World’s Best Preview: Homecoming sack dance

Von Miller wants to host homecoming in the Packers’ backfield, plus Joe Flacco, a rookie tight end and a struggling left tackle as we go inside the Broncos.
World’s Best Preview: Homecoming sack dance
World’s Best Preview: Homecoming sack dance /

Denver Broncos linebacker Von Miller will chaperone one winner and seven friends to a homecoming dance as part of NFL 100 Experiences of a Lifetime.

“It will be fun. I do know how to party,” Miller, a “Dancing with the Stars” veteran, told reporters in Englewood, Colo., this week. “When it’s time to party and it’s time to celebrate, I know how to do it. Homecoming, that falls under that list of partying and celebrating. I think it’ll be great. Nobody likes to dance like Von likes to dance. I think it’ll be good, it’ll be a great moment to connect with some of the younger fans that I don’t normally get to connect with on a daily basis. It’ll be good, it’ll be good for me to go back to high school and relive some of my glory days, so it’ll be good.”

Miller would like to relive the glory days of sacking the quarterback when he takes aim at Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers on Sunday. Since entering the league in 2011, Miller leads all defenders with 98 sacks and 25 forced fumbles. Among active players, he is third in career sacks. However, through two games of this season, he not only doesn’t have a sack but he has zero quarterback hits and only one pressure.

“I think more than frustration for me is just not winning,” said Miller, an All-Pro in each of his seven healthy seasons.

Miller rushes almost exclusively from the defense’s left side. That means a matchup against Packers right tackle Bryan Bulaga. Bulaga is off to a sensational start, having earned personal victories against Chicago’s Khalil Mack and Minnesota’s Danielle Hunter to start the season. As we’ve written about before, gone are the days when the left tackle was tasked with blocking the opponent’s top pass rusher. This year, an argument could be made that Bulaga is facing a better batch of rushers than left tackle David Bakhtiari.

“He has a very big arsenal of things that he does well,” Bulaga said. “Maybe a lot of people think he can just turn a corner and be a speed rusher, but he has really good power as well. With that speed and power combination, that’s what makes him so good. If you just try to set for his speed, he’ll turn it into a bull rush and walk you back to the quarterback. He’s got everything that you’d want from a pass-rusher.”

Miller had 14.5 sacks last season. Thus far this season, teams have used a combination of quick passes and chip blocks to keep Miller and his sidekick, Bradley Chubb, away from the passer. It’s worked; the Broncos are the only team in the league without a sack.

“When I go to sleep at night, that’s what I say in my head: ‘No matter what they do, I’m still going to be able to get there,’” Miller said. “It doesn’t always work like that. We’re just playing for a breakthrough. It’s like blackjack, just double down. We’ve been doing all the right stuff. We’re preparing well, we’re practicing well. We’re doing everything that we need to be doing off the field and everything in between. We’ve just got to keep playing. Sacks come in bunches and it’ll be a good week to get it this week in Lambeau.”

Not Super: Flacco led the Ravens to a Super Bowl championship in 2012. However, that brief burst of greatness has wound up being the pinnacle of his career rather than the jumping-off point. From 2013 through 2018, 36 quarterbacks threw at least 1,000 passes. Flacco ranks 34th in that group in passer rating.

With that, the Ravens decided to hitch their wagon to Lamar Jackson and gave up on Flacco, who was shipped to Denver for a fourth-round pick. In some ways, he’s been excellent with a 69.1 percent completion rate. However, he’s completed only 43.8 percent of the red zone – a big reason why the Broncos are fifth in the league in yards per possession but have scored just two touchdowns.

In Week 3, teams have established some trends. And thus, it’s time to call some trend-busting plays. Here’s one to keep in mind: Flacco is only 1-of-3 on passes thrown 20-plus yards downfield, according to Sports Info Solutions. That’s tied for 28th in deep attempts. Meanwhile, only Cincinnati’s Andy Dalton (59) has thrown more passes within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage than Flacco (58), a figure that includes 16 behind-the-line-of-scrimmage passes. Whether it’s to one of his receivers or rookie tight end Noah Fant, expect Flacco to try to stretch the field to loosen up what has been an excellent Packers pass defense.

“I think when you’re taking chances down the field and you’re trying do all kinds of different things, there’s still a calculated type of mind-set with it,” Flacco told Broncos reporters this week. “We know what we’re doing, and we know what looks we’re going against all those things. It doesn’t matter if you’re throwing 5 yards down the field or 50. Sometime those ones are easy because of the way things work out. Getting big plays doesn’t mean you have to be super risky. It just means guys doing their jobs.”

Bolled over: In the 2017 draft, the Broncos used the 20th pick on Utah offensive tackle Garett Bolles. So far, not so good.

Bolles has started all 34 games of his career. He’s allowed 11.5 sacks, which would be a decent number had he not been penalized again and again and again. According to STATS, Bolles has been found guilty of 24 penalties, including 16 holds. And those are just the accepted penalties. Including penalties that were declined, he’s been penalized 34 times, including 26 for holding.

“It’s got to stop, period,” Broncos general manager John Elway said in a radio appearance on Thursday. “There are no more excuses for it. He's had 26 holding penalties in the last two years and two games, so it’s got to stop. The bottom line is if he thinks he’s getting singled out, he is. He's got to understand that. He's got to understand what he's doing. And that was my question (Sunday), ‘Does he know what holding is?’ Does he know what he can and can't do? If he thinks he’s getting targeted, he's got to realize he isn’t. We’ll keep working for it and he’s still a talented guy. He cannot do that because it’s beating us.”

Overall, Bolles has been flagged five times for holding this season. At least he has not given up a sack, but he’ll face a big challenge against the Packers on Sunday. Outside linebackers Za’Darius Smith and Preston Smith don’t have prolific sack numbers – Preston Smith has 1.5 sacks and four quarterback hits and Za’Darius Smith has 1.0 sack and four quarterback hits – but Za’Darius Smith has 15 pressures and Preston Smith has 10, according to Pro Football Focus.

“You don’t try to aim for nobody getting no penalty on the other side,” Preston Smith said. “You just want to keep doing your rushes and it’ll come to you. Against a guy who’s known for holding, the refs won’t miss that if you keep playing your game. If you’re out there trying to get holds, you probably won’t get them. If you go out there and play your game, you’ll get holds. He’s known for that and he’s known for getting a lot of penalties due to holding. If you keep rushing, that will happen naturally.”

Big-play potential: The Broncos drafted tight end Noah Fant with the 20th pick of this draft. In three seasons at Iowa, Fant caught 78 passes and scored 19 touchdowns. The bulk of the damage came in his final two seasons: 30 catches for 494 yards (16.5 average; tops in the nation among tight ends) and 11 touchdowns as a sophomore and 39 catches for 518 yards (13.3 average) and seven touchdowns as a junior. At the Scouting Combine, he ran his 40 in a blistering 4.50 seconds.

Thus far, he’s caught 6-of-8 passes for 66 yards. With cornerbacks Jaire Alexander and Kevin King playing winning football against the opponents’ top receivers, Fant might be Denver’s X-factor on Sunday.

“He’s getting rookie baptism by fire, which will be good for him in the long run, but I think he’s doing good,” Fangio said. “He’s tough. He plays. He doesn’t whine and mope. I think he’s getting better daily.”


Published
Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.