How the Broncos’ offense put stress on an already strained Packers defense

In Week 15, the Green Bay Packers defense turned in perhaps its worst defensive performance of the season. The Denver Broncos and head coach Sean Payton found multiple ways to attack some of the schematic tendencies and personnel weaknesses the Packers’ defense suffers from.

In addition to this, the defense lost Micah Parsons to an ACL injury, with Quay Walker and Evan Williams also leaving the game in the second half due to injuries. There were multiple injuries on offense, too. Overall, it was not a good day on that front, and the Packers are on a shorter week with a Saturday game this week.

On defense, though, even before losing those players, the Broncos were still able to take advantage of the Packers’ pass defense in some critical ways. And the way they did it was by putting stress on the Packers’ corners and isolating them in situations where they did not have any kind of bracket or top-down help.

They were able to do this because of the way Jeff Hafley structured the defense by always playing the nickel defender to the wider side of the field (the “field” side) and always playing the Sam linebacker to the “short” side of the field  (the “boundary” side). These aren’t terms typically associated with the NFL due to the narrower hash marks, but if there’s one thing modern NFL offenses are good at, it’s creating a ton of space where there normally isn’t any.

At the college level, it’s a bit easier to exploit defenses due to the width of the hashes and lining up the passing strength to the boundary. The hashes make the defense more vulnerable to the field side because there’s a lot more space to cover. College offenses can usually accomplish it most of the time with two or three receivers into the boundary (formation into the boundary). 

In the NFL, it almost always has to be done with a 4×1 formation to truly stress the defensive alignment or a fast motion to create a 2×2 or 3×2, where they can influence the nickel and pick on a weaker corner defender. The Broncos did both.

The Broncos had several explosive plays out of 4×1 formations that set up on plays where they tested how the Packers would align to the formations. The Packers nearly always align the nickel to the wide side of the field, probably because they don’t want a linebacker trying to run and cover in space. The nickel defender is faster. In more traditional defenses, the nickel travels with the passing strength, no matter if that is the short side of the field.

Here, the Broncos get confirmation that the nickel, Javon Bullard, will stay to the wide side of the field even with a change of strength motion. The Broncos’ play call is a bubble RPO with a wide zone run to the weak side. Quarterback Bo Nix is reading Rashan Gary. 

The defense is in cover-3 with Bullard essentially acting as the Will linebacker with the change of strength motion.

With the motion, Bullard slides inside as the B-gap run defender.

Gary doesn’t chase the run, so Nix hands the ball off, and they run it right at Bullard and gain seven yards. It’s still a favorable gain for the Broncos, especially since they can get a decent gain running at a smaller defender.

On the next play against the Broncos 4×1, the pass strength was to the short side of the field on the same RPO and ended up throwing the screen for a short gain.

This time, they start out in a 2×2 formation before shifting the running back over to the left and then motioning the bubble screen receiver to the short side.

The defense is in cover-1 man coverage this time so Bullard ends up bumping inside to follow the motion. Edgerrin Cooper has to cover the running back. Bullard still looks unsure of his responsibility and hesitates after the snap.

He’s looking at the run action, but shouldn’t have his eyes there. They should be on his receiver in case he does break a gain off on the sideline. Fortunately, they bottled it up. But that was all the confirmation they needed. They knew how the Packers would respond to these formations and the kind of stress it puts on the nickel defender.

On a touchdown pass from Nix to Michael Bandy, the Broncos again stressed the Packers’ defense with a 4×1 mesh rail concept.

The Broncos aligned in a trips bunch to the right with the running back to that side. Bandy (No. 83) is outside of the bunch running a shallow crossing route. The running back is out on the wheel/rail route, and there’s a sit route over the middle on top of the mesh crossers. The single receiver side is also running a shallow cross.

The defense aligns in cover-3 again, with the nickel to the wide side. It’s almost a dead giveaway that the offense is running some sort of crossing patterns because of the condensed formation, and the Packers cover it mostly cleanly.

Nix dropped back, looking to his right for the running back rail, and the defense flows that way as the mesh crossers develop.

There’s a slight coverage bust, though, with Carrington Valentine as the deep third defender on the single receiver side. For some reason, he funnels inside to the sit route from the opposite side of the field while Bullard is chasing the shallow crosser.

Bullard stepped up to play the quarterback, and those couple of steps were all Nix needed to get Bandy the ball. Bullard should have stayed with the receiver and forced Nix to tuck and run and live to fight another day. However, if Valentine had stayed put, then they also would have had a chance to get a stop.

Later in the game, the Broncos offense created another explosive by putting the defense in a bind versus a 4×1 formation, but this time with the single receiver split outside the numbers away from the opposite hash. Only this time, the Broncos rolled out heavier 12 personnel (1 running back, 2 tight ends) and the Packers matched with base personnel.

The Broncos are running a 4×1 three verticals concept with Courtland Sutton as the isolated receiver to the right.

The rest of the offensive personnel is bunched up to the left, giving the defense another element to think about with a potential toss play or quarterback run out of that overloaded alignment.

The defense matched with a cover-6 shell with poach coverage (wide side safety helping over the top of anything running across from the 4-strong side).

To Sutton’s side, Keisean Nixon is the single side corner and only has help from the safety over the top if nothing runs across the middle. Nixon is in “MEG” coverage (man-everywhere-he-goes).

With the defense playing with 10 defenders inside the field hash, Nixon is left alone on an island to defend anything from Sutton. He has no help inside, and the safety has a hard time getting over the top on the go-route. Nix placed it perfectly over Nixon in the back of the end zone for the touchdown.