Broncos Offense Reaches New Low in All-Time Annals

Denver Broncos fans are rightly embarrassed over this.

How bad is the Denver Broncos offense? In a word, abysmal.

It is easily the worst offense in the history of the franchise. The offense is scoring 13.8 points per game, which places it dead last in the six decades that the Broncos have been in existence. 

Coupled with the fact that Denver's second-worst scoring team was in 1966, it paints a picture of utter failure. It's obviously terrible juxtaposed with Denver's all-time annals, but how bad is the offense compared to teams in NFL history? 

It may not be the worst ever, but it isn’t far from that dubious award. There have been several teams that have scored fewer points per game since the 1970 NFL merger, but not many. Only 70 teams out of the 1,477 have scored less than or equal to 13.8 points per game. The last team to have less was a decade ago, and 73% of those teams played before the year 2000.

However, that doesn’t paint a bleak enough picture because the scoring across teams has only increased since 1970. In order to get a read on just how bad this Broncos offense truly is under Nathaniel Hackett, one must compare the scoring to the mean points per game across all teams that season.

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By doing this, we find that there are only 27 teams out of the 1,477 that have scored fewer points compared to the mean of that season than what the Broncos have done in 2022. They are 8.2 points less than the NFL average this season. The only reason it isn’t worse is that scoring is down this season from over the past four years.

However, if the Broncos continue at the pace they currently find themselves, they may challenge the 1998 Philadelphia Eagles for the mantle of the worst of all time. The Broncos are continuing to average fewer points per game as the year drags on and could be considerably worse by the season's final gun.

The 1998 Eagles were horrific on offense, averaging 10 points per game, and were shut out three times. The Eagles scored a massive 11 points fewer than the mean. 

This was a team coached by Ray Rhodes, whose career record as a head coach was under .500, and quarterbacked by a combination of Koy Detmer, Bobby Hoying, and Rodney Peete. Interestingly enough, that Eagles team had a defense that could stop the pass, but not the run, very similar to the Broncos squad we have all watched this season.

If the Broncos were to take the mantle from the ’98 Eagles or even come close to doing so, it would be a failure of epic proportions. It would indicate negligence across so many parts of the team that it became systemic. This type of failure cannot be overlooked.

Hackett is the leader of this team, and the blame for this failure falls directly at his feet. He implemented the offense and called plays for most of the season. 

Even if he hadn’t, Hackett is still the person in charge of the results on game day. He has failed miserably. 

It would be a dereliction of duty for the new ownership and GM George Paton to give Hackett a second season, considering the magnitude of his failure. 

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