Category Archives: Broncos/NFL

April 2, 2013

Post fax faux pas, Broncos taking their time

By Dave Krieger

The Broncos have already been accused by one national analyst of “steamrolling” Elvis Dumervil’s former agent, Marty Magid, so John Elway would rather not get into the details of the most famous fax faux pas since . . . well, since fax machines became functionally obsolete about twenty-five years ago.

But Elway wants it known that the heart of the matter is pretty simple: The Broncos gave Dumervil a deadline of March 15 at 1 p.m. mountain time to accept their final offer to restructure his existing contract. When that deadline arrived, Dumervil’s answer was no. In Elway’s mind, the comedy of errors that followed only confirmed why that deadline existed in the first place.

Elway joined the Dave Logan Show on Monday for a wide-ranging interview about free agency and the draft, and we spent the first few minutes discussing the Dumervil episode.

I started by asking whether the Broncos remain interested in veteran pass rushers Dwight Freeney and John Abraham, free agents they’ve looked into as possible replacements for Dumervil, who had eleven quarterback sacks last season and 63.5 in six seasons with the Broncos (seven if you count 2010, which he sat out with an injury).

“We’re still looking into that,” Elway said. “We haven’t made any decisions on what we’re going to do. As I’ve said, those guys out there are options, but the bottom line is we also feel very comfortable with Robert Ayers. He’s going to be at the right end — as of right now he’s our starter at right end. We’re not pressed into doing anything. We feel like we can go to bat with the guys that we’ve got if that’s where it ends up, or, if other things shake out, we’ll go that direction.”

I mentioned the report KOA got from a source close to the situation that Magid, Dumervil’s former agent, had an old fax number for the Broncos, so when he tried to fax a signed contract back to the club at the last minute following Dumervil’s change of heart, he couldn’t get through in time.

“The thing that I’m going to tell you is we had a deadline at one o’clock, and I’m not going to take it any further,” Elway said. “We needed a decision at one o’clock. We got that decision that was a ‘no’ and they were not going to accept it, so therefore we started moving on.

“From that point on, we knew that there was always going to be a difficult time to get everything and all the pieces together to be able to get the contract in. That’s why there was a one o’clock deadline put on that. What happened after that, whatever it was, who knows. But the bottom line is there was not enough time to be able to get it done.”

Last week, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk and NBC Sports came on the program and criticized the Broncos for allowing the negotiations to drag on so long that the deadline for guaranteeing Dumervil’s original deal even came into play. The 1 p.m. March 15 deadline was one hour before the Broncos had to file a revised contract with the NFL office or be liable for a fully-guaranteed 2013 salary of $12 million under Dumervil’s old contract. I asked Elway why it all came down to the last minute.

“Because . . . nothing comes down unless there’s a deadline,” he said. “Especially in this situation. We had a deadline. That’s why it took the whole week. . . . Until the deadline, a lot of times you can’t get that decision. The sad thing is it took a while to get that decision and by the time we got it, it was too late.”

Florio’s suggestion on his web site that the Broncos steamrolled Magid and now face trust issues from other agents — he based the latter claim on quotes from a single, unidentified agent — is not supported by the facts. Florio’s chief complaint is that the counterproposal the Broncos sent to Magid at about 10 a.m. mountain time on March 15 converted a $3 million guarantee for 2014 to an injury-only guarantee.

But there’s no evidence the Broncos were trying to pull a fast one. Rather, that counterproposal was the result of a Magid counterproposal increasing the 2013 salary in the restructured deal from $6.5 million, the Broncos’ proposal, to $8 million. In their final offer that morning, the Broncos essentially said, “OK, we’ll give you the $8 million in 2013, but in exchange for that concession we’re going to restrict the guarantee we had offered for 2014.”

Dumervil had three hours to mull that over before the deadline. His answer, as Elway related it, was no. Then, after the Broncos’ deadline had passed, with the league deadline looming, Dumervil had a change of heart and decided to accept the restructured deal after all. But Magid was unable to engineer the logistics in time and the Broncos, without a signed contract in hand by the NFL deadline, were forced to release Dumervil to avoid guaranteeing the $12 million salary in the only contract the NFL had on file.

Even after that, with Dumervil on the free-agent market, the Broncos made a new offer of a three-year deal, reportedly worth $18 million — $8 million the first year and $5 million each of the next two, with a total of $10 million guaranteed. Dumervil chose instead to sign the Ravens’ offer of a five-year deal with $8.5 million the first year and a total of $12 million guaranteed.

Logan asked Elway if, after everything that had happened, he still thought the Broncos had a chance of retaining the defensive end after releasing him.

“I thought there was a chance, there’s no question,” Elway said. “When we looked at it, once the Cinderella slipper came off and we had to release Elvis, it was free game and he was a free agent. He was out on the market. We thought we could be competitive there, and obviously Elvis made the decision that he thought was best for Elvis. We wish him luck there and we’ll move on, too.”

In retrospect, what happened seems clear enough. The Broncos decided that Dumervil’s original contract, offered by a previous regime headed by coach Josh McDaniels, was too rich. With the advent of Von Miller, Dumervil was no longer the Broncos’ best pass rusher. The Broncos thought his value was roughly half the salary he was scheduled to make this season.

Dumervil had a hard time accepting this, but with the free agent market not yet open, he had no way of judging the market for pass rushers. As it turned out, it was only slightly higher than the Broncos’ initial offer. In any case, he seems ultimately to have reconciled himself to a pay cut, but wanted it to be less than the 46 percent cut for 2013 the Broncos had proposed. He got the Broncos up to $8 million, a 33 percent cut, but in exchange was asked to accept the injury limitation on the 2014 partial guarantee.

The fact that he turned down this compromise initially indicates his lack of enthusiasm for the revised deal. The fact that the Broncos’ three-year offer after he became a free agent was worth less in the aggregate than the restructured contract Dumervil originally turned down indicates the Broncos weren’t that enthused about the restructured deal either, thinking it still overpaid Dumvervil in the out years.

In short, the two sides never agreed on Dumervil’s current value, so it may well be better for both that the deal fell apart. But one lesson from the affair became indisputable when Dumervil fired Magid the day after the fax faux pas:

If you’re transmitting legal documents on a deadline, and you’re doing it by fax for some reason, check in advance to make sure you have the right fax number.

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March 17, 2013

Wes Welker and the NFL’s triangular blind spot

By Dave Krieger

Here’s a list of NFL receivers, most of them now out of the league. See if you can find the one that doesn’t belong.

  • WR                              Ht.       Wt.       Draft    Recep.     Yards      TDs
  • Reidel Anthony        5-11   178           1         144          1,846       16
  • Kevin Dyson              6-1      208           1        178           2,325       18
  • Rod Gardner             6-2      213           1         242          3,165       23
  • Bryant Johnson        6-2      214           1        314           3,938        16
  • Matt Jones                 6-6      242           1         166           2,153       15
  • Charles Rogers         6-3      202           1           36               440         4
  • Travis Taylor             6-1      210            1         312          4,017       22
  • David Terrell             6-3       215           1         128          1,602         9
  • Peter Warrick           5-11    192            1         275          2,991       18
  • Wes Welker               5-9      190        None    768          8,580        38
  • Mike Williams           6-5      229            1         127          1,526         5
  • Troy Williamson      6-1      203            1           87           1,131         4

Not that hard, was it?

