Monthly Archives: April 2012

April 13, 2012

Colorado State makes a bet on redemption

By Dave Krieger

There’s never been any doubt that Larry Eustachy could coach.

Anybody following Big 12 Conference basketball at the turn of the century will recall the back-to-back conference championships at Iowa State featuring star players Jamaal Tinsley and Marcus Fizer. Eustachy and his upstart Cyclones came this close to the Final Four in 2000 before losing a memorable Midwest Regional final to eventual national champion Michigan State.

Of course, Big 12 fans might also remember Eustachy’s meltdown at the end of that game, a public hint of the private demons that stalked him when the games were over and the television lights had been packed away.

Four years later, after the sort of internet-fed public disgrace with which we have since become familiar — a Missouri student snapped and posted photos of a drunken Eustachy kissing college co-eds at a party after a game — he found himself starting over with a program at the University of Southern Mississippi that even basketball fans barely knew existed.

The road back, both personally and professionally, led him to Fort Collins on Thursday, where he became head coach at Colorado State, a school with a president and new athletic director dreaming of greatness.

“The Southern Miss job really interested me because of the culture,” Eustachy said on the Dave Logan Show. “There just is no basketball culture there, and I’m one who has lofty goals and thinks I can change the world. The previous coach, the coach I followed, I picked the last game that he was the coach at and I counted the people in the stands and there were like 218 of ’em. And I thought, well, here’s a perfect place to try to educate the fans, to try to build some type of tradition.”

In his first season, the Golden Eagles went 2-14 in Conference USA play, good for fourteenth in the standings. Conference USA doesn’t even have fourteen teams anymore. Eight years later, they were 25-9 overall and 11-5 in the conference, accepting their first NCAA tournament bid in twenty-one years.

“To say it was easy, it was not,” Eustachy said. “It was very difficult. We were in for a marathon, not a sprint. And we got it to a point where we were getting four or five thousand people at the game and I just thought it was time to have a new challenge.

“When this opportunity opened up, I just am in love with this region, you know? I had been at Utah State. I grew up on the beach of Southern California. I love the beach and I love the mountains. I just thought this would be a perfect place to reach other goals of mine, particularly with a program with such potential.”

The internet pictures made Eustachy more famous than he’d ever been as a successful basketball coach. Iowa State announced his departure in 2003 as a resignation, but Eustachy calls it what it was — a firing.

“It was truly the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said. “I’m a recovering alcoholic. I have the disease of alcoholism and I have no problem talking about it.

“I never understood just what it meant to have that disease and be an alcoholic. I thought that was the guy under the bridge with the paper bag. I mean, I never drank during the day. I never drank before a game. I never drank before a practice. I never drank before a meeting. I drank when the day was over. And how can I be an alcoholic if I’m National Coach of the Year, winning back-to-back Big 12 championships? But I was. But I was, is my point.

“I believe there’s somebody much more powerful than me I choose to call God guiding my life, and he dropped me to my knees and humbled me and made me reinvent myself. I know it happened for a reason. So I don’t look back. I wouldn’t change a thing. I don’t need to be at Duke. I don’t need to be at Kentucky. I need to be at a place that has a chance to win because losing’s no fun. So I’m at a perfect spot in my life and would rather be nowhere else.”

In keeping with the tone that CSU president Tony Frank and athletic director Jack Graham want to establish, the first economic incentive in Eustachy’s five-year contract rewards him if his players graduate and there are no major NCAA violations on his watch. After that come the usual incentives for winning. Asked about CSU as his next stop, the 56-year-old Eustachy responded this way:

“The next and the last, and I’ve got a contract to prove it, because if I tried to buy myself out, I’d have to take out a loan. I love the area, I love the vision of the president and the athletic director and I really think it’s been an untapped basketball program, I really do.”

