The Broncos couldn’t have asked for a better time for their best defensive players to step up.
With a playoff berth in the balance on the road in late December against a high-powered Cincinnati offense, Zach Allen tormented quarterback Joe Burrow to the tune of 3.5 sacks and eight pressures. He was in on sacking Burrow on five different occasions and got the star quarterback to the ground on back-to-back snaps in overtime.
Cornerback Pat Surtain II, meanwhile, shut down All-Pro receiver Ja’Marr Chase in a performance that likely solidified his eventual NFL Defensive Player of the Year selection.
Yet in the end, Burrow still wrenched a victory away from Denver.
When he wasn’t getting pasted by the Broncos’ defensive front and stymied by Surtain in search of his top option, Burrow poked and prodded, dinked and dunked and finally tore through the weak points of Vance Joseph’s defense to the tune of 412 yards and three touchdowns to Tee Higgins — the final a walk-off in overtime.
That game, as much as any down the stretch, provided a preview of how Denver would spend its offseason. Upgrading on offense, sure, but also spending significant capital to fortify its defense.
The goal: Simple. Take one of the best defenses in the NFL and make it even better in 2025.
The reality: That’s easier said than done. Building a defense to last in the NFL is tricky business, and the AFC is in a golden age of quarterback play.
“We had a great defense. That was last year,” defensive coordinator Vance Joseph said. “This year is totally different. My entire sell this entire offseason has been, ‘Let’s start over again. Let’s keep improving.’
“Last year counts, but it doesn’t matter moving forward. We have to continue to improve.”
A volatile business
The NFL is a league driven by star quarterbacks. Plain and simple.
Patrick Mahomes has led Kansas City to the AFC Championship Game each of the past seven seasons. The quarterbacks who started opposite him in those games: Burrow twice, Josh Allen twice, Lamar Jackson and Tom Brady.
Teams with good quarterbacks, naturally, tend to be consistent performers. Last fall marked the third straight year that Kansas City, Baltimore, Cincinnati and Buffalo all ranked in the top 11 of offensive DVOA, a metric developed by now-FTN chief technology officer Aaron Schatz that attempts to capture overall efficiency.
There’s no equivalent position defensively that has that level of impact on unit-level performance year after year.
“The quarterback controls so much of what goes on on the field that defensive performance is naturally going to vary more because it’s kind of subject to the quarterback,” Schatz told The Post. “Even if you try to adjust for the quality of quarterbacks you’re playing, defensive performance is (affected).”
It’s not a big surprise, then, that many in football analytics see defensive performance as more volatile.
There’s a lack of consistency when it comes to certain defensive metrics — Schatz pointed out that Surtain was just OK by several metrics in 2023 but terrific in 2022 and the best corner in football in 2024 — and defenses can’t fully control production in categories like sacks and turnovers.
“Turnovers are obviously really important, but they’re more random than yards,” Schatz said. “And interceptions on defense are more random than interceptions on offense. Again, that comes back to quarterback play. Even sacks, I think, the offense can be more responsible for them than the defense.
“So you have these plays where the outcomes are really important and they vary more for defense than they do for offense.”
Denver Broncos cornerback Riley Moss (21) runs up the field after making an interception during the third quarter of the game at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver on Oct. 6, 2024. The Denver Broncos beat the Las Vegas Raiders 34-18. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)The Broncos, of course, led the NFL by a wide margin with 63 sacks in 2024, but they didn’t just finish at the quarterback. They were second in pressure rate, too. They were good but not elite in forcing turnovers, tying for seventh at 29.
Joseph’s group ranked near the top of the league across the board and checked in at No. 4 in defensive DVOA.
In the seven years of DVOA data on FTN’s website, none of the teams that finished fourth in defensive DVOA improved on that mark the following year. Of course, there’s not a ton of upward mobility from there.
More broadly, only seven times between 2018 and 2023 has a top-10 finisher in DVOA moved up the following year. Out of 61 top-10 finishers, 24 stayed in the top 10 the following year, but more than half of those (14) came from the same four teams: Baltimore, Buffalo, San Francisco and New Orleans.
Those groups show it can be done. Payton (and then Dennis Allen) oversaw a team in New Orleans that checked in between No. 2 and No. 9 from 2018-22. Buffalo’s been in the top 11 each of the past seven seasons. The 49ers had six straight and likely would have matched the Bills if not for a major rash of injuries that led to a No. 13 finish last fall.
“It’s an offensive-driven league and everything’s meant to score points and be enjoyable, so it’s hard to be a really good defense,” Broncos inside linebacker Alex Singleton said. “Because, unless you’re a fan of that team, nobody really wants that on Sundays.”
Continuity… plus
If anybody’s in position to match or exceed last year’s defensive production, though, it might just be the Broncos.
Joseph’s back for a third year orchestrating the unit.
Every member of Denver’s defensive line who played a snap last year is under contract for 2025. The defense as a whole returns a whopping 61.5 of its 63 sacks and 90.2% of its league-leading 265 quarterback pressures.
After an active offseason, the Broncos have more starters from last year’s team who could be replaced due to upgrade — safety P.J. Locke and nickel Ja’Quan McMillian among them — than core players who departed via free agency.
The biggest loss personnel-wise from 2024 is inside linebacker Cody Barton, but even he wouldn’t have been the every-down player he became for the Broncos if Singleton hadn’t torn an ACL in Week 3.