It’s no secret that NFL scouts, personnel executives and general managers are in love with the triangle, the three measurables that ostensibly tell them about a prospect’s ceiling as an NFL player. They are height, weight and speed, the numbers even many fans now follow rigorously during the NFL scouting combine. The triangle has become so important in scouting evaluations that the combine, once considered a boring set of drills and tests, is suddenly must-see TV for true football fanatics.

As the above list indicates, it is not unusual for a college wide receiver with great measurables — big, strong, fast — to be selected in the first round of the draft and then produce an underwhelming pro career. Nor is Wes Welker alone among those who have been overlooked and gone on to produce big pro numbers. Rod Smith was an undrafted free agent who turned into the best Broncos receiver of all time.

So the fact that the triangle is far from an infallible predictor is not breaking news. But Welker is one of the most obvious examples of why. At 5-9, 185 pounds, he was decidedly small. Repeatedly clocked in the 40-yard dash at 4.6 seconds and above, he was not exceptionally fast. “Small and slow” will get you crossed off a lot of lists. And frankly, when you see Welker in street clothes, “football player” is not the first thought that comes to mind.

All Welker had going for him was a history of making big plays.

During his junior and senior years at Texas Tech, he gave NFL scouts plenty of notice of what was to come. His uncanny ability to get open produced 86 catches for 1,054 yards as a junior and 97 catches for 1,099 yards as a senior. He scored 31 touchdowns in his college career — 21 as a receiver, eight as a punt returner and two as a rusher.

Nevertheless, Welker was generally viewed by NFL scouts as a college player without the size or athletic ability to make it at the next level.

This is pretty much what college coaches thought four years before. A native of Oklahoma City, Welker attended Heritage Hall High School, where he was named Oklahoma high school player of the year by USA Today and the Daily Oklahoman in 1999. He scored 90 touchdowns in high school playing offense, defense and special teams. Oh, he also kicked field goals.

Nevertheless, he was viewed as just another high school kid without the size or athletic ability to play major college football. It didn’t help that Heritage Hall competed in Class 2A — the second lowest — in a state with six high school football classifications. He thought he’d get a scholarship offer from Tulsa, but it never came. On National Signing Day, he had no offers.

“I was thinking I’d get a scholarship offer somewhere,” Welker told USA Today. “When it didn’t happen when it was supposed to, on signing day, I was pretty hurt by it.”

A week later, Lenny Walls walked away from his scholarship at Texas Tech, choosing Boston College instead. A week after signing day, Mike Leach, the new coach at Texas Tech, offered it to Welker.

“When you saw him, he was slow and not really big,” Leach told USA Today. “But he just had a great sense of the field and how to play football.”

Welker thrived in Leach’s spread offense, but the NFL scouting report was familiar. In fact, he was so far off the league’s radar he didn’t even get an invite to the combine, where they collect the measurables that were working against him anyway.

As an undrafted free agent, his background as a kick returner helped him find work. The Chargers signed him as a returner, then released him after one game when somebody else they liked became available on the waiver wire. Marty Schottenheimer later called it one of his biggest personnel mistakes.

Miami picked him up and kept him for three seasons. The Dolphins used him as a returner and slowly opened up opportunities for him to get on the field as a receiver. In his third season he had 67 catches for 687 yards, offering a glimpse of the production he would make routine in New England.

Welker caught Patriots coach Bill Belichick’s eye with nine catches for 77 yards in a Patriots 20-10 victory over the Dolphins in 2006. Belichick reportedly considered giving him an offer sheet as a restricted free agent that offseason. Instead, he offered Miami a second-round draft pick (and, ultimately, a seventh) for Welker and acquired him that way.

In his first season in New England, Welker teamed with Tom Brady to lead the NFL in catches with 112 for 1,175 yards and eight touchdowns. The Patriots went to the Super Bowl.

In six seasons in New England, Welker caught 672 passes (an average of 112 per) for 7,459 yards (1,243 average) and 37 touchdowns. He blew out a knee in the final game of the 2009 season, tearing both his anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments. He came back in 2010 as if it had never happened, catching eight passes for 64 yards and two touchdowns in the season opener.

After all this proof that expert talent scouts have been wrong repeatedly about Welker, not that much changed when he became a free agent this season. He was far from the most prized receiver on the market.

Mike Wallace, a third-round draft pick by the Steelers in 2009, got a five-year, $60 million free agent contract from Miami, a reported $30 million of it guaranteed. Greg Jennings, a second-round pick by the Packers in 2006, got a five-year deal worth a maximum of $47.5 million from Minnesota.

Welker got a two-year deal worth $12 million from the Broncos. The $6 million annual average puts him behind more than 20 NFL receivers, even though he’s had more catches than any of them over the past six seasons.

So last week I asked him if all these skeptics and doubters over all these years have fueled him.

“They get me out of the bed every morning,” he said.

I’m told they’re trying to come up with a new test at the combine that will somehow capture intangibles that the scouts keep missing in the lengthening list of NFL stars passed over when the blue-chip athletes are selected at the top of the draft. Of course, such a test wouldn’t have helped scouts discover Welker because he wasn’t even invited to the combine.

Now 31 (he’ll turn 32 in May), Welker will never be the league’s highest-paid or most highly-valued receiver. But for a guy who fails every test of the sacred triangle, he’s having a pretty nice career.

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February 4, 2013

Broncos early favorites

By Dave Krieger

According to the oddsmaker Bovada, the Broncos are the early favorites to win next year’s Super Bowl in New Jersey. Would you take 7-1 odds right now to bet the Broncos will go all the way in Peyton Manning’s second season in Denver?

Super Bowl XLVIII Odds (2014)
Odds to win the 2014 Super Bowl XLVIII  
Denver Broncos                                     7/1
New England Patriots                           15/2
San Francisco 49ers                              15/2
Green Bay Packers                               10/1
Baltimore Ravens                                 12/1
Seattle Seahawks                                  12/1
Houston Texans                                    14/1
Atlanta Falcons                                     18/1
New Orleans Saints                               18/1
Pittsburgh Steelers                                 18/1
Chicago Bears                                       20/1
New York Giants                                  20/1
Dallas Cowboys                                    25/1
Washington Redskins                            30/1
Indianapolis Colts                                   33/1
Cincinnati Bengals                                 35/1
Detroit Lions                                          35/1
Minnesota Vikings                                 35/1
Philadelphia Eagles                                35/1
San Diego Chargers                               35/1
New York Jets                                       40/1
Carolina Panthers                                   50/1
Kansas City Chiefs                                50/1
Miami Dolphins                                     50/1
St. Louis Rams                                       50/1
Tampa Bay Buccaneers                          50/1
Arizona Cardinals                                   66/1
Cleveland Browns                                  66/1
Tennessee Titans                                    66/1
Buffalo Bills                                          100/1
Oakland Raiders                                    100/1
Jacksonville Jaguars                              150/1

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February 1, 2013

My Super Bowl bet with George Karl

By Dave Krieger

So we were wrapping up an interview the other day with Nuggets coach George Karl, who was named Western Conference coach of the month for January today, and he suddenly offered me a Super Bowl bet. You can listen to the exchange here.

