The secret ingredient powering Zach Allen’s breakout season and Broncos’ dominant pass rush

Any good utensil can serve multiple purposes.

On a scorching July day in Dallas, Zach Allen’s Mediterranean bowl had to wait.

He and John Franklin-Myers were too busy talking shop.

The new Broncos teammates finished up a day of drill work and meetings with dozens of other NFL players but they weren’t done chopping it up.

They found themselves at dinner carrying on, learning to speak the same language.

Sometimes the best way to explain how you want to handle a certain look, rush a certain tackle or work wrinkles into your repertoire includes a plastic fork or a salt shaker.

“It was just us pretty much alone at Cava, talking pass-rush, moving utensils around,” Allen told The Denver Post. “Literally.”

Three months later, Allen and Franklin-Myers are powering one of the most disruptive defenses in the league. The Broncos are second in the NFL in sacks and lead the league in total pressures. They’ve rattled quarterbacks from rookie Spencer Rattler to 20-year veteran Aaron Rodgers.

Allen, in his sixth season overall and second with the Broncos, is playing the best football of his life. There are all kinds of reasons for his ascendance individually and for the collective overhaul of a group that lacked punch in 2023 and now hands it out in bunches.

But Allen has a secret weapon.

It’s the reason he and Franklin-Myers found themselves in Texas in the first place. Or, better put, he is the reason.

He is BT Jordan, a pass-rush guru with a roster of NFL clients 200 deep, who spent training camp working as an intern on the Broncos coaching staff and is still doing consulting work for the team. He’s in regular dialogue with Allen, Franklin-Myers, Baron Browning and others on Denver’s front seven.

Ask around and they make it very clear: The story of the Broncos’ pass-rush turnaround this fall can’t be told without noting Jordan’s influence.

“He’s been huge,” Allen told The Post. “I really owe a lot to him.”

A new level

Allen is on the elevator, ascending into the upper echelon of NFL defensive linemen week by week.

The 27-year-old has taken all the facets of his game — he plays hard, he plays a ton of snaps, he generates pressure — and cranked them up another notch.

In 2023 he played every game for the first time in his career. He set career highs by playing 80% of Denver’s defensive snaps and generating 64 pressures (12.8% pressure rate), according to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats, while recording five sacks.

In 2024 Allen is playing a whopping 90% of defensive snaps (his 405 snaps lead all defensive linemen and his 252 pass-rush reps are the most for any player), he’s generated 35 pressures already and his pressure rate is up to 13.8%.

Allen has a routine for the extra work he does outside of practice and team meetings that he developed this season.

It starts with a note from Jordan sent within a few hours of the Broncos’ game ending each week.

“We talk every week,” Allen explained. “Sunday night he sends me a quick (note) on what he thought. Tuesday we go over the past game and then Wednesday night we’ll figure out this, this, this for this offensive lineman and this other thing for this other guy.”

Jordan does similar work with Franklin-Myers and Browning.

Allen has always been a prolific note-taker and the kind of player who will put in extra work. But this, he said, has been a revelation.

It’s showing, too.

Allen had two pressures in Week 1 against Seattle and since then he’s logged four or more in every game, according to Next Gen Stats.

Defensive coordinator Vance Joseph has seen Allen’s entire career up close in Arizona and now Denver and said Allen has not only grown as a rusher, but he’s developed as a run defender, too.

“He’s a complete player now,” Joseph said.

A player, though, who logged five sacks in 2023 and came away frustrated, sure he was leaving meat on the bone.

That’s why he sought out Jordan this offseason.

The two crossed paths in 2021 when Jordan was doing some work in Arizona — Cardinals defensive line coach Brentson Buckner linked them up — but then this summer the stars aligned.

Franklin-Myers has worked with Jordan since his rookie year in 2019 and later became friends with Allen over a mutual game-recognize-game appreciation for each other.

Then in April Franklin-Myers got traded to Denver. After the pair spent OTAs and minicamp getting to know each other, Franklin-Myers put the hard sell on Allen to join him at Jordan’s July pass-rush retreat in Texas.

Not only that, but Jordan was coming to Denver to spend training camp with the Broncos.

Allen decided to get a head start.

“We just kind of broke it down to a science,” Allen said. “He obviously has great drill work, but the thing that he and I really emphasized was just, like, last year I had a good amount of pressures, but how do we turn those into sacks? However many sacks I had — five I think —  if out of 60-some pressures, you just turn three or four more of those into sacks, (that’s huge). So we just worked on little things like that, how to finish better or win a little bit cleaner.

“Little things like that have made a big difference.”

Last year Allen turned 7.8% of his pressures into sacks. This year he’s at 11.4%. He’s currently on pace for 9.7 sacks. If he hit double-digits, he’d nearly double his previous career best of 5.5.

Jordan explains his process in a simple way.

“My teaching is I break it into pieces and then we put it together to where guys can build and learn muscle memory,” he said.

And he explains Allen’s approach similarly.

“Zach knows exactly why he’s rushing the way he’s rushing,” Jordan said. “He studies all week to study the o-line he’s going against and he has the detail on how he’s going to rush his guy every week. He gives me his plan each week and why he’s doing it.

“He’s a student of the game and he’s a great athlete, too. He’s got good ball quickness, he uses his hands. He’s a football player but he’s got the other tools like effort and being a student of the game that makes him great.”

Making connections

Jordan’s story is as improbable as it is impressive.

He played offensive line and then was an offensive graduate assistant at FCS Austin Peay in 2013 when the defensive line coach was fired and he got thrust into the role.

When the staff got fired in 2015, he couldn’t find a job so he went home to New Orleans.

