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Broncos’ Jonah Elliss showing signs of Year 2 breakout in already-deep OLB room: ‘I feel like I’m playing a lot better’
The Broncos’ top pair of outside linebackers is creating new levels of havoc through Denver’s first three games of the season.
Newly minted $106 million man Nik Bonitto leads the league both with 21 pressures and a 31.3% pressure rate (best among players with 10-plus pressures), according to Next Gen Stats.
Jonathon Cooper, meanwhile, pressured Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert nine times Sunday and is tied for seventh in the NFL with 15 for the season. After posting pressure rates of 11.6% and 13.6% the past two seasons, respectively, Cooper is off to a blistering start this season at 20.5%.
But opposing offensive linemen aren’t getting much of a break when they leave the game, either. So far this season, second-year OLBs Jonah Elliss and Dondrea Tillman are doing plenty of quarterback harassing of their own.
Elliss, in particular, is in the early stages of a breakout sophomore campaign.
Still just 22, the 2024 third-round pick out of Utah had a sack in the Broncos’ season opener, two pressures against the Colts and four more against the Chargers. He’s posted a 17.5% pressure rate so far this season and been an asset on special teams, too, where he forced a fumble on L.A. kick returner Derius Davis on Sunday.
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That’s the second play Elliss has made early on this season that’s helped flip the field for the Broncos. His Week 1 sack of Cam Ward helped drive the Titans all the way out of field goal range after starting with the ball in scoring territory. The fumble he forced, recovered by teammate JL Skinner, set the Denver offense up at the Chargers’ 30-yard line.
“Honestly, he had me beat, and I wasn’t going to be able to tackle him, so I was just trying to hit the ball out,” Elliss said.
Head coach Sean Payton talked during training camp about trying not to lean too heavily on Denver’s defensive front seven. So far, the Broncos have stuck to that plan. Cooper is getting substantially more rest (71% play time last year, 63% so far this year) in the early going, and Bonitto’s playing time has ticked down, too, from 61% in 2024 to 58% so far this fall.
“There’s an attrition to doing what those guys in the front do,” Payton said recently. “… We just have to be mindful of these guys. If you’re (playing) too many, then at the end you look at it and say, ‘Maybe the effectiveness wasn’t the same as the game wore on.’”
Elliss and Tillman make it their goal to make offensive lines feel them just as much as the starters.
“We don’t want to go out there and offensive tackles say, ‘Oh, thank goodness, Nik and Coop are out,'” Elliss said Monday. “We want to be able to go out there and apply pressure like they do.”
Elliss spent most of the offseason rehabbing a fractured shoulder he suffered in Denver’s Wild Card loss to Buffalo in January. The Utah product wanted to work on adding to his pass-rush arsenal, but told The Post earlier in the offseason that his main goal was to improve his get-off at the line of scrimmage. As part of that process, Elliss said he spent a lot of time watching Bonitto tape. Bonitto, Elliss said, might have the best get-off in football.
“Last year everything started with my get-off,” Elliss reiterated Monday. “When I had a good get-off, it opened up a lot of different pass rush for me. But the issue was that I wasn’t getting a good get-off.”
Elliss told The Post that part of feeling slow last year was just about being a rookie in the NFL.
“I felt like throughout the season last year I was spinning,” he said.
This year, he’s more comfortable with his assignment and with what offenses are trying to do to him based on formations and personnel. But he’s also decided that, in some ways, the key to playing faster is trying to do less rather than more.
“Last year, I was out there trying to do too much,” he said. “Thinking too much. Trying to know everything before the play. I’ve kind of taken a step back, tried to go out there and just play free and react to what an offense is giving me.
“I feel like I’m playing a lot better that way.”
For the most part, at least. Elliss thought he had a lull in play Week 2 against Indianapolis. Then Sunday, he was back to wreaking havoc. That included blasting through Chargers right tackle Trey Pipkins and hurrying Herbert into a third-down red zone throw that came up short and forced a first-half field goal.
“This week, I really just tried to lock in on playing free, playing with my athleticism, and honestly just running off the ball,” Elliss said. “That helps create these counter moves, and it opens up the rush game for me and makes it so the offensive tackle doesn't know what I’m doing every time.”
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