Category Archives: Broncos/NFL

November 18, 2012

‘Von Miller is the next Lawrence Taylor, plain and simple’

By Dave Krieger

On at least one San Diego third down Sunday, a third-and-10 early on, Broncos defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio dispatched two defensive linemen, two linebackers and seven defensive backs.

If five defensive backs is a nickel defense and six is a dime, I’m guessing seven is a quarter, or possibly a JFK half-dollar, considering the effects of inflation.

As defensive tackle Kevin Vickerson pointed out afterward, Von Miller wears a linebacker’s number (58) but he’s generally rushing the passer, so maybe that was a 3-1-7 alignment rather than a 2-2-7. Either way, let’s just call it Del Rio’s freakout package.

That’s what it did to Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers, who was under pressure because of Miller and looked downfield to see nothing but the Broncos’ alternate blue uniforms. Symbolizing the frustration he showed much of the day, he threw the ball away into his own bench.

“I’ve never been a part of a team that’s shown this many looks,” said cornerback Champ Bailey, now in his 14th season. “It’s funny because every guy that comes out there could start. It’s not like we’ve got a bunch of guys we’re just trying to get playing time. These guys can play. I’ve got to give Jack a lot of credit for trying to utilize all the guys he has around him.”

Do all those different looks — pretty much every coin in the change machine — confuse opposing offenses?

“I sure hope so,” Bailey said. “I think it does. But I think the most important part of our defense is that front. They’ve been getting it done and that’s what’s really enabled us to play better.”

Good as the front wall has been overall, the difference maker is Miller, who took over the NFL lead in quarterback sacks Sunday, adding three to his previous 10. He became just the fourth NFL player since 1982 to record at least 11 sacks in each of his first two seasons, joining the late Reggie White, Jevon Kearse and Dwight Freeney.

“I told him today, he’s a beast, man,” Vickerson said.

“That boy works his butt off and he plays with a lot of confidence and I see him doing it for a long time,” Bailey said.

“Von Miller is the next Lawrence Taylor, plain and simple,” said safety Rahim Moore. “No lineman in the country — born, not born, past — can block him.”

With the inquiring minds, Miller takes his lead from Bailey, returning the compliment.

“I think it all starts in the secondary,” he said. “I don’t think our guys in the background get too much credit. We got Champ Bailey out there, Chris Harris, Rahim Moore’s been having a great season. I think that’s where it starts.”

The media scrum around Miller afterward was almost as deep as the Broncos’ defense. He used the word “relentless” relentlessly to describe his mindset, citing other dominant defensive players who play with that attitude, including the Cowboys’ DeMarcus Ware, a two-time league sack champion who had 19.5 a year ago and has 10 so far this year, three back of Miller’s league-leading total.

“He’s explosive, he’s fast, he’s a savvy football player,” Chargers center Nick Hardwick said of last year’s defensive rookie of the year. “He uses his hands and feet well and ties his moves together.”

“It’s probably his speed,” said San Diego guard Rex Hadnot. “He probably runs under a 4.4 (40-yard dash). He’s really fast and plays pretty physical.”

For the second week, the Broncos’ defense took the lead. The offense ended up scoring 30 points, but 17 of them came as a result of Chargers turnovers (a Wesley Woodyard interception, a fumble forced by Miller on one of his sacks, and a punt blocked by Nate Irving), giving Peyton Manning and the offense short fields.

Manning’s streak of 300-yard passing games came to an end — he managed only 270 — although he did throw for three touchdowns again, becoming the first quarterback in Broncos history to do that six times in the same season. And he still has six games to play. The previous record was five, set by John Elway in 1997. Still, the story was the defense again, and Manning knew it.

“Anytime you have a change in the defensive coordinator and you have some new players, it’s going to take time forming a little chemistry and getting on the same page,” he said. “I think they just continue to get better each week, understanding coach Del Rio’s system, and those guys are playing at a really high level right now. It sure is fun to watch.”

In fact, the offense sputtered enough that someone actually asked Manning if he felt more happiness or frustration after this one.

“Happiness,” he replied. “We won, didn’t we? Are you not happy? Strange question . . . strange question.”

The defense surrendered a couple of late drives that made the final score closer than the game actually felt, but the Broncos’ growing confidence on the defensive side is a propitious sign for the postseason.

And, yes, although they can’t talk about it, we can start talking about that now. With a record of 7-3, they lead the Chargers by three games with six to play, and effectively four since they swept the season series and own the head-to-head tie-breaker.

In the process, they stretched their string of third-down denials to 26 over three games, the longest such streak in the NFL in 10 years, before the Chargers finally converted one into a first down. San Diego finished three of 16 on third down.

“It’s the best defensive team they’ve had since we’ve been playing against them,” said Rivers, who has been playing the Broncos twice a year since taking over the starting job in San Diego in 2006. “This is definitely as good, if not the best defense they’ve had that I can remember.”