Before leaving for Nebraska, former CSU coach Tim Miles left the program in much better shape than the one Eustachy found eight years ago at Southern Miss. The Rams made the NCAA tournament field this year for the first time since 2003. They went 20-12 overall, 8-6 in the Mountain West Conference. In fact, Eustachy’s Golden Eagles were the only team to beat the Rams on their home floor last season, a 79-58 thrashing in November.

“I’ve completely changed as a person, Eustachy said. “I haven’t had a drink, in a couple weeks it’ll be nine years. But the game hasn’t changed. I really think there’s just one way to play the game. I think players want parameters built around them. I think players want to be coached hard. They certainly don’t want to be belittled, and we don’t do that. What we do is we mold character and we teach them how to play the game the right way.

“We’re very demanding. We don’t believe in taking plays off. We push it up the court offensively and take the first good shot available. You’d have to ask them, but I think players love playing that way and love playing for not only me but the staff that I have.”

Not that many college coaches last long enough to amass 400 career wins, so you know Eustachy has been around just by the career 402-258 record he brings to Fort Collins. CSU gives him a chance to take an unrecognized program to the national stage. Eustachy gives CSU a chance to achieve its suddenly ambitious athletic goals. And together, they have a chance to make a public statement about the power of redemption.

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April 10, 2012

The lamest home opener in Rockies history

By Dave Krieger

Throughout their twenty-year history, the Rockies have been an above-average entertainment value in home openers.

There was the unforgettable first one, for example. Everyone remembers Eric Young hitting a leadoff home run in the bottom of the first, as if christening big league baseball in Colorado by smashing a bottle of champagne on the hull. Not everyone remembers Charlie Hayes hitting a two-run shot later that same inning on the way to a raucous 11-4 win over the Expos before an astonishing crowd of 80,227 at Mile High Stadium

Two years later, in another christening, they opened their new ballpark, Coors Field, with a four-hour, 49-minute, fourteen-inning marathon against the Mets. Down 9-8 in the bottom of the 14th, Dante Bichette hit a walk-off three-run homer that sent the most loyal among the sellout crowd of 47,228 — those who had not found an excuse to retreat from the cold — deliriously into the night.

In 2001, Mike Hampton pitched 8 1/3 innings of shutout ball to lead an 8-0 shutout of the Cardinals, providing temporary (and false, as it turned out) hope about the results of the team’s most expensive free agent signing of all time.

Four years after that, the Rocks delivered another walk-off in their opening act, a two-out, two-run homer by Clint Barmes in the bottom of the ninth to beat the Padres 12-10.

The next year, 2006, brought yet another walk-off win when Brad Hawpe drove in Matt Holliday in the bottom of the 11th to earn a 3-2 win over the Diamondbacks.

And two years ago, they cruised to an Opening Day 7-0 shutout over the Padres behind Jorge De La Rosa.

In all, the Rocks were 11-8 in home openers going into Monday’s 20th edition, and 8-4 since 2000.

So, all things considered, the twentieth curtain-raising was their lamest ever. For one thing, they had never failed to score in a home opener before the Giants’ 7-0 whitewash.

On a gorgeous Colorado spring afternoon, before a full house ready to rock Coors Field, the Rocks looked curiously unprepared to play, as if informed a game had been scheduled just minutes before it began. They made Giants starter Barry Zito look worthy of his seven-year, $126 million contract, which is otherwise considered one of the ten worst contracts in baseball history. At an altitude where breaking balls come to die, Zito’s curve ball completely baffled the Rocks. In fact, this was Zito’s first shutout in nine years and his first in the National League.

“Obviously, he pitched a good game,” Rockies first baseman Todd Helton said. “He got a lot of weak pop flies, kept us off balance. But we’ve got to put together better at-bats, and I think we will. I think nerves were a little involved. Hopefully the next game we’ll come out relaxed and swing the bats better.”

It wasn’t just the bats, although, admittedly, it’s hard to win when you don’t score. It was, as Mike Shanahan used to say, all three phases.