“I reached out to some kids in the neighborhood. I was working at this middle school or we’d go to an open park or we’d go to a field,” Jordan said.

He started putting videos of his drills on social media and they racked up views.

Then Snacks Harrison, a Louisiana native and longtime NFL defensive tackle, reached out and asked about working together.

The next week: Gerald McCoy.

Jordan’s stock in the eyes of pros took off.

He worked with players and got into draft training. He founded his company, Trench Performance.

“My first draft class was Rashan Gary, Clelin Ferrell, Ed Oliver and Maxx Crosby,” Jordan said. “It started growing crazy after that. …  Guys started talking about me in the locker room and then guys wanted to try me out. Maliek Collins, I was in Dallas at that time, he reached out and then the next three weeks it was the whole D-line for the Cowboys.

“It’s really about the testimonials.”

Franklin-Myers was an early believer. He started working with Jordan after getting cut by the Rams following his 2019 rookie season.

“Ever since then we’ve just really been locked in,” Jordan said.

Franklin-Myers’ eyes light up when Jordan’s name is raised.

“I can truly say that he’s the reason I’m at where I’m at,” he told The Post during training camp. “… (He’s) just somebody who, in a world that’s different, he kind of grounds people and he understands what people want and he understands where he came from, too. He started at a middle school and was coaching kids on sleds that didn’t have any pads on them. Now he’s interning here, he trains over 100 NFL D-linemen.

“Just a humble guy and a guy I can’t say enough good about.”

Jordan seems to know everybody in football and everybody seems to know him.

He got close with the Broncos’ current defensive line coach, Jamar Cain, during the 2021 pandemic shutdown in what Cain deems “a crazy story.”

“Everyone was in the house chilling and I saw his videos so I just reached out to him and DM’d him,” Cain told The Post. “He DM’d me back. We got on a Zoom a couple days later and we’ve just been friends ever since. Any time he’s training, I’m trying to learn from him. I think he’s one of the elite pass-rushing coaches in the country.

“He had a summit and there were like 70 of the top pass-rushers in the country, you know? The amount of money that was there, the people who train with him is ridiculous.”

Jordan spent 2023 working with Seattle but the staff was let go. He ended up at Ohio State for spring ball and then left the school after three months.

He grew up in New Orleans just like Joseph, the Broncos’ defensive coordinator. He knew Cain and he knew Buckner, who coached for Joseph in Arizona. He had a close relationship with Franklin-Myers. When Denver inquired about interning, he jumped at the chance.

Now he continues to do consulting work for the team and said he’s around for three days of practice about once a month.

“He’s very diligent about his work. He’s detailed. The guys listen to him,” Cain said. “Just a little thing like him talking and seeing how the guys are engaged to every word he’s saying — it’s really good.”

People power

Allen wasn’t skeptical of trainers like Jordan, per se, but he used to only see one part of the equation.

“Drill work is drill work,” he figured.

Not only has Jordan helped Allen technically, but he’s also built a community that brings scores of the best defensive players in football together.

This is Allen’s real wheelhouse.

He played at Boston College, not exactly an NFL factory. He’s been in the NFL six years now and played with a bunch of different guys, most notably J.J. Watt in Arizona, but he’s by no means a journeyman.

And yet any conversation with Allen might lead to him talking about his former draft prep partner Brian Burnes’ latest sack in New York or a Leonard Williams move in Seattle or a Maliek Collins counter in San Francisco.

At Jordan’s retreat this summer, Allen had them all right there along with so many others.

“That’s a cool thing,” he said. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, I’m just in it for me and I’m keeping secrets’ or you’re just depending on your three other teammates. We’re getting opinions from around the league from guys who have done it for so long.

“That was a cool thing going to Dallas this summer for those two days. Most of those guys I haven’t seen in a couple years or have never met, so it’s like, OK, we get to talk it out in person instead of over text or Instagram DM.”

That’s how you end up with a new teammate who’s an established friend, talking hand placement and counter moves over chicken and rice in an empty restaurant.

It’s how you go from good to really good, maybe even among the best.

Broncos gone wild

Allen’s not doing this alone on the Broncos defense.

That, actually, is a major part of the point. Teams often doubled him last year. With Franklin-Myers as a partner this year along with Malcolm Roach and D.J. Jones, teams can’t pay so much attention to No. 99.

Nik Bonitto has taken another step. Jonathon Cooper, too. A sticky secondary gives Joseph confidence to dial up pressure whenever he wants. Through seven games, 12 Broncos have at least a half sack.

“It’s been awesome,” Allen said. “It’s fun, too, because we’re doing it with so many guys and it’s not just one or two people and everyone else struggles. The standard’s really high for the whole group, which is cool, and I think that’s why you’re seeing a lot of guys play at a high level because we’ve established that culture.

“It’s been really good.”

Players get credit first and foremost. Joseph deserves plenty, too, for building a scheme that’s allowing the group to thrive individually and collectively. Cain has instilled an aggressive ethos in the defensive line during his first year on the job.

Jordan, though, deserves plaudits, too.

From afar, he’s enjoying every minute of the show.

“I’m not going to lie, I’m excited every Sunday to turn it on and just watch them and then watch that tape,” Jordan said. “Just because of the way they’re rushing and just knowing the way they studied this training camp and really put the time in after practice working it.

“The way they worked the small details of the rush all during camp and the way they’re rushing it, it’s really exciting to watch.”

Zach Allen’s rise

Source: NFL Next Gen Stats | Click here to view chart in mobile

Broncos’ 2024 sack attack

Source: Pro Football Reference and NGS | Click here to view chart in mobile

Want more Broncos news? Sign up for the Broncos Insider to get all our NFL analysis.

Link to original article