Three questions:

1. Who do you think will win the bet?

2. Do you think the loser will actually pay up?

3. Where should we go for our lunch of Mexican food?

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January 13, 2013

For the Broncos, a puzzling, timid ending

By Dave Krieger

“Thanks,” Baltimore coach John Harbaugh said afterward, “for bearing witness to one of the greatest football games you’re ever going to see.”

You could understand his enthusiasm without buying his analysis. From the Ravens’ point of view, Saturday’s four-hour, 11-minute marathon represented an unbelievable comeback that will go down in Baltimore sporting lore. From the Broncos’ point of view, the only thing remotely great about it was the play of a five-foot-five-inch kick returner.

The word that best describes the home team’s approach is timid, right up until the key play with 41 seconds left in regulation, when a 22-year-old safety suddenly turned into a risk-taker. All in all, the Broncos’ judgment — when to play it safe and when to take a chance — seemed poorly calibrated.

I was standing in the south end zone when their fingernails slipped off the ledge, in the waning light of a day so cold that field security personnel were deployed in full facial gear. Rahim Moore, the free safety still a month from his 23rd birthday, was cornerback Tony Carter’s deep help in a situation that demanded the soft, safe prevent defense that fans hate.

When Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco stepped up through an ineffectual pass rush and launched a prayer of a bomb up the east sideline toward speedster Jacoby Jones, Moore cut in front of the receiver to intercept or deflect the ball.

Too late, he realized he had misjudged the angle on Flacco’s rainbow. He stumbled backward like an outfielder who has misjudged a fly ball. The football sailed over both Broncos defenders and settled into Jones’ hands. He jogged into the end zone without resistance.

This was the Ravens’ impossible situation before that play began: Third-and-three at their own 30-yard line with 41 seconds remaining, no timeouts, down 35-28. They had already used a precious 28 seconds going seven yards on two plays.

The Broncos led the NFL in quarterback sacks this season. When they knew opponents had to throw, they feasted. But they got very little pressure on Flacco all day as the Ravens’ reconstructed offensive line held the Denver pass rush at bay. Flacco completed 18 of 34 passes for 331 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions and a passer rating of 116.2.

Which made him the best quarterback on the field by a substantial margin. This was quite a surprise considering how Peyton Manning had outplayed him a month earlier in Baltimore. Manning completed 28 of 43 passes for 290 yards, three touchdowns, two interceptions and a passer rating of 88.3. Not bad, especially if you consider that his first interception bounced off receiver Eric Decker’s hands, but not exactly immortal, either, especially at the end.

Like the team around him, Manning seemed strangely timid for most of the afternoon. After that disastrous blown coverage in the final minute of regulation tied the game at 35, the Broncos got the ball back with 31 seconds showing and two timeouts. Manning took a knee and welcomed overtime.

Afterward, head coach John Fox explained this by pointing out what happened near the end of the first overtime quarter, when Manning threw behind Brandon Stokley into the arms of Ravens cornerback Corey Graham and put the visitors in position to kick the game-winning field goal.

“With 30 seconds it’s hard to go the length of the field and some bad stuff can happen, as you saw at the end of the game,” Fox said.

It was a contrived answer, like boilerplate when the actual explanation cannot be disclosed. For one thing, the analogy to the end of the fifth quarter was a poor one because the end of a fifth quarter in the postseason is like the end of a first or third. The game just continues. There’s no need to hurry up. So Manning’s mistake near the end of the fifth quarter was not a result of trying to do things in a hurry and bore no relation to the end of regulation other than the coincidence of a quarter winding down.

In addition, the Broncos didn’t have to go the length of the field at the end of regulation. They just needed to get into field goal range.

But they chose to be timid, just as they did in the series before Moore’s blown coverage. Having forced the Ravens to surrender the ball on downs, the Broncos took over at their own 31 with 3:12 remaining, leading by a touchdown. Two runs by rookie Ronnie Hillman, in for the injured Knowshon Moreno, gained 13 yards and a first down. The Ravens called their second timeout to stop the clock with 2:23 remaining.

The Broncos gave it to Hillman again, forcing Harbaugh to use his final timeout with 2:19 on the clock. They gave it to Hillman again, running the clock down to the 2-minute warning.

At this point, with the Broncos facing a third-and-seven, the Ravens no longer had any means of stopping the clock. The Broncos had a four-time Most Valuable Player at quarterback and one of the league’s most productive offenses. They needed a seven-yard pass completion to ice the game and move on to play for a berth in the Super Bowl.

Instead, they gave it to Hillman for a fifth consecutive time. He was stopped for no gain. They let the clock run, finally punting the ball back to the Ravens with 1:09 showing, setting the stage for Moore’s brain freeze.

“I just misjudged it, man,” the miserable young safety said afterward. “It was pathetic, you know? It’s my fault.”

The Broncos did what they could to deflect attention from Moore’s gaffe by talking about their other mistakes, and there were plenty to talk about. Champ Bailey, the normally reliable Pro Bowl cornerback, was consistently beaten by Ravens receiver Torrey Smith. Smith caught two touchdowns on him, and it could have been worse.

Von Miller, the Broncos’ Defensive Player of the Year candidate who finished the regular season third in the league in quarterback sacks with 18.5, eventually shared a sack with Elvis Dumervil in overtime, but was neutralized for most of the day by Ravens right tackle Michael Oher of “The Blind Side” fame.

Manning had a timid 6.7 yards per pass attempt, meaning he was usually checking it down, dinking and dunking, while Flacco’s remarkable 9.7 yards per attempt reflected Baltimore’s aggressive downfield passing game.

The Ravens’ three longest plays from scrimmage — the 70-yard bomb to Jones in the final 41 seconds, a 59-yard bomb to Smith over Bailey in the first quarter, and a 32-yard heave to Smith in front of Bailey in the second quarter — were all touchdowns.

The Broncos’ three longest plays from scrimmage were a 32-yard pass from Manning to Decker in the second quarter and two short gains extended by penalties. Manning showed no interest in throwing the ball deep.

“I couldn’t tell you what their defensive game plan was, but for a good bit there in the second half, (they had) a lot of two-deep safeties, man-to-man underneath,” Manning explained afterward. “They are going to take away some of those guys on the outside, which means you’ve got to beat them on the inside — the back out of the backfield, the tight end. That’s how you have to attack that defense.”

Maybe, but Manning threw to his backs eight times, his tight ends 11 times and his wideouts 24 times. He had only two pass plays that went for more than 20 yards.

Their big plays came not from Manning and the offense but from kick returner Trindon Holliday, who authored the longest punt return for a touchdown in NFL playoff history (90 yards) and the longest kickoff return for a touchdown in NFL playoff history (104 yards). No one had ever returned both a punt and kickoff for touchdowns in the same playoff game. Trindon Holliday’s day will be in the record book for a long time.