“We didn’t pitch well early in the game, we weren’t able to do a whole lot offensively and we had a miscue that helped lead to a three-run fifth inning,” manager Jim Tracy said, summing up the general incompetence succinctly. “I think tone to a game and tempo to a game is obviously very, very important, and the tempo that we set in the early part of the game was not good. Jhoulys (Chacin) struggled with his command throughout the time that he was out there.”

The Rockies’ winningest pitcher a year ago (11-14), Chacin threw 90 pitches in four innings, barely more than half of them (47) strikes. After leaving a pitch over the middle of the plate in the first and watching Pablo Sandoval airmail it into the right field stands for a two-run homer, he seemed to want nothing to do with the plate. He walked three batters in a row in the third, which turned the inning’s only hit, a single to right by catcher Hector Sanchez, into two more runs.

“The first two innings I feel pretty good,” Chacin said. “The third inning I just lost my focus and I was rushing all the pitches, my breaking ball and my fastball especially. I couldn’t get the ball to the plate and I walked a lot of guys in that inning . . . It’s a good thing I’ve got 30, 31 starts to go. I’m not going togive it up after one start.”

Meanwhile, the Rockies were batting as if hypnotized by Zito’s breaking balls. They lunged, they dove, they popped the ball in the air. The eight position players went down in order in the first three innings. The first of their four hits was a mighty twelve-foot nubber down the third-base line by Chacin himself. Marco Scutaro followed with a two-out single to center. This, it turned out, was their big rally of the day. Dexter Fowler fanned to end it.

The Rocks have now scored ten runs in four games. When I asked Tracy about this, he urged patience.

“I think it’s four games into the season and I think rather than push any kind of panic button or anything like that, we’re probably not the only club in baseball that right now is trying to find its way a little bit offensively,” he said. “I think the cure for that is to keep allowing a bunch of professional hitters to go up there and take at-bats and at some point in time, I guarantee you, we’ll get that squared away. There’s too many good hitters in this lineup for it to continue, in my opinion, for an extended period of time.”

For the sake of the paying customers, he’d better be right. Even prognosticators who didn’t think much of the Rockies’ chances this season thought they’d hit. Through four games, third baseman Chris Nelson is 0-for-10. Fowler is 1-for-11. Helton is 1-for-12. The team’s stars, left fielder Carlos Gonzalez and shortstop Troy Tulowitzki are batting .176 (3-for-17) and .214 (3-for-14), respectively.

“I actually felt good today,” said Helton, who went 0-for-4. “I know it didn’t show. Third at-bat it was tough to see. The shadows came into play. Fourth at-bat you could see. Put a couple good swings on the ball, but, you know, get ’em tomorrow.”

To complete Shanahan’s trifecta, the Rockies didn’t field well, either. The cherry on the Giants’ sundae was a three-run fifth against reliever Matt Reynolds that was built on a pair of errors — a dropped pop fly to short left by CarGo and a throw in the dirt to second from the hole between short and third by Tulo.

That’s six errors in four games, which is not a good ratio. Last year, they committed 98 in 162 and ranked ninth in the National League.

So, yes, it was only one game, but it was the sort of debut that can close a Broadway show in its first week. The sellout crowd of 49,282 booed the home team early and often.

The Rockies’ hardest-hit ball of the day was a foul line drive off the bat of Michael Cuddyer that hit Judith Reese, a woman celebrating her 69th birthday in the stands down the third-base line, in the head. The game was stopped so Reese could be removed on a cart normally reserved for injured players. Thankfully, she was treated for a concussion and released later in the day from Denver Health.

“I want to thank the fans, the paramedics and the community for their instant support,” she said, according to a news release by the hospital.

All in all, the opener was not exactly what the team marketing officer was going for.

