Broncos hope experience vs. Derrick Henry proves useful
Given the circumstances and opponent, the Denver defense’s performance against Tennessee running back Derrick Henry on Sunday might be its most impressive work against the run this season.
Henry entered Week 10 as the NFL’S leading rusher, but the Broncos held him to 53 yards on 19 carries and didn’t allow him to get free for a gain of longer than 10 yards.
Despite the Broncos’ 17-10 loss, that staunch work was notable for two reasons: First, Denver entered the weekend No. 21 overall in the NFL against the run and secondly, had allowed 346 yards over the previous two games. Not only that, but this Sunday’s opponent, the Las Vegas Raiders, dominated the Broncos on the ground earlier this season.
Raiders running back Josh Jacobs rumbled to 144 yards and two touchdowns in Las Vegas’ 3223 win against Denver, which surrendered a season-worst 212 rushing yards that day.
The Titans, according to inside linebacker Josey Jewell, tried to attack Denver in a similar manner.
“The Titans ran a lot of the stuff that Vegas actually does to us,” Jewell said. “Especially the first time we played them this year. There’s still some small stuff, the ‘counter-o,’ they love a lot of their gap schemes with the Raiders and (what they do with) Jacobs. They also like the ‘lead’ and the Titans did run that a couple of times. They put their tight end back there as a fullback, so we got to see a couple of different things that the Raiders (did) last time and we got pretty close to perfecting.
“We’re just going to have to go back and look at the film to see those ‘counter O’s,’ see those different gap schemes that they ran and understand our fits.
“That’s one thing we need to perfect more is our fits. Just being perfect on those, whether you’re outside leverage on the tight end or inside leverage, if you are C-gap or you are B-gap.”
Without several key players Sunday including outside linebackers Baron Browning and Randy Gregory and safety Justin Simmons, Denver defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero deployed several different personnel groups to try and slow Henry. That included a starting group that featured eight defenders in the box: Defensive linemen Mike Purcell, D.J. Jones and Deshawn Williams plus Dre’mont Jones as a standup edge player opposite outside linebacker Jonathon Cooper and then all three regular inside linebackers — Jewell, Alex Singleton and Jonas Griffth — on the field together behind them.
“It’s a puzzle every week and our coaches did a great job putting it together,” Jewell told The Post. “We’re making do with what we have, especially with injuries and all of that. … We’ve got a lot of good players on defense, so I’m sure it’s fun for the coaches to play
around with that puzzle a little bit and move people. We played out there with three (inside) LBS, which is fun. We don’t get to do that a lot these days.”
Not only did Jacobs run well against the Broncos on Oct. 2, but quarterback Derek Carr picked up first downs five times when he took off and ran. Later in the month, Evero said Denver had made adjustments in anticipation of more mobile quarterbacks like the Chargers’ Justin Herbert.
“It’s always going to be a deal where if you have a lot of opportunities and if you don’t stop the run, they’re going to keep (running the ball),” Evero said. “We need to keep focusing on playing technique, tackling, not ever losing sight of that. … We have to really focus in on those situations and the looks where we think we’re getting in the run game, knock it out and get ready to deal with the pass.”
Jewell expressed confidence in his defensive group, which he said keeps getting better.
“We still have some small fit issues every once in a while,” Jewell said. “Our communication has been pretty great so far, but the fit issues, or maybe an adjustment off of a certain coverage that we needed to make. Small things like that, that then we can communicate from the back end to the linebackers or us to them. Then gap integrity stuff. Just being able to play our blocks and be able to beat those one-on-ones and make sure we’re always on the advantageous side.”