If Manning lacked confidence in his ability to throw a deep, accurate ball in the frigid temperatures, he wouldn’t acknowledge it publicly. All season, he declined to discuss the progress of his comeback from four neck surgeries and the nerve regeneration in his throwing arm and hand it required, other than to say it was incomplete. We do know he decided to wear a glove on his throwing hand beginning with the final two regular season games because he was having issues gripping a cold ball.

My only basis for suspecting this was an issue Saturday is that Manning played with a timidity that simply isn’t characteristic of him. I find it hard to believe that any defensive game plan could turn Peyton Manning into Elvis Grbac.

For whatever reason, the Broncos’ stars for most of a 13-3 season were ordinary in the most important game of the year, and that includes Manning, Miller and Bailey. Following an 11-game winning streak to finish the regular season, they seemed oddly flat.

“If you don’t win, you get criticized on everything,” said Fox, dismissing all second guesses with a single swipe.

The Vegas sports book fantasy of Manning vs. Tom Brady in the conference championship is off the books. As they did in 1984 and 1996, the Broncos had both a playoff bye and home field advantage and still bowed out of the postseason at their first opportunity.

Manning called the loss “disappointing,” as great an understatement as Harbaugh’s analysis was an overstatement. To some extent, Manning, Fox and everybody else were covering for Moore, trying not to say, “Look, we had the game won with 41 seconds left, whaddaya want?”

Still, they also committed three turnovers that led to 17 Ravens points and kept the visitors in the game. Two of those were Manning interceptions, one of which deflected off Decker’s hands. The third was a Manning fumble when no one was open and he had to pull the ball down in the pocket. Again, we don’t know if his ability to grip the ball was an issue there. And the defense, ranked in the league’s top five, surrendered 479 yards and innumerable big plays that kept Baltimore in the game.

Fox is presumably responsible for the decision to have Manning take a knee with two timeouts and 31 seconds left in regulation. Offensive coordinator Mike McCoy is presumably responsible for the play calls with his team leading by a touchdown near the end of regulation, although Manning said the running play on third-and-seven with two minutes remaining was an audible on his part.

So you can blame the coaches or you can blame Moore or you can blame Bailey or Miller or Manning. Or you can blame them all. For 59 minutes and 19 seconds the only Bronco who played at a championship level was the kick returner. Then, 41 seconds from victory, a 22-year-old safety had a brain cramp that will haunt him and fans of his team for a long time.

Of course, you can also blame the officials, as many fans did. The crew led by Bill Vinovich seemed particularly inept, calling 18 penalties and constantly stopping the flow of the game. The Broncos seemed unable to get into a rhythm with their no-huddle offense.

On Manning’s first interception, the one that bounced off Decker’s hands and turned into a Ravens defensive touchdown, replays seemed to show Decker was hit before the ball arrived. Broncos fans found the absence of a flag particularly galling because the previous Ravens touchdown had been aided by a dubious pass interference penalty against Carter.

But frankly, the Broncos weren’t much better than the officials. Even after Moore’s mistake, even after they declined an opportunity to move the ball at the end of regulation, the Broncos had the entire overtime, slightly more than a quarter, in which to score three points and win the game. Of the 16 minutes, 42 seconds of overtime, the Broncos had possession of the ball for just 6:30. Their deepest penetration was their own 39-yard line.

“The worst thing about it is we’re going home off a play I could have made, and I’m here to make,” Moore said, standing stoically in front of his locker and answering every question.

“Coach Fox and his staff and everybody is relying on me to make that play. I didn’t make it. That’s what I do. I’ve been blessed with those skills and I didn’t use what I was blessed with today. But at the end of the day, it was a great season. I’m sorry it ended like this, but next year it won’t.”

Could be. The last time the Broncos were 13-3 and a No. 1 seed, the year was 1996 and the Jaguars came to Denver and shocked them. John Elway & Co. came back the next year to win the first of two consecutive Super Bowls. So maybe this year was their dress rehearsal for a similar run behind Manning. Certainly, they have an excellent young core of players.

But when it came time to rise to the occasion Saturday, the Broncos couldn’t do it. They were out-coached and outplayed by a team they had dominated four weeks before. And they never showed the swagger that defines a champion.

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January 12, 2013

Goodell has no objection to a Super Bowl in Denver

By Dave Krieger

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell spent about forty-five minutes taking questions from Broncos season-ticket holders today a couple of hours before kickoff of the divisional playoff game at Mile High.

Asked about Denver’s bid to host a Super Bowl, Goodell said a lot will depend on how next year’s title game in New Jersey goes. It will be the first Super Bowl held at an outdoor stadium in a northern city.

“The answer to the question is we are going to do this for the first time next year in New York and it’s going to be a real test,” the commissioner said.

“My personal view is football is a game made to be played in the elements . . . but I don’t have a vote. If (the game at the Meadowlands) is a success, we may do some more.”

Broncos president Joe Ellis, accompanying Goodell on his pre-game rounds, drew applause when he interjected that a Super Bowl in Denver is “a no-brainer.”

Super Bowl sites are determined by owners of the thirty-two clubs.

Goodell also asked the season-ticket holders how the league can improve the in-stadium game day experience. He noted that the experience at home, through television, keeps getting better thanks to advancing technology.

Fans told him they’d like to see more variety of information on the video boards, more and better replays, and a sound system that allows fans to hear the referee more consistently when he announces penalties and the results of video reviews.

Goodell said improving in-stadium replays to the quantity and variety offered on television is “the No. 1 thing our fans want.”

Asked about his proposal to change the schedule from four preseason games and sixteen regular-season games to two preseason games and eighteen regular-season games, Goodell acknowledged he has backed off the suggestion due to arguments that it contradicts the league’s recent emphasis on player safety.

“We’ve got that on the table. We’ve also got the alternative, which is sixteen and two,” he said, referring to a proposal to delete two preseason games without adding to the regular-season schedule. Goodell said he understands why season-ticket holders resent paying regular-season prices for lackluster preseason affairs.

“We had the unilateral right to (go to eighteen games) several years ago,” he said. “We just did not feel it was the right thing to do.”

On the subject of player safety, Goodell said head injuries remain the main emphasis.

“We’re trying to take the head out of the game,” he said.

Asked whether the league might switch to Kevlar helmets, the commissioner said research continues but changes in equipment often have unintended consequences.

“I still believe it comes back to rules,” he said. “You have to have rules that take the head out of the game.”

Asked if kickoffs might be eliminated altogether, Goodell said increasing touchbacks by moving the kickoff up five yards  “reduced concussions by 50 percent.” Unless kickoff-related injuries spike up, the commissioner said the kickoff rules are likely to remain as they are.

Goodell was also asked whether the Pro Bowl will continue to be played the week before the Super Bowl, eliminating players from the Super Bowl teams from the all-star game, or moved back to its traditional place on the calendar after the Super Bowl.

Ratings have improved “very significantly” with the Pro Bowl before the Super Bowl, Goodell said, but scheduling is less of a concern than the quality of the game itself. Lately, the Pro Bowl has increasingly taken on the competitive tenor of basketball and hockey all-star games, in which little or no defense is played.

