Broncos Quarterback has to Step up to Help Team Win on Road

The Denver Broncos started their 2016 season with two wins, but both of which came at home. Their quarterback play has been poor/below average, but yet they still managed to win. In their first road game, their quarterback will have to step up his play to help Denver come out on top.

In their two wins, it may seem that the Denver Broncos quarterback has played well. However, that isn’t the case. He has made some promising plays, but lackluster overall. Of course, as someone who is 23 years old with two career starts and one snap prior to this season, poor play isn’t unexpected.

If you are looking at his base stats, you could be mislead to believe he has played well. After all being 40-59 for 444 yards one touchdown and three interceptions may look well, but is misleading. There are many reasons why that is misleading.

To start it all out, Siemian hasn’t graded out the best in our grades. For week one, Siemian had a 39.7. In week two he improved to a 40.5 grade. For this upcoming game, Siemian most likely has to walk away with at least an 80.0. If he does, odds are the Broncos won this game.

In almost every advanced metric, Siemian is in the bottom 5-10 for quarterbacks, this includes ESPNs Total Quarterback rating. In their TQBR, Siemian is 25th with a 52.2. Only six quarterbacks have a TQBR lower than his.

As for points added, Siemian ranks 26th out of 31 with a 0.5. The five lower than him are all in the negatives. If you want to look at where he ranks for the pass under ESPNs advanced metrics, Siemian falls to 28th. Again this is out of 31. As for interception percentage and touchdown percentage, Siemian ranks third worst in both categories.

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If you want to look just at his rating, Siemian is 30th out of 33. He is tied at third with most interceptions, but of course two games is a very short time. To add-on about interceptions, two of Siemians three picks have been on screen plays. If you don’t know, screens are considered the safest throw a quarterback can make. Not good.

One big issue with Siemian, that is a huge benefit to the Cincinnati Bengals defense is where he throws the ball. On 59 attempts on the season, only eight of his passes have traveled more than 15 yards through the air. Only two of them ended in completions, with one dropped and another intercepted.

To add more to that, Siemian is 27th in air yards per attempt with 3.73 yards. That would give Siemian 220 yards through the air on all attempts. That leads to more than 50% of his 444 yards passing came at the legs of the receivers picking up yards after the catch.

The Bengals defense will shut down the Broncos offense if they continue to play the short passing game. Siemian and the Broncos with have to take more than four shots 15+ yards down the field, like they are averaging so far. So some shots downfield are needed.

Defending the deep ball has been hit or miss for the Bengals, who have allowed 6-16 on passes 15+ yards downfield, which isn’t good but not bad either. The best chance Denver has to attack deep is the left side of the field, where the Bengals allowed three completions on four attempts.

What will help Trevor Siemian is getting the run game going, and sticking with it. If the Bengals start to defend against it, that is when Siemian needs to step up and take a shot. That is just one of the areas he has to step up.

One issue Siemian has is missing open receivers. This is something that has to stop, and this game is a good place to start. Both Demaryius Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders vented some frustration about how they have been used, and rightfully so. Both receivers were open three or four times against the Colts and never saw the ball thrown their way.

Of all those times, Siemian only completed two passes, and both went for 8+ yards shorter than where Thomas/Sanders were open at. The rest of the plays were in-completions, sacks, or Siemian using his legs. Both receivers make 11+ million dollars and should be used like it.