3 ways the Denver Broncos offensive line will improve in 2019

2. Garett Bolles takes a leap forward

We get it, Garett. You’re an ultra-athletic brute of an offensive tackle who will stop at nothing to protect the quarterback.

It’s time to clean things up, though.

Bolles has 28 penalties in his first two NFL seasons, 15 as a rookie and 13 as a sophomore.

As much as we’d like to chalk that up as ‘progress’, Bolles needs to get that number down where elite tackles in the NFL have it, somewhere around 10 or less (Tyron Smith had 10 penalties in 2018, David Bakhtiari had 5).

Bolles actually didn’t play too bad down the stretch last year. He has lapses out there, sure, but folks acting like Bolles would rank 64th on a list of the 64 starting tackles in the NFL are outside their minds.

He’s not so terrible the Broncos are going to have to throw their swing tackle out there (looking at you, Mark Schlereth).

In fact, he’s not terrible at all. Bolles is simply an average tackle who makes more mistakes than the average tackle in terms of penalties. That makes him seem like a less effective player than he actually is, but this is a guy who gets out in the running game and mauls people, and he’s at least stopped the bleeding the Broncos were experiencing at the left tackle position from 2013-2016.

If Bolles can take a leap in 2019, the Broncos’ offensive line will probably be substantially better.