“Yeah, it is disappointing,” Helton said. “Obviously, you want to go out and have a good showing Opening Day, and we didn’t do that. But in the end it is one game. We get a day off (Tuesday). It’ll be tough to sleep tonight, but after that you’ve just got to wash it off. It’s just one game. But yeah, with the excitement, the fans in the stands, it’d be nice to put together a better game.”

They’ll come back with Jeremy Guthrie against Giants ace Tim Lincecum on Wednesday. The early results don’t mean much for the outcome of the long season — the Rocks started 11-2 last year and finished 16 games below .500 — but a few signs of life would be nice.

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April 9, 2012

A little early to panic: Thoughts on the Rockies’ first series

By Dave Krieger

On Twitter, the modern version of Morse code, RIGHT NOW is all that really matters. Thus, from the first weekend of baseball’s new season, we get:

* Trading Jason Hammel was a huge mistake by the Rockies because he had the best start of his career in his Orioles debut, taking a no-hitter into the eighth inning.

* The Red Sox stink again, just like last fall when they blew a sure playoff berth. Shows what the experts know.

* The Mets are awesome.

* The Rockies’ roster is a joke, what was Dan O’Dowd thinking, and Jim Tracy still overmanages.

Slight exaggerations, granted, but I did receive these tweets, verbatim, after the Rocks lost two out of three in Houston:

“Offense overrated.”

“So far, Rockies are who critics thought they were.”

After three games. Out of 162. So let’s take a step back and remember a few things. Last year, the Rocks came out of the gate 11-2 and finished April at 17-8. They were under .500 by the end of May (25-29) on their way to a desultory 73-win season.

This is where the level-headed writer is supposed to urge fans to wait for a statistically significant sample size, but in two of the past five seasons, there has been no such thing for the Rockies.

In 2010, they had a .554 winning percentage, on pace for 90 wins, through 148 games, which seems like a pretty good sample size. Then they lost 13 of their last 14 to finish 83-79 (.512). So a team that looked good for much of the season turned out to be mediocre.

In 2007, as you may recall, exactly the opposite happened. The Rocks had a .514 winning percentage through 148 games, barely above average, then won 13 out of 14 (14 out of 15 if you count the one-game playoff with San Diego; 21 out of 22 if you could the NLDS and NLCS), to finish the regular season 89-73. So a team that looked mediocre for much of the season turned out to be pretty good.

All of which is to say sometimes you can’t tell with the Rockies even when you’ve watched them all summer. So one weekend in April is probably not enough basis for any significant conclusions. But let’s knock down a few misconceptions anyway:

* Jamie Moyer is not the No. 2 starter, even though he pitched the second game. You might think this wouldn’t need to be explained to anyone paying even casual attention, but apparently it does. Moyer, who throws nothing but junk because he’s . . . well, because he’s 49 years old . . .  was inserted in the rotation between hard throwers Jeremy Guthrie and Juan Nicasio in hopes he would serve as a change of pace. It may have worked, although not for him. After hitting against him Saturday, the Astros were largely lost against Nicasio’s heat Sunday. Starting Moyer in Houston also gives him one less start at altitude, where one winces at the prospects.

In any case, Moyer is the fifth starter, and a temporary one at that. The first four starters are Guthrie, Nicasio, Drew Pomeranz and Jhoulys Chacin. When Jorge De La Rosa is ready to return from Tommy John surgery — early June, the Rocks hope — he’ll take the fifth spot and Moyer’s grand Reminiscence Tour will be over.

Moyer made the club only because four younger candidates for the temporary fifth starter role — Guillermo Moscoso, Tyler Chatwood, Josh Outman and Alex White — failed to win the job in the spring. That’s disappointing, but if any of them starts pitching well, either in the minor leagues or from the bullpen, he can take Moyer’s spot any time.