“It does help that Vance comes back and in large part the defense is going to return and even upgrade a few positions right now,” NFL Network analyst Brian Baldinger told The Post. “I think it’s harder to replace great coaches than it is great players.”
The Broncos added what they think are at least a couple of really good players this spring, too.
Singleton was amid his rehab back in March when free-agent negotiating opened and the Broncos followed their re-signing of D.J. Jones with three-year deals for inside linebacker Dre Greenlaw and safety Talanoa Hufanga.
His reaction?
“Hell yeah,” he recalled.
Talanoa Hufanga (9) of the Denver Broncos speaks during OTAs at Broncos Park in Englewood, Colorado on Thursday, May 29, 2025. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)If the Broncos had a weakness last year, it developed in the middle of the field and in defending running backs in the passing game. They had trouble at cornerback when Moss missed time with a late-season knee injury, too.
The free-agent additions plus the selection of cornerback Jahdae Barron at No. 20 overall in April’s draft are clearly targeted at shoring up those areas.
Whether they elevate the defense or stave off regression, though, remains to be seen.
“You start with the premise that a top-five defense last year is more likely to be, like, a top-12 defense this year,” Schatz said. “Then you add Greenlaw, Hufanga (and Barron) to that. … I would say that you should start with the idea that there’s always going to be some significant regression on defense. Maybe the players they added will counter the regression, but it’s unlikely that they will overwhelm the regression.”
Joseph said those additions allow him and the defensive staff to go back to the drawing board rather than just slotting them into the existing structure.
“We watch every clip from last year and once you watch it all, you get a clear idea of how teams attacked you,” Joseph said. “It was obvious. I won’t share that, but it was obvious how teams attacked us and you have to go to work on how you prevent some of that stuff. That’s what you do in the offseason every year.
“Every year, you have to change and adjust as teams see you differently. Our players have grown into different types of players. The respect level for Pat has gone up, so how we adjust off of that is going to be huge.”
Expectations of dominance
No two seasons play out exactly the same.
Allen, for example, led all defensive tackles with 67 pressures. Surtain went on a preposterous run of shutting down top-flight receivers and allowed just 306 receiving yards as the nearest defender for the entire season, according to Next Gen Stats.
If they’re healthy, they’ll undoubtedly be top-end performers again this fall. But can they repeat that level of impact?
“It’s very likely that Surtain had a career season,” Schatz said. “Zach Allen was insanely good last year. It’s very unlikely that he can be that good again this season, just because you don’t hit 70 homers two years in a row.”
Cornerback Pat Surtain II (2) of the Denver Broncos lines up against the Las Vegas Raiders during the second quarter at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)Related Articles
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Joseph had such trust in his secondary that he frequently sent five rushers and played man coverage behind.
“If you get a lot of five-man rushes, you’re going to get a lot of one-on-one rushes and last year a lot of those guys won,” Baldinger said. “… They should be every bit as good in that department this year and if they are and if they think they can hold up, you’re going to get a lot of five-man rushes. I mean, 63 is a lot of sacks, but you might be able to put up similar or close to that kind of number.”
Baldinger said he thought Sean Payton would want an emphasis on creating more turnovers and noted that in 2009, when the Saints won the Super Bowl, they were second in that department with 39 forced.
The Broncos’ additions may help with that, but they also should help cover up some of the ills that became more frequent down the stretch last year.
Denver gave up 30-plus points five times and four of them came from Week 13 against Cleveland through the Wild Card loss at Buffalo. Quarterbacks like Burrow and Justin Herbert picked them apart in the middle of the field.
“We watched our (film) cut-ups from the fall,” Joseph said. “We weren’t perfect in every area. Third downs, we have to get better. There’s lots of room for improvement.”
Greenlaw is considered a terrific coverage linebacker when healthy. Barron’s got the versatility to play inside or out depending on need. And Hufanga’s the kind of playmaker on the back end that Joseph loves finding ways to build around.
“It’s my job to do what players do well. I know what he is as a player,” Joseph said. “He’s a guy with great instincts. He’s a guy that’s going to chase and tackle the football for us. So I won’t give him jobs where he’s too tied up with nonsense, right? I want him to find the ball and do what he does best. That’s what I’m talking about with ‘players first and scheme second.’”
There are always twists and turns during a season. The Broncos were mostly healthy defensively last year, but they felt Singleton’s absence as the season wore on, and they saw, clearly, the impact on the perimeter when Moss missed time.
There comes a point where even the best units can be compromised beyond repair by injuries, like San Francisco last year.
The Broncos have bolstered an already-good defense to a point, however, where that kind of massive injury run looks like about the only thing that can keep it from being really good again this fall.
“I think Sean and (the front office) are just showing that how you win football games in this league is on defense and now it’s our job to prove that,” Singleton said.
Payton himself said he wasn’t sure he put much stock in the notion of defensive volatility in the first place.
He oversaw a long stretch of good units in New Orleans, both early in his tenure and then again near the end of it. The Broncos added significantly to the group early in his time here and now have the pieces in place — albeit impossible to keep together fully beyond this year — to put another consistent stretch together.
“I think it just depends on the team,” he said this summer before flatly stating his expectation for 2025.
“And I don’t plan on having any volatility with our defense from last year.”
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