“We don’t like what they’re watching,” Goodell said. “My focus right now is not when it should be played but whether we should play it.”

Asked about his biggest challenge as commissioner, Goodell replied: “To make the game safer.”

One fan cited the knee injury suffered by Broncos receiver Eric Decker against Pittsburgh in the playoffs last season, asking whether discouraging hits to the head has produced more attacks on the knees.

“There’s plenty of room between the knee and the head, what we call the strike zone,” Goodell said.

The commissioner also urged the players’ association to approve blood testing for human growth hormone, as baseball’s players recently did.

“The players have continually raised issues saying there’s problems with the science of HGH testing,” Goodell said. “That’s just not true.”

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January 7, 2013

Broncos flashback: What not to do following a playoff bye

By Dave Krieger

They won 13 out of 16 regular-season games, leaving them with the best record in the American Football Conference.

They were the No. 1 seed in the conference playoffs, which earned them a first-round bye.

Everybody was looking forward to the third round, when they were expected to meet the No. 2 seed, the New England Patriots, with a berth in the Super Bowl at stake.

The year was 1996, and it didn’t quite work out that way.

The Jacksonville Jaguars, a 9-7 team that made the playoffs as a wild card, came to Denver on a 36-degree day in January 1997 having beaten Buffalo in the first round while the Broncos rested. The Broncos jumped out to a two-touchdown lead at the old Mile High Stadium, although a blocked Jason Elam extra point try and failed attempt to make up for it with a two-point conversion left their lead at 12-0.

Behind a 140-yard rushing effort by power back Natrone Means and a precision passing game featuring quarterback Mark Brunell and veteran receivers Jimmy Smith and Keenan McCardell, Jacksonville came back to outscore the Broncos 20-0 in the second and third quarters. Brunell’s second touchdown pass, to Smith, gave the visitors a 30-20 lead with just 3:39 remaining.

John Elway’s late touchdown pass to Ed McCaffrey was too little too late. The Jaguars left Mile High with a 30-27 upset, postponing Elway’s championship dreams for one more year.

Going into their first playoff game of 2013, the Broncos’ circumstances are about the same as they were 16 years ago, except that their first opponent will be a division winner, the Baltimore Ravens, rather than a wild card. So I asked Elway, who now runs the club’s front office, what if anything he remembered about 1996 that might be useful to know today.

“We did it in ’84 also,” he pointed out, harkening back to his second year in the league. “We were 13-3 and had the No. 1 seed and lost to Pittsburgh. So I went through it a couple of times.”

Actually, the Broncos were the No. 2 seed in ’84, behind the 14-2 Dolphins, but otherwise Elway’s recollection is accurate. The Broncos lost at home to the 9-7 Steelers, who went on to lose to the Dolphins in the AFC championship. It turned out to be Dan Marino’s first and last trip to the Super Bowl.

By contrast, in 1997, the year following the Jacksonville debacle, the Broncos made the postseason as a wild card, didn’t get a week off and blew the doors off the Jaguars, 42-17, on the way to their first Super Bowl title.

The following year, 1998, they went 14-2 and were once again the top seed. Just two years removed from a flat performance coming off a playoff bye, they came off their bye with a 38-3 thrashing of the Dolphins on the way to their second straight championship.

“If I could pinpoint one thing, it would be for us not to take the home field advantage for granted,” Elway said. “We still have to play good football. The home field advantage wins no games for you. Obviously, we play better at home and it’s a friendlier crowd, but the bottom line is you still have to go out and play well.

“In ’96, we had a good football team, but we ran into a team in Jacksonville that was playing very well. Those type things happen in the playoffs. That’s why we have to take care of our business, play the best football we possibly can and be ready. Only good teams make the playoffs, and so we’ve got to be ready for a battle.”

The Broncos have done an excellent job this season of concentrating on the task at hand, thanks in large part to Peyton Manning’s fanatical focus and the peer pressure he brings to bear behind it. That quality will be tested this week.

The entire football world is already looking forward to Manning vs. Tom Brady for the AFC championship a week from Sunday. It will be as highly anticipated a playoff matchup as we have seen for years, at least as anticipated as the Super Bowl that follows it.

Just one catch: Both teams have to get there first.

Fans and bettors generally assume that they will. Both the Broncos and Patriots are heavy early favorites — between eight and ten points, depending on the book — to win their divisional matchups this weekend.

When they beat the Ravens by 17 points less than a month ago in Baltimore, the Broncos looked like a clearly superior team. It’s worth remembering, though, that a single play — an egregious mistake by Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco — made that game look more lopsided than it was. Having driven 76 yards from their own 20 near the end of the first half, the Ravens were four yards from a touchdown when Flacco threw an interception into the waiting arms of Broncos cornerback Chris Harris, who returned it 98 yards for a touchdown. What looked likely to be a 10-7 halftime lead for the Broncos became a 17-0 advantage in a matter of moments.

Change the outcome of that single play and the entire complexion of the game changes with it. The Broncos might well have won anyway. They ran the ball effectively and stopped the Baltimore running game. They held the Ravens to twelve first downs. Most of Baltimore’s points — 14 of 17 — came in the fourth quarter when the Broncos deployed a softer defense protecting a big lead.

Still, the dangers in the rematch are obvious:

1. Beating a good team twice in the space of a month is hard to do.

2. Ravens running back Ray Rice averaged just over 70 yards a game on the ground this season, which was exactly the number he managed in Baltimore’s first playoff game, a victory over Indianapolis. The Broncos held him to 38 in their first meeting. Can they do it again?

3. Flacco is a bit of a Jekkyl-and-Hyde act. There are times when he looks like he belongs in the upper echelon of NFL quarterbacks. Like, Sunday, for example, when he put up a passer rating against the Colts of 125.6, the best of any quarterback in the wild-card round. Against the Broncos, he was a thoroughly mediocre 76.5. Can the Broncos’ top-five defense make him look mediocre for the second time in a month?

4. The Ravens finally have all their injured defenders back, including 37-year-old middle linebacker Ray Lewis, their inspirational leader. Will this allow them to play better defense against Manning & Co. than they did in Baltimore, where they gave up 350 yards of offense, including 163 on the ground?

Make no mistake: The Broncos should beat the Ravens. They’re better on both sides of the ball. They beat them handily in Baltimore, so beating them in Denver should be easier.

Of course, that’s exactly the attitude that can send you home from the postseason early, wondering what happened. Elway remembers the feeling.

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December 17, 2012

Nevermore: Broncos ditch doomsday scenario

By Dave Krieger

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

`’Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door –

Only this, and nothing more.’

Spoiler alert: ‘Twas not a visitor. ‘Twas the Raven. And this is what the Broncos said Sunday about the Ravens’ previous dominance in the city of Edgar Allan Poe:

Nevermore.

No single Sunday has delivered results so promising for Denver’s football squad since the Sunday in March when Peyton Manning elected to join it.

It was not merely that the Broncos expunged an ignominious losing streak in Baltimore, nor that they won their ninth consecutive game, a streak now tied for third-longest in franchise history.