* The fact that Pomeranz is not yet on the 25-man roster does not prove Rockies management is demented. Pomeranz, the fifth pick of the 2010 draft and the central prize of the Ubaldo Jimenez trade, pitched 101 innings in the minors last year and 18.1 in the majors. That’s . . . give me a minute to warm up the calculator — 119.1 innings pitched. Crunching the numbers on young pitchers who have run into arm trouble, the Rocks conclude that one red flag is a big jump in innings pitched from one year to the next.

If Pomeranz is as good as he looks — his minor league ERA last year was 1.78 — he would pitch 200 innings or more as a regular member of the rotation. The Rocks don’t want that. In fact, they don’t want him to pitch many more than 150. How to do that?

Well, treat him like a fifth starter, even though he’ll probably be their ace in short order. Skip him the first time around, since a day off allows them to go with four starters twice through the rotation. His scheduled start at Double A Tulsa is to keep him on schedule, but it should be a short one. I’m still suggesting you get tickets for Sunday, April 15, his first scheduled start of the season at Coors Field.

* The reason Jonathan Herrera is on the roster is not that he’s friends with Carlos Gonzalez. He, Chris Nelson and Eric Young Jr. may seem like way too many of the same sort of ineffectual player, but there’s one big difference: Rockies management doesn’t want to see either Nelson or Young playing shortstop or second base if it’s not an emergency. That means Herrera is the only defensive replacement for Troy Tulowitzki or Marco Scutaro that doesn’t make the brass cringe. Rockies fans love to hate Herrera because he doesn’t hit much, but inasmuch as the Rocks have committed four errors in three games, all by infielders and one costing them Sunday’s game, they probably want more defense, not less.

* Yes, admittedly, third base is still a black hole. While studly prospect Nolan Arenado begins the season at Tulsa (batting .533 through four games with an OPS of 1.344) the Rocks hope that either Nelson or Jordan Pacheco proves capable of being a placeholder. Each made a costly throwing error in Houston, Pacheco’s arguably costing them Sunday’s game, and they were a combined 1-for-11 at the plate.

If it makes you feel any better, Ian Stewart committed one of those sleepy Ian Stewart errors — dropping a ball as he transferred it from his glove to his hand — for the Cubs, although he is 2-for-8 with a run scored and an RBI through three games in Chicago.

But, hey, that ship has sailed. Stewart hit .156 last season and after eight years in the organization, the Rocks moved on, exchanging him for outfielder Tyler Colvin, another former first-round pick in need of a fresh start. One of three things is going to happen at the hot corner:

1. Nelson or Pacheco takes hold of the position, hits enough to stay in the lineup and learns how to throw to first.

2. Neither takes hold of the position and the Rocks, desperate, call up Brandon Wood from Triple A Colorado Springs, who is 4-for-14 through four games (.286) and hasn’t made an error yet.

3. Neither takes hold of the position and the Rocks, desperate, notice Arenado is batting over .500, figure he’ll be old enough to drink legally any day (his 21st birthday is a week from today), throw caution to the wind and call him up.

Even while losing the series in Houston, the Rocks saw some encouraging signs. Guthrie and Nicasio both gave them quality starts, pitching seven innings apiece. Rookie catcher Wilin Rosario hit a towering home run in his first start, confirming the power he demonstrated in spring training. The bats haven’t heated up yet, but newcomer Michael Cuddyer had five hits in his first series in purple and black.

But the main point I want to make is it’s only three games. The Yankees are 0-3. So are the Red Sox. The Orioles are 3-0, which is the biggest tell of all. So do what the Rocks did last night. Put the Houston series in the rearview and enjoy today’s home Opening Day.

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April 8, 2012

Will this be the year both of Denver’s winter teams miss the playoffs?

By Dave Krieger

In the sixteen winter sports seasons since the Avalanche arrived in Colorado from Quebec, Denver has never been shut out of the playoffs in both of its major league winter sports.

In five of those seasons, both the Nuggets and Avs made it. In eight others, from 1996 through 2003, the Avs made the playoffs and the Nuggets did not. In the other three — 2007, 2009 and 2011 — the Nuggets made it and the Avs did not.

