Broncos Hurting Future With Spread Option

The Broncos won for the third time in 4 Tim Tebow starts.  It is a great day to be a Denver Bronco and also to be their fans.  The Broncos are winning, their contending for the division, and their quarterback is proving all of his critics wrong.  Well, that last one isn't correct.  I'm a football critic and analyst and I'm still doubting Tebow's ability to beat good teams with his arm and the Broncos process of building for the future.

It's easy to say that the team is better because Tebow is at the helm and now they are winning games.  I can say that he has very little to do with the wins since he has taken over.  2 things have gotten better since Kyle Orton has been benched while one has gotten much worse.  The defense isn't allowing teams to score a lot of points in their wins and the running game has improved with the teams new dedication to it.  The passing game has been a joke with Tebow at the helm and this weeks punch line is 2 completions.

Since Tebow has taken over, the offense has scored more than 20 points only once.  In comparison, Kyle Orton only scored under 20 points one time in games he played from start to finish.  This means that the offense is actually doing worse with Tebow in the lineup.  Without the 38 points scored in Oakland the Denver offense would be scoring only 14 points per game in games that Tebow has started this year.  With that in mind I take a look at the rest of the schedule and ask myself if the Broncos can keep each of the remaining teams on the schedule to under 14 points.  The answer is no.  If they are lucky they will be able to keep the Jets and Chiefs off the scoreboard.  The Patriots and bills were score a lot and the Bears are a well balanced team right now that is proving difficult to stop.  Without the ability to produce point consistently, the Broncos can't sustain their current winning ways.

I was wondering, on Sunday watching the game, what would this offense look like if Orton were still the starter.  Imagine what the Broncos could do with the dedication they are showing to the run and still had the ability to throw the ball.  Orton would never be asked to throw the ball only 8 times in a game.  In his games this season Orton threw an average of 35 times a game.  Tebow has only been asked to throw just under 24 times a game and on Sunday it was an astounding 8 tries at throwing the ball.  The closest Orton has ever come to only 8 attempts in a game was against San Diego where he threw 13 times... in the first half.  I really think that the running game complimented with an efficient passing game would score more points than what the team has now.  I also think that the lack of attempts speaks volumes to how the coaching staff feels about their passer.

When looking to the future, past this season, I feel the Broncos are doing themselves a disservice by turning to a spread option running game.  The traditional sets produced very good returns in the run game and provided a sense of improvement from the beginning of the season.  Tebow has been everything but efficient since taking over.  He has yet to throw 50% of his passes for completions and when only asked to throw 8 times, he completed only 2.  Kyle Orton was completing almost 59% of his passes, 15% better than Tebow.  By changing the offense over to the spread option, the team is basically giving up on the passing portion of their offense and won't see any significant improvement to evaluate Tebow on.  How is that good for the franchise moving forward.

The Broncos, though contending for the division at present, are doing themselves a terrible disservice by running an offense that won't be effective in the long run.  The team needs to come out and run the offense that they plan on running next year, the offense they were running for the first 7 weeks of the season.  They need to do this so they can evaluate what they truly have in Tebow and every other position on offense.  By running the spread option, at least how they have been, they aren't seeing if Tebow can read offenses, throw on time and on target within a pro style offense, how good their current receivers are, and what the group as a whole will be capable in the future.  Along with those draw backs, the Broncos are making it harder to get rid of Tebow if they decide he isn't what they want come the offseason.  The more he wins in this style of offense the worse off the Broncos will be for the nest 2-4 years.