It was mainly that they leapfrogged the defrocked New England Patriots in the conference standings, with a little help from the San Francisco 49ers, who blitzed the Pats on Sunday Night Football, then hung on by their fingernails in the second half.

If the Broncos win out at home against the hapless Cleveland Browns (5-9) and Kansas City Chiefs (2-12), they will finish the season as at least the AFC’s No. 2 seed. (If the Houston Texans were to lose both of their remaining games, against Minnesota and Indianapolis, the Broncos could ascend to No. 1.)

Earning one of the top two seeds not only gets them a first-round bye, meaning they would need two playoff victories to reach the Super Bowl rather than three. It also exempts them from another postseason trip to Foxboro, Mass., and you may remember how the last one of those turned out.

This was widely assumed to be the Broncos’ doomsday scenario. No matter how well they played in the regular season, if they finished with a playoff seed inferior to that of the Patriots, the season likely would end again in disappointment far from home. After all, last year’s dream ended with a 45-10 spanking at Gillette Stadium. Even with Manning on board the Broncos’ bus, the Patriots beat them at Gillette again, 31-21, earlier this season.

The combination of the Broncos’ win at Baltimore and the Patriots’ 41-34 loss to the Niners means that if the Broncos win out, any postseason meeting with Tom Brady & Co. will be in Denver, not New England.

And so, as surely as winter follows fall, here comes the Super Bowl talk. Whether you get your sports conversation from the radio, TV or social media, you will be treated to a barrage of excited Super Bowl talk for at least the next three weeks. The Broncos will do their best to ignore it.

“We’re not measuring ourselves now,” coach John Fox said after his team improved to 11-3 on the season. “We need to measure ourselves at the end to be the best. Right now, our guys have responded very well to just improving every week, and we’ve kept it as simple as that. The big challenge this week was to win the turnover battle and we were able to do that. I thought that was the biggest difference in the game. This (Ravens) team is a very good football team and we may run into them again.”

To appreciate how hard it is to do what the Broncos did — playing every phase of the game expertly with two rushing touchdowns, a passing touchdown, an interception for a touchdown, a stifling defense, two takeaways, no giveaways and a dominant time of possession — you have only to observe the frustration along the other sideline.

“The thing about football is the offense can be playing really well and then the defense is not playing really well; it’s lopsided,” said Ravens running back Ray Rice, who was held to 38 rushing yards. “Today the defense was playing really well, and we didn’t. Last week, it was the flip side. We have to find a way to come together and play as one unit. ”

For all the Broncos’ ultimate dominance, the key play in this one came at the end of the first half, with the Ravens on the verge of a touchdown that would have cut the Broncos’ lead to 10-7. The home team, which had only four first downs and 119 yards before intermission, finally got its offense moving in the last two minutes, connecting on a 43-yard pass from Joe Flacco to Jacoby Jones to begin the drive and arriving at the Broncos’ 4-yard line with a first-and-goal and barely 30 seconds showing.

Head coach John Harbaugh, new offensive coordinator Jim Caldwell and Flacco, the quarterback, had two choices. They could call timeout — they had all three remaining — and set up a play, or they could run to the line of scrimmage and run a play out of the no-huddle offense in an effort to catch the Broncos off guard. They chose the latter. The Broncos were not caught off guard.

“There were 34 seconds when the ball was snapped,” Harbaugh said. “With three timeouts left that’s going to give us time to run three plays. That’s plenty of time. Throughout the course of the drive, we wanted to score, but we didn’t want to leave a lot of time on the clock. That’s a strategic call. We have a number of plays we run with no-huddle that are not kill-the-clock plays, but they are run-route plays, and that was the play we had. And we thought that gave us a great chance to score, and that’s what we ran.”

The Ravens chose a pass play with one receiver running a fade to Flacco’s left and another, Anquan Boldin, running a flat route beneath the fade. Flacco is supposed to check the fade first, then the flat. If neither is open, he’s supposed to throw it away, stop the clock, try again.

“That’s one of our plays that you kind of get a flat and a fade, and it’s kind of like going up and clocking the ball,” Flacco said. “It’s kind of like calling a timeout in that situation because it’s one of those things that you catch it and get out of bounds, you catch it in the end zone, or you throw it away, and you live for the next down. I just made a mistake, there’s no other way to put that. I made a mistake. I wanted to have the fade, and I came down to the flat, and the guy undercut it, picked it and went the whole way. It’s just a mistake on my part.”

The guy was Chris Harris, the former undrafted free agent who took over for Tracy Porter opposite Champ Bailey earlier in the season and has not permitted Porter to get back on the field. He cut in front of Boldin, caught Flacco’s pass at the 2-yard line and sprinted up the Broncos’ sideline 98 yards for a touchdown, the longest regular-season interception return for a score in franchise history. The previous record — a 93-yard return at Cleveland 32 years ago — was authored by linebacker Randy Gradishar.

“Chris did a good job kind of hanging back there, and stepped in front, right in front of our bench,” Fox said with a smile. “He had a lot of direction from the sideline on that (return).”

“A 14-point swing,” Manning said. “Baltimore has some momentum there on the drive and looks like they’re probably going to get the touchdown. Plus they get the ball the first series of the second half. So just a huge play by Chris, undercutting it. The turnover is good; the fact that he took it all the way to the house for a touchdown is even bigger. Big swing in the game, in the momentum, and I thought it kind of jump-started everything in the second half for us.”

“I didn’t really expect him to throw that out-route, but he threw it to me, and I just wanted to make sure I scored,” Harris said. “That was a long run, but once I got to the 40, I was like, ‘I just have to stride it on in.’ ”

Flacco tried to run him down, but managed only to dive at his feet as he flew into the end zone.

Asked to explain what happened on the play, Boldin, the intended receiver, replied: “I’d rather not.”

Someone asked Flacco if he changed his mind at the last moment about where to go with the ball.

“No, I was just reading it out,” he said. “The fade was just taking a little bit longer than I wanted. I was probably a little bit late on it because the sideline was squeezing with (Boldin) and all that. In hindsight, I should have just taken the ball and thrown it over Anquan’s head and lived for the next play.”

The Ravens did manage a scoring drive to start the second half, but they got only a field goal out of it. When the Broncos responded with consecutive touchdowns, it was 31-3 and all over but the excuses. The first of Denver’s two third-quarter touchdowns came on a 51-yard bomb from Manning to Eric Decker, who finished with eight catches for 133 yards in an oftense that seems to reward a different receiver each week.

“(We) were hitting some outs and some intermediate routes and we thought it was time to maybe send something down the field,” Manning said. “They had good cover guys outside, so anytime you’re playing against good cover guys you’ve got to give them the mix, you’ve got to give them the short, the intermediate and the deep stuff.

“It was a double-move by Eric, a good route, good protection. I really thought it was set up by the run game. We were running the ball well. It was off a run play we’d been running. Had a good fake. I don’t know that it necessarily froze the safety or anybody, but it just gives you that good mix of run and the play-action when you’re running the ball well.”

Ravens safety Ed Reed undercut the route, leaving Decker with single coverage, perhaps because Decker had been running comeback routes for much of the day.