In short, with the Avalanche having missed the NHL playoffs this season for the fourth time in six years and the Nuggets facing a daunting final ten games in their battle to make the NBA postseason, there’s a chance Denver could see no spring playoffs for the first time since it acquired teams in all four major league sports.

Even after Saturday night’s flat performance at Golden State, where they lost by fifteen, the Nuggets remain in the eight-team Western Conference playoff bracket, seeded eighth going into today’s games with a record of 30-26. Houston and Dallas, in sixth and seventh, are a half game ahead of them. Phoenix and Utah, seeded ninth and tenth, are one game behind them.

The Nuggets are 7-10 this season against the teams remaining on their schedule. Chris Sheridan, who covered the NBA for years with the Associated Press and now runs his own website, ranked them eighteenth in his weekly power rankings today, tenth in the West, and had this to say about their playoff hopes:

“Went a decent 4-5 in stretch of playing eight of nine on road, but the “5” included losses to Raptors, Hornets and Warriors. Last 10 are half on the road, half at home. Pair of “must-wins” to start week, home against Golden State and Minnesota. If they lose one of those two, I think they’re missing the playoffs. Rest of schedule is too tough.”

Asked about his team’s prospects, coach George Karl had this to say: “If we put 37 or 38 wins on the board and someone beats us out, I think we can at least look in the mirror and say we’ve done our job. It is crazy, and I’m not going to predict what’s going to happen.”

The Nuggets would have to go 7-3 or 8-2 over the final ten to put 37 or 38 wins on the board. Considering they are 5-5 over their last ten and 11-9 over the last twenty, that would be a significant improvement down the stretch.

Danilo Gallinari, considered their best player by many of their fans, has missed 23 of the past 31 games with injuries, the most recent a broken left thumb that kept him out of the past ten. He’s expected back for the final stretch. The team is 11-12 without him this season, 19-14 with him.

Here’s the remaining schedule, with the Nuggets’ record against the opponent this season in parenthesis:

April 9: v. Golden State (0-2)

April 11: v. Minnesota (1-1)

April 13: at L.A. Lakers (1-2)

April 15: v. Houston (1-1)

April 16: at Houston (1-1)

April 18: v. L.A. Clippers (1-2)

April 21: at Phoenix (2-0)

April 22: v. Orlando (1-0)

April 25: at Oklahoma City (0-2)

April 26: at Minnesota (1-1)

If the Nuggets come up short, it will be the first time during the Kroenke ownership era that both of the family’s Denver major league teams miss the playoffs. It’s also likely to increase the criticism that E. Stanley Kroenke now cares more about his St. Louis football team and English soccer team than his Denver holdings.

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April 7, 2012

How Ubaldo’s suspension turned into a joke

By Dave Krieger

Ubaldo Jimenez was reportedly hit with a fine — amount undisclosed — in addition to his five-game suspension for throwing at Troy Tulowitzki in the final week of spring training. The fine, it turns out, will be his only punishment.

The five-game suspension will have no effect on Jimenez or the Indians.

Had the suspension taken effect at the start of the regular season, as intended, Jimenez would have missed the Indians’ first five games, costing him a start. But players can suspend a suspension by filing an appeal, and Jimenez did just that, never intending to follow through with the appeal.

Still, the maneuver served its purpose. It allowed him to take his regular turn, second in the Indians’ rotation, on Saturday, when he pitched 5 2/3 innings of perfect baseball against Toronto, lost his no-hitter, shutout and lead on one pitch in the seventh and exited without a decision. The Indians ultimately lost in 12 innings.

He dropped his appeal immediately after the game, meaning he will begin serving his suspension on Sunday, when the Tribe’s No. 3 starter, Derek Lowe, pitches. Because the Indians have an off-day Thursday, Lowe will be able to pitch out of order on his regular rest Friday, and Jimenez will be eligible to pitch Saturday, having sat out the required five games.

