Everything the Denver Broncos have worked for is now in front of them. They have conquered the regular season and have the best possible position heading into the NFL postseason.
Denver, CO
3 No Bull Offensive Keys
Now that we’ve got some separation from the regular season and a week without Broncos football being played, I’m ruminating on what the Broncos are going to do on the field in the playoffs.
One of the big things I love about cheering for this team today is just how dynamic and cunning the coaching staff is on both sides of the ball. Sean Payton is the real deal, both as a head coach first and foremost and as an offensive coordinator. He’s constantly shifting the team’s game plan to match opponents, keep them off balance, and take advantage of weaknesses that show up on film.
As a guy who loves to play armchair coach during the season a bit, I’m going to share some ideas I have that seem like somewhat obvious tweaks to this offense we are likely to see in the postseason.
Go with the hot hand at running back
One issue I see on offense is the disparity at times in who is getting carries at running back when you look at the production on the field. Most of the last few games have seen Jaleel McLaughlin produce more consistently than RJ Harvey in raw run play production. I think one obvious thing we may see Sean Payton do is to let McLaughlin have more carries if he stays hot.
That’s not to say that I’m down on Harvey. I just think when a guy is producing, you should adjust to give that guy more carries at the running back position. RJ Harvey is a talented back who produces both on the ground and through the air (especially in the red zone).
The only aside I can see about this idea is that it is possible that McLaughlin and Harvey aren’t interchangeable from a play-call perspective. It is possible
Punish man / off coverage looks with quarterback scrambles
Bo Nix is a scrambling weapon with the ball. In the playoffs, if the defense wants to sink coverage or play man Nix will need to be quicker to take the ground yards. For much of the regular season, we’ve seen Nix stay very disciplined with wanting to throw the ball down the field on scrambles. There’s a fine line to walk with this, as sometimes you need to just punish defenses for ignoring your athletic capability.
Nix ran 83 times in 2025 and averaged 4.3 yards per carry. He easily could have had 100 carries with a more aggressive approach. Keeping Nix healthy means it is a much better idea for him not to take the risk in the regular season. He’s pretty good at taking angles out of bounds or sliding and knowing when to do that to avoid big hits, though.
The Broncos’ offense doesn’t really scare anyone, but adding this wrinkle in the postseason should help open things up quite a bit.
Get Mims and Franklin some deep shots
Easily the most frustrating thing about the Broncos’ offense this season has been their inability to connect on their deep shots. Nix hasn’t dialed in his accuracy deep down the field yet, which is a shame. The Broncos end up in a lot of man coverage situations and rarely are able to capitalize.
In the postseason, it is time to change that. We have both Marvin Mims and Troy Franklin, who are superb deep pass targets with killer speed. If the Broncos can get their run game production geared up, they absolutely will have opportunities to hit these deep plays.
Bonus No Bull thoughts on Sean Payton
Don’t get lulled to sleep by the last few games of the season. Everyone who knows football sees the same thing I have in my game reviews: Payton kept things vanilla on purpose.
It is a hard thing to watch a team go run, run, pass ad nauseum (am I right, Broncos fans who “enjoyed” the Dan Reeves era with John Elway?). That was strategic, not senile.
Sean Payton is one of the brightest offensive minds in the game (with all due respect to Kyle Shanahan, Andy Reid, and Sean McVay). He knows exactly where this team is at and what is at stake in the postseason. The Bills are going to have to go back to some old tape to try to sort out what our offense is about.
No matter what they prepare for, I expect a good dose of plays that they won’t know are coming. The world at large may think that the Bills are Goliath. That’s just fine. Payton knows exactly how dangerous a team can be when everyone thinks your team is a bunch of young Davids.
Denver, CO
Pedestrian fatally hit by Frontier airplane departing Denver for Los Angeles, flight canceled after
Posted:
Updated:
DENVER (AP) — A Frontier Airlines plane hit a pedestrian on the runway of the Denver International Airport during takeoff, airport authorities said, sparking an engine fire and forcing passengers to evacuate.
The plane, on route from Denver to Los Angeles International Airport, “reported striking a pedestrian during takeoff at DEN at approximately 11:19 p.m. on Friday,” the airport’s official X account wrote.
Neither the airport nor the airline has disclosed the pedestrian’s condition.
“We’re stopping on the runway,” the pilot tells the control tower according to the site ATC.com. “We just hit somebody. We have an engine fire.”
The pilot tells the air traffic controller they have “231 souls” on board and that and “individual was walking across the runway.”
The air traffic controller responds that they are “rolling the trucks now” before the pilot tells the tower they “have smoke in the aircraft. We are going to evacuate on the runway.”
Frontier Airlines said in a statement flight 4345 was the one involved in the collision and that “smoke was reported in the cabin and the pilots aborted takeoff.” It was not clear whether the smoke was linked to the crash with the pedestrian.
“The Airbus A321 was carrying 224 passengers and seven crew members,” the airline said. “We are investigating this incident and gathering more information in coordination with the airport and other safety authorities.”
Passengers were then evacuated via slides and the emergency crew bused them to the terminal.
Denver Airport said the National Transportation Safety Board had been notified and that runway 17L, where the incident took place, will remain closed while an investigation is conducted.
The president and governor of the Denver Nuggets said Friday his faith in coach David Adelman remains strong despite the team’s first-round flop in the playoffs but he indicated a roster overhaul could happen just as much as the team running it back largely intact. “I have full faith in Coach Adelman,” Josh Kroenke said at a news conference at Ball Arena. The Nuggets finished third in the Western Conference at 54-38, behind Oklahoma City and San Antonio.
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