now ranked seventh in EPA/play since Week Seven, before which they sat in last place. They have also, though, risen from just 31st to 24th in that time period.
Things have improved, even if the gains have been marginal. But what the Broncos will take encouragement from as much as anything is what might have been had Browning been fit to play from the start, and what could yet come to be of a modernised pass rusher capable of weaponising four-man fronts with stunts and slides.
It has been a back-to-basics job for the Broncos, whose approach on offense has leaned on Russell Wilson checking the ball down, utilising a quick game, shorts air yards per attempt and feeding off a tempo-controlling run game until he is granted the green light to pursue the occasional splash play downfield. Sean Payton has simplified an offense mending its broken self from last season, partially restoring the kind of anti-'Let Russ Cook' philosophy that aided some of his better years in Seattle as he benefited from a more balanced scheme.
Wilson has not thrown an interception for five successive games, and at times has looked like the Wilson the league once knew with the mobility to roll away from pressure and make off-platform throws. The Broncos are meanwhile coming off their best rushing performance of the season in Sunday's win over the Cleveland Browns, during which Myles Garrett was denied a sack for just the third game this year.
It was the latest reflection of a 'start inside and work out' retool of sorts, whereby an offensive line trending towards the league's most productive is being supported by a defensive core of Browning, Bonitto, Simmons and Patrick Surtain II, not to mention the emergence of 2022 undrafted cornerback Ja'Quan McMillian with his two interceptions and two fumble recoveries in four games.
Granted, the Broncos remain 16th in EPA/play and 17th in success rate, having been 16th and 16th across their 1-5 start, respectively. They are also just 12th in EPA/play on offense and 24th in success rate across the league's longest active winning run. But somehow here they are, firmly in the AFC playoff hunt at 6-5.
Payton has tightened the reins and restored some control to a spiralling team, while Joseph is earning his flowers as the string-puller to a defensive revival in which Browning is starring as a potential long-term face. He is fast, ferocious, athletic and a shrewd football mind whose pursuit of his own potential is one of the more intriguing storylines in Denver over the coming years.