So the Cleveland rotation for the first ten games of the season: Justin Masterson, Jimenez, Lowe, Josh Tomlin, Jeanmar Gomez, Masterson, Lowe, Jimenez, Tomlin, Gomez.

Ubaldo never misses a start; he just switches places in the rotation with Lowe. That meaningless flip-flop is the suspension’s sole effect.

Rockies general manager Dan O’Dowd declined comment Saturday, saying the club was moving on.

By suspending Jimenez, the league office made it clear it believed he hit Tulowitzki intentionally in a Cactus League game last Sunday after the Rockies shortstop made comments critical of his former teammate earlier in the spring. And yet, other than whatever weight comes out of his wallet, neither he nor the Indians will be penalized for it.

Ubaldo’s manipulation of baseball’s disciplinary process makes the league office look stupid, and not for the first time during the Bud Selig regime.

Baseball has at least two ways to fix its process:

1. Adjudicate appeals immediately — say, within 24 or 48 hours — by use of video conferencing. Had this been done in Ubaldo’s case, his appeal would have been heard and presumably denied before the season began, meaning his suspension would have been served during the season’s first five games, as intended.

2. If the intent is to suspend a starting pitcher for one start, make the suspension eight games instead of five. That way, whenever it’s served, the pitcher’s team has to skip him in the rotation one time.

Ubaldo manipulated the system because the system let him. If the league office is paying attention, it should make sure it doesn’t happen again.

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April 4, 2012

The two things Peyton Manning will need to survive in Denver

By Dave Krieger

Peyton Manning’s short free agency prompted a healthy debate about the merits of putting the fortunes of your franchise in the hands of a 36-year-old quarterback coming off a neck injury serious enough to require multiple surgeries and sideline him for an entire season.

Skeptics cited Johnny Unitas and Joe Namath as examples of once-great quarterbacks who tried and failed to rekindle past glory with new teams late in their careers. But then, Unitas was 40 when he played his final, forgettable season in San Diego after 17 years in Baltimore, and Namath could barely walk by the time he played an equally cringe-worthy final season for the Rams after 12 years with the Jets.

(By the way, these two greats put on what some consider the best passing exhibition in NFL history on Sept. 24, 1972 in Baltimore, where they combined for 872 passing yards. Namath threw for 496 yards and six touchdowns in a 44-34 win, the Jets’ first victory over the Colts since Super Bowl III almost four years before. Unitas threw for 376 and three touchdowns.)

On the other hand, although John Elway never changed teams, he did achieve his greatest success very late in the day, winning his two Super Bowls with the Broncos at ages 37 and 38.

The best example of a quarterback changing teams and achieving success late in his career is Jim Plunkett, like Elway a Stanford star and first overall pick in the draft. Plunkett struggled in his early stops at New England and San Francisco. He joined the Raiders in 1979, the year he turned 32. A year later, at 33, he led them to the first of his two Super Bowl championships. He threw for 261 yards and three touchdowns and was named most valuable player as the Raiders became the first wild-card team to win a title, beating the Eagles 27-10. Three years later, at 36, he led them to his second, a 38-9 romp over the Redskins.

“It’s about the all-around personnel,” Plunkett explained recently during an appearance on the Dave Logan Show. “You’re playing with a better group of people. You’re playing with a team that has a defense. You’re not always playing catch-up all the time. A team that’s used to winning. That’s a big plus as well. They expect to win each and every game every time they step on the field.

“It was a struggle initially for me both at New England and San Francisco. I wanted it to work out in the worst possible way for me back in my home area and it just did not. I joined the Raiders and I’m playing with a lot of Hall of Famers-to-be, guys who are used to winning, guys who have a winning past. They just surround you with more better players to get the job done.”

I mentioned Unitas and Namath and asked Plunkett what the primary differences are between older quarterbacks who save their best for last and those clearly on the downhill side of their careers.