The Broncos ran the ball 45 times and threw it just 28. Even subtracting the final series — two kneel-downs by backup quarterback Brock Osweiler and a no-gain run by rookie running back Ronnie Hillman — this is a heavier dose of running plays than one normally associates with Manning, who set or extended two more NFL records Sunday (most 11-win seasons, 9; most 4,000-yard passing seasons, 12).

Manning said one series where he threw it on all three downs — and went three-and-out, getting knocked down by the pass rush twice — represented probably the worst play-calling of the day. Heavy reliance on the running game was not a plan solely for the Ravens. The Broncos are coming to understand it will be a good strategy in the playoffs against higher-scoring offenses as well. If the re-emergence of Knowshon Moreno is paired with veteran Willis McGahee, who could be ready to return from injury for the AFC Championship Game, the Broncos’ ground game could be nearly as formidable as their aerial attack.

“It’s something we’re going to have to be able to do,” Manning told KOA. “Especially against teams that have these explosive offenses, you don’t want to give them the ball back.”

So let the fans and media types talk about the Super Bowl. Manning will make use of every moment of practice and game action between now and then to get in closer touch with his new teammates. They may not seem new to you anymore, but they do to him.

“You try to learn something every day,” he said. “You get a little more comfortable with something every day, but it’s still very new, there’s no question about it.

“I think the goal is to get on the same page. Obviously, the more that the receivers and I are on the same page, the better for our offense, the better for our team. I do think the more games you play, the better you’re going to be; the more practice reps you get, going against our secondary in one-on-one drills in practice.

“What are we, in Week 15 here, that’s all the time we’ve had to improve our timing. It’s not what it’s going to be if you play with guys six, seven, eight years. So it feels like a scramble and you’re trying to use every piece of practice that you have — walkthroughs, meetings, special teams periods where you might get them off to the side. We try to use all those things to talk football.

“There’s some things we’ve made strides on; there’s some things that I think you just have to have more time in order to get more on the same page. But I appreciate the work ethic. I know Decker had a good day today. DT probably didn’t have the numbers that he’s been having, but his presence, I can assure you, is a huge part of what’s going on out there. It’s a huge part of why the run game is good.

“For the most part, those runs, Baltimore had their safeties and corners apart, or removed from the line of scrimmage. That’s because the respect they have for a guy like Demaryius Thomas and Decker. So if you can run it versus those looks; when they come up, if you can throw it, that means you’re playing good offensive football.”

Winners of nine in a row, now in position to earn a first-round bye and second-round home game in the playoffs, the Broncos, according to their quarterback, remain a work in progress.

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

Nothing further then he uttered – not a feather then he fluttered –

Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before –

On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.’

Then the bird said, `Nevermore.’

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December 3, 2012

Broncos may not be dominating, but they are rolling

By Dave Krieger

So Mitch Unrein was doing what he does on the football field, which consists mainly of hand-to-hand combat with offensive lineman, when Jamon Meredith, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ right guard, reached through his face mask and gouged both his eyes simultaneously.

Temporarily blinded, Unrein reached out to fend off Meredith and was immediately penalized for the personal foul of putting his hands in another man’s face. These are the ironies NFL players live with.

Red-eyed but unbowed, Unrein absorbed this particular injustice more easily than most because he had caught a touchdown pass from Peyton Manning just a few minutes before, a rare moment of glory for a 290-pound defensive tackle from Eaton, Colorado who went undrafted and started his career on the practice squad.

“I was just glad he caught it,” teammate Champ Bailey said afterward. “You see a lot of linemen get wide open and drop that thing.”

“I’ve never had a TD catch in my entire life,” Unrein said. “The last time I scored a touchdown was as a freshman in high school. So it feels pretty good. I mean, it’s still kind of surreal.”

It was that kind of day for the Broncos, who marched down the field the first time they had the ball, topping off the drive with a goal line formation in which Unrein lined up at fullback. When he released into the left corner of the end zone, Manning lofted a floater into his arms for the one-yard touchdown.

But the Broncos seemed to regress into confusion for the remainder of the first half. At intermission, they trailed 10-7, and the mere seven points suggested their offense was short on rocket fuel.

“Their defense does a good job of moving around,” explained tight end Jacob Tamme, who, in the absence of veteran Brandon Stokley, became Manning’s security blanket.

“They run a lot of games up front and make it tough to run the ball because they’ve got D-linemen moving everywhere and linebackers doing the same thing. It was really just kind of adjusting to how they were playing us and we were able in the third quarter to come out and put some big drives together.”

Tampa defensive coordinator Bill Sheridan might have gotten this idea from Mike Nolan, the Atlanta coordinator with whom he competes in the NFC South. Nolan’s walk-around, amoeba defense confused Manning into three interceptions and the Broncos’ first loss in the second week of the season.

In this case, Manning seemed less confused than his linemen. He connected on 11 of 15 first-half passes, but the Broncos sabotaged their own efforts with six penalties for 60 yards before intermission, including 10-yard infractions against offensive linemen Orlando Franklin and Chris Kuper that short-circuited the two drives following the touchdown.

“I really felt like there were some opportunities there,” Manning said. “We had some self-inflicted penalties, some mistakes we thought were hurting us. Believe me, they have an excellent defense, but we thought we were doing some things to make it a little tougher.”

After scoring at least 30 points in the first five wins of their current seven-game winning streak — the fourth-longest in franchise history and longest in 14 years — the Broncos managed only 17 the previous week in Kansas City. Sitting with seven at halftime against Tampa, the orange-clad denizens of Sports Authority Field at Mile High began to grow restive.

If game balls went to coordinators, which they seldom do, Mike McCoy and Jack Del Rio might have deserved them after this one. In a contest of halftime adjustments, the Broncos dominated. They won the third quarter 21-0 and the fourth became a formality.

So much so that fans began to entertain themselves by doing the wave. Unfortunately, the Broncos had the ball at the time. Manning, needing quiet so his signals could be heard in the no-huddle offense, politely shushed them.

“I’m all for excitement, but certainly, in a no-huddle offense when you’re calling something at the line, the quieter the crowd can be, it certainly is helpful,” he explained, while also paying obligatory tribute to the crowd’s enthusiastic spirit.

Meanwhile, on the defensive side, the Broncos gave up consecutive scoring drives in the first quarter, then shut out quarterback Josh Freeman and his troops until the fourth, when a couple of late scores accounted for the 31-23 final. They limited Doug Martin, one of the NFL’s leading rushers also known, unfortunately, as The Muscle Hamster, to 56 yards on 18 carries, a measly average of 3.1 yards per.

“We just settled down,” Bailey said. “You’ve got to give (Freeman) credit. He’s a good quarterback. He’s been doing that all year, making plays early in the game. We knew if we just stay with it and just keep trusting our technique, we’ll be fine.”

“The hype these guys get is well-deserved,” Freeman said of the Broncos’ defense, which is ranked in the NFL’s top 10 for the first time since 2005. “They get after it. Their front four did a good job of timing their blitzes. The Denver defense played a great game today.”

