💪2. Strength on strength
There are plenty of intriguing matchups in Sunday’s Wild Card playoff between the Bills and Broncos, but few measure up to the battle at the line of scrimmage between Buffalo’s offensive line and Denver’s defensive line.
The best unit two years running in preventing sacks against this season’s league leader in sacks as Denver finished with 63 quarterback takedowns.
“It starts at the line of scrimmage for both clubs,” said Bills right tackle Spencer Brown. “They have a good group. We have a good group, and that’s kind of what you want in the playoffs. That’s kind of what gets teams to the playoffs is your ‘bigs’ up front playing well.”
Broncos defensive coordinator, Vance Joseph has found ways to consistently get one-on-one matchups up front with his pressure packages believing one of his top three pass rushers will win and get home, and more often than not they have.
Led by OLB Nik Bonitto and his 13.5 sacks, six players on the roster have at least five sacks to top the league. Fellow OLB Jonathan Cooper is second with 10.5.
“It’s an elite defense,” said ESPN NFL analyst, Dan Orlovsky in his weekly appearance on ‘One Bills Live’ of Vance Joseph’s unit. “Their defensive front is fantastic. Jonathan Cooper is outstanding. Nik Bonitto is a Defensive Player of the Year candidate. Zach Allen on the inside. I think it’s a really good matchup.”
“They rush well as a unit,” said Brown. “They’ve got some younger guys who got their feet wet, and they added Jonathan Franklin-Myers from the Jets. I respect them a lot. All across the board they have guys who can come in, they rotate, they can do whatever fronts they want to adapt, and they do it well.”
With cornerbacks Patrick Surtain and Riley Moss on the back end, Joseph is comfortable making man coverage calls leaving him with at least five to rush the passer in obvious passing situations.
“When they play man defense, they put five guys across the line of scrimmage, and they’re just trying to create those one-on-ones versus your offensive line and they’re so good up front, you can’t just focus on one guy, because Jonathan Cooper, who plays opposite Bonitto, is outstanding, and then inside is Allen. And so, as an offensive line, I think that’s one of the most fascinating parts about this game.
“It’s always fun going up against a team that prides itself with its play up front,” said Bills RG O’Cyrus Torrence. “This is a good matchup up front for us to go out there and show why we’ve been so competitive up front this year. We like to put the game on our shoulders. No matter how good we think the other team may be in certain areas we just always put it on us to do our job. And if we do our job, and we have great communication, we’ve got a great chance to win.”
Buffalo’s offensive line has surrendered just one sack in their last seven games.