“Part of it has to do with health,” he said. “Part of it has to do with the team you’re around. As you get older, you get hurt more. I just found that to be my case after that second Super Bowl, and even a little bit before. It was hard for me to stay healthy. I’d get nicked up a little easier. Of course, part of it was my style of play. Instead of going down like I should, I’d hang in there and get my head knocked off and in the process got beat up quite a bit.

“Peyton Manning’s had a lot of luck in that regard up until lately. And it still remains to be seen how well he bounces back. One of the things everybody’s hoping, especially the Broncos, is that he hardly misses a beat and he comes back strong. But then you’ve got to still surround him with the type of people and run the kind of offense that he’s used to, I think. That would be a big plus for him. The personnel’s just different. It was geared (in Indianapolis) to make Peyton Manning a better quarterback on offense. Right now, they might not have those kind of people at Denver in place yet.”

Plunkett, who continues to cover the game as a radio and television host for the Raiders, offered this overall assessment of Manning as a quarterback and his prospects moving to Denver:

“I see a guy who gets rid of the ball quickly, who reads defenses quickly, throws prior to the break. I’ve seen him a lot. I saw him in that great championship game when they were down 21-3, I believe, to the Patriots at halftime (the 2006 season AFC championship on Jan. 21, 2007, in which the Patriots led 21-6 at the half and the Colts came back to win, 38-34). To watch him bring that team back against a very good football team was quite impressive. The Patriots were able to put a lot of pressure on him, but the guy’s just got a great ability to anticipate where that receiver’s going to be and get rid of the ball, even though the protection’s not that good. Hopefully, that’s the kind of quarterback that Denver’s going to get.

“But also you’ve seen guys with injuries, and I’ve seen it a lot with broken jaws for some players, especially linebackers and running backs. Those guys that have broken their jaw, for whatever reason, when they come back, they’re kind of tentative. They’re afraid to put their head in there because it hurts. It’s something you’ve got to overcome. I had a few knee operations when I was playing and after you get your first hit and you get knocked down, you’re kind of testing out your knee to see if it’s OK. And I think Peyton might have to go through some of that when he comes back and starts to get hit and knocked around: ‘Is my neck going to hold up?’ And he might be kind of tentative until he takes a few shots and sees how sturdy or not that his neck is.”

Immediately after signing Manning, Elway moved to improve the quality of the weapons around him. He added wide receiver Andre Caldwell to incumbents Demaryius Thomas and Eric Decker. He also signed a pair of receiving tight ends in Joel Dreessen and Jacob Tamme, the latter a teammate of Manning’s with the Colts.

Plunkett put his finger on the two key ingredients if the Broncos are going to enjoy the kind of success with Manning that Elway is banking on:

1. Manning must stay healthy, fully recovered from his neck injury and not suffering other, nagging injuries that often contribute to the deterioration of play in older quarterbacks.

2. Elway must surround him with the right personnel. If anyone understands this, Elway should. After three Super Bowl losses, it was the arrival of Terrell Davis that finally gave him the opportunity to win championships. Manning may not need a 2,000-yard rusher, but Elway will have to get the supporting cast right for the $96 million gamble on a 36-year-old Hall of Famer-to-be to succeed.

The Broncos ranked 23rd in total offense and 25th in scoring offense last season. Some of that, obviously, was the result of a run-dominated scheme built around the skill set of quarterback Tim Tebow. The Broncos ranked first in rushing, at 165 yards a game, and 31st in passing, at 152. Those numbers are likely to change quite dramatically with Manning at the controls.

Somewhere along the way, Manning will have to find the sort of working relationship with Broncos receivers that he enjoyed with Marvin Harrison, Reggie Wayne and Dallas Clark for him to replicate the success in the passing game he achieved in Indianapolis.

Do the Broncos have receivers capable of that on the roster currently? We’ll soon find out.

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