Freeman completed six of eight passes in the first quarter, when the Bucs scored 10 points, but only two of six in the second and three of 12 in the third as the Broncos took control.

Von Miller had a quarterback sack to give him 15 on the year — third in the league behind San Francisco’s Aldon Smith (17.5) and Houston’s J.J. Watt (15.5) — but he also returned an interception for a touchdown, yet another plank in his campaign for defensive player of the year.

“He’s the best player in the NFL right now on defense,” said safety Rahim Moore. “He’s unstoppable. I’m just glad to be a part of his team. He makes all of us better.”

The Broncos improved their record to 9-3, clinching the AFC West title — and the playoff berth that goes with it — with four games still to play. They tied the Raiders, whom they play Thursday night in Oakland, for most AFC West titles all time, with 12.

They remain in a battle with the AFC’s other division leaders for playoff seeding. Baltimore, which leads the North, lost to Pittsburgh on Sunday, dropping them into a three-way tie with the Broncos and Patriots at 9-3. Like the Broncos, the Patriots clinched their division Sunday.

A win at Baltimore in two weeks would leapfrog the Broncos over the Ravens, but they still need help to pass the Patriots, who beat them earlier in the season, to get one of the top two AFC seeds and the first-round bye that goes with it. New England still must play Houston, which has the inside track on the AFC’s top playoff seed at 11-1, and San Francisco.

“Winning the division, that was certainly one of our goals,” Manning said. “We still want to keep getting better throughout the season.”

So the Broncos keep rolling along, playing well enough to win each week without exactly dominating.

“A year ago we were getting critiqued if we won or lost,” club vice president John Elway said last week. “Now we’re getting critiqued on how we win. So that’s a good thing, as long as we’re winning.”

The critics of the Manning signing have disappeared. The apocalyptic talk about his age and injuries has been silenced. The Broncos rule their division once more, the first step in Elway’s plan to return to their glory days.

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November 25, 2012

Winning without your fastball

By Dave Krieger

No question about it, the Broncos lost valuable style points Sunday in Kansas City.

Wait, what? There is no column for style points in the standings? Oh, then never mind.

Before complaining about the Broncos’ season-low point total (17) or season-high missed field goal total (2) in their sixth straight win, keep this in mind:

In 2008, a Chiefs team that finished 2-14 beat the Broncos at Arrowhead, 33-19.

A year later, a Chiefs team that was 3-12 at the time came to Denver for the season finale and blew out the Broncos, 44-24.

In their 22 previous visits to Arrowhead, the Broncos were 7-15.

The Chiefs have been dysentery to the Broncos. No matter how bad they are, they can still ruin Denver’s day.

So winning at Arrowhead is its own reward. How the Broncos get there is all fine print. Fortunately, this is not college football. There are no voters to judge the dominance of a win or computer algorithms to assess the margin of victory. In the NFL, as Bill Parcells famously said, you are what your record says you are. The Broncos’ record says they are 8-3, six games after starting the season 2-3.

It also says they are 4-0 against division opponents with games at Oakland (3-8) and at home against Kansas City (1-10) still to play. They are already guaranteed a winning record within the AFC West for the first time since 2005.

The game? The game was like watching a power pitcher on a day he lacks command of his fastball. Can he find another way to win? Will he grind it out or flip out?

This was not the finest game Peyton Manning’s receivers have played. With the ball at their own 2-yard line and 8 minutes to play, offensive coordinator Mike McCoy was fearless, calling three consecutive pass plays. On first down, Manning put the ball on the hands of wide receiver Demaryius Thomas on a split screen. On second down, he put it on the hands of tight end Joel Dreessen on a crossing pattern. Neither made the catch.

Still, the defense did its job once more and when the Broncos got it back at their 16 with 6:24 remaining, they put together a 12-play, 68-yard drive that ended in a confidence-restoring field goal for Matt Prater, who had missed twice for the first time all year, and drained all but 14 seconds off the game clock in the process.

“This is the kind of a drive that championship teams put together,” CBS analyst Dan Dierdorf said. “This is just a demonstration of how to win football games, what Denver has done on this drive.”

Here are some reactions to the 17-9 win from Broncos players in their own words, posted on Twitter, with spelling and contractions as posted:

Tight end Jacob Tamme: “Another good team win on the road! Records mean nothing. Hard fought, man.”

Defensive lineman Derek Wolfe: “Def wasnt pretty but a wins a win and we gotta keep on rollin”

Omar Bolden: “Sometimes it’s pretty and sometimes it’s ugly. . . . I really don’t care what it is as long as its a W!!!”

Chris Harris: “Blessed to be able to play in front of my Fam & friends today. I came a long way.”

Eric Decker: “W is a W in this league! What’s better than 5 in a row, #BroncosCountry? 6 in a row!!”

A pattern has emerged in Manning’s post-game ruminations. When outsiders are piling on the praise, Manning responds with caution, emphasizing things his team could do better. When outsiders are critical, Manning defends his guys.

But after praising the work of Knowshon Moreno, who stepped in productively for injured Willis McGahee after spending most of the season on the scout team, Manning made it clear the Broncos will be working on their shortcomings in Kansas City as they prepare for Tampa Bay next week.

“I know Jack Del Rio has high expectations for the defense,” he said. “Mike McCoy has high expectations for the offense. Ultimately, it is about winning the game, but certainly we want to try to fulfill those expectations that the coaches have for us. They set goals for us. There are certain parts of the game, certain goals for the game, they want to accomplish, whether it’s ball security, red zone, third down.

“Sometimes, you won’t hit on all those goals, yet you can still win the game. So when we watch the film, the coaches are very constructive of us and the players are very accountable in wanting to hit those goals and play better. I think that’s the sign of guys that certainly have the right attitude, in my opinion.”

Manning also disclosed that Broncos players have recently added a players-only film session in which they are expected to own up to their own failings.

“Certainly, I think players being accountable is very important,” he said. “These past couple weeks we’ve been watching the game film together — just the players; the coaches aren’t in there. It’s the player’s job to speak up on what he did wrong if there was a mistake he made, and what he can do better.

“I know offensively that’s been productive for us. I know defensively Champ (Bailey) and Elvis (Dumervil) have said the same thing. Ultimately, players have to hold each other accountable. You’re certainly always trying to get better, and you want to get better late in the season. Either you get better or you get worse; you don’t stay the same. So certainly our goal is to get better every week.”

For the first time all year, the Broncos won a game in which they did not score 30 points. The hidden story of the winning streak has been their growing confidence on the defensive side of the ball. Del Rio has taken a unit that finished 20th in total defense a year ago and moved it into the league’s top 10.

Its pash rush couldn’t take over this one because the Chiefs don’t much like to pass. Even in a loss, they ran the ball more often than they threw it. Former Bronco Brady Quinn was accurate early (nine of 11 in the first half) and familiar late (four of 14 and an interception after intermission).

Despite 107 yards rushing from Jamaal Charles, Del Rio’s unit held the Chiefs to 264 yards of offense and kept them out of the end zone all day.

It may not have been a work of art, but it wasn’t an Arrowhead horror movie, either. The Broncos will take it, happily, and move on to the next one.

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