Historical perspective on how bad the 2022 Bronco offense is at scoring points

Yes, it’s bad, but how bad is it compared to other league worst scoring teams?

You can dredge up stats that tell you what you want to hear, but the bottom line is always points. Can your team score them? Can your team prevent the opponent from doing so?

The Denver Broncos right now are scoring 14.27 points per game. However, this is not the worst since the 2000 Browns as Field Yates erroneously tweeted on Sunday.

Sometimes even stats nerds get one wrong, but not usually this wrong. You have to go all the way back to… 2020 to find a team that had scored fewer points per game (ppg) through 11 games. If you go back to 2010 the Broncos have the 11th worst scoring offense in terms of ppg. If you want to find a team that scored fewer ppg over the entire regular season, you have to go all the back to… 2018. The 2018 Cardinals finished the regular season scoring 14.06 ppg. 14.06 is less than 14.27.

If you go back to the 2000 the Broncos are only the 31st worst scoring offense through 11 games. That being said the Broncos have the cumulative worst scoring offense over the last 5+ NFL regular seasons (see below). Note that the 2022 column below is only for 11 games played, while the others are for full regular seasons.

I wanted to know how this Bronco team compares to other league-worst scoring teams in terms of percent below average in ppg. The 2022 Broncos are currently scoring 34.8 percent fewer ppg than the league average. The current league average is 21.9 points and the Broncos are scoring 14.3. There are 33 teams this century who have been worse than that at the end of the regular season, but only a handful have been worse in the last few years.

For example the 2021 Houston Texans scored more per game (14.9) than the Broncos have through 11, but the league average ppg was higher in 2021 than it is this season so far (23.0), so the Texans were actually farther below average at the end of last season than the Broncos currently are. (I don’t know what the league scoring average was after week 13 in 2021 and I don’t want to take the time to figure that out – even though I could). The 40 worst scoring offenses through 11 games this century relative to league average at season end are shown in the table below

As you can see, while 35% below average is terrible, it could be worse. The 2000 Bengals (and Browns) were both much worse relative to league average ppg through 11 games as were the 2009 Raiders, Browns and Rams. The 2022 Broncos are the only Bronco team in the “top” 40. The 2019 Broncos came in at 46th (30.2% below league average). The 2020 Broncos were 88th as the only other Bronco offense this century in the “top” 100 in terms of relative ppg through 11 games.

That being said, the 2022 could still finish NOT dead last in scoring with six regular season games left to play. The Colts and Texans are currently scoring 1.5 more points per game than the Broncos. So in theory if the Broncos could get to something like 16.5 points per game they could possibly finish out of not league worst in scoring.

Think about it this way. 1.5 ppg over 11 games is 17 points – that’s two goal-line fumbles lost and one blocked 25 yard field attempt.

Let’s say, for the sake or argument, the Broncos are able to get to 17.0 ppg by the end of the regular season. That’s 289 points scored. The team has scored 157 so far, so that means the team would need to score 22.0 ppg the rest of the way (289 – 157 = 132, 132/6 = 22.0). Considering that is almost exactly league average, it is not out of the realm of possibility, but keep in mind that the Bronco season high so far in points scored is 23.

To put it another way, the current best scoring offense in the league, KC, has only failed to score 20 or more once this season while the Broncos have only scored more than 16 points twice (21 and 23).