Bailey, of course, was having none of it.

“You look at the fourth quarter, they had two drives that we just can’t give up,” he said. “We’re better than that. We’ve shown we’re better than that. It’s just being consistent. We’ve just got to find a way to keep pressing on the gas throughout four quarters.

“Never become complacent. That’ll put you on your couch.”

It’s now five in a row since they came back from a 24-0 halftime deficit in San Diego on Oct. 15. On both sides of the ball, the Broncos are on a roll.

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November 11, 2012

Two stats suggest Broncos growing into legit contender

By Dave Krieger

Five weeks ago, the Broncos were 2-3 and ranked 19th in the NFL in points allowed. Peyton Manning and the offense were coming together, week by week, but the Broncos had all kinds of questions on the other side of the ball. Having surrendered 62 points to Houston and New England over the previous three weeks, their defense scared no one.

Sunday, the Broncos won their fourth consecutive game since then. For the first time, Manning was not the main reason. The Denver defense, which had improved to 13th in points allowed in the interim, dominated Carolina, forcing Cam Newton to run for his life most of the day.

Two stats best reflected this defensive dominance:

— Seven quarterback sacks by six different Broncos defenders, the first time they’ve had that many in a game in nine years.

— The Panthers’ astonishing 0-for-12 success rate on third down, the first time the Broncos have shut out an opponent on third down in 12 years.

Jack Del Rio’s unit had improved from 29th to 20th in third-down defense over the past three weeks, and that ranking will rise again when all of this weekend’s action is over.

Combine a stifling defense that held Carolina to 250 yards of offense (the Broncos had 360) with another kick return for a touchdown by Trindon Holliday — a kickoff last week in Cincinnati, a punt this week in Carolina — and the Broncos resembled, for the first time, a complete team that could be a legitimate championship contender.

“It was a heck of an effort by the defense today,” Manning told KOA afterward. “They really put a lot of pressure on Carolina’s offense. And, boy, that’s two straight weeks with a (special teams) return for a touchdown. Just can’t tell you what that does for a team. Just a huge swing. Holliday and the entire return team has done a heck of a job. So, good overall team win. Offensively, obviously, some things we need to do better, but it sure was a good win.”

This is the key intangible the Broncos have going for them — veterans on both sides of the ball who are dissatisfied after a convincing 36-14 road win.

Asked by Channel 4’s Gary Miller if the defense was coming along faster than he expected, cornerback Champ Bailey did not hesitate.

“No,” he said. “I think we’re going too slow. We need to pick it up a little bit.”

It sounded like a joke, but if you know Bailey, who held the great Panthers receiver Steve Smith to one catch on seven targets for 19 yards, you know it wasn’t. At 34, Bailey’s sense of urgency to get to his first Super Bowl is palpable.

Similarly, Manning returns to Denver determined to work on flaws in the offense.

“I thought we were close on offense all day and really had some chances to put some more points and maybe have a little more separation,” he said. “We still had a few self-inflicted wounds. I’ve learned never to take winning for granted in the NFL, but certainly some things we can improve on and hopefully correct on offense.”

Even on a relatively modest day for Manning — he completed 27 of 38 passes for 301 yards, one touchdown and a passer rating of 103.1 — the Broncos’ quarterback continued his assault on the record book. The touchdown tied Dan Marino for second on the career list at 420. Only Brett Favre, with 508, had more. The win tied him with Marino for third on that list with 147, behind only John Elway (148) and Favre (186).

Now in charge of the Broncos’ front office, Elway gets appropriate credit for courting and signing Manning, giving the franchise instant credibility on offense. The front office he leads has continued to add veteran pieces that have played major roles, among them linebacker Keith Brooking, center Dan Koppen and safety Jim Leonhard.

But no pickup on the fly has had a bigger impact than Holliday, just the third player in Broncos history to return both a kickoff and a punt for touchdowns in the same season, joining Al Frazier in 1961 and Eddie Royal in 2009. The Broncos claimed him off waivers from Houston last month.

“We look at the wire every single day to see who’s on that wire and if there’s a possibility that we can improve our football team,” Elway said on the Dave Logan Show last week.

“When we had a chance to get Trindon Holliday and claimed him a couple weeks ago, it was key for us because we needed a returner and he’d had so much success in preseason and even earlier this season . . . It was kind of an area of need and we saw what he could do last week. He’s really upgraded our return game.”

Holliday’s 76-yard punt return on the first play of the second quarter broke a 7-7 tie. Returners with the ability to break one at any time are a rare breed and provide a dimension that few teams have. To add that, in midseason, to improving units on offense and defense, makes the Broncos a threat to score in all three phases of the game, as they did Sunday.

“Especially a guy with that kind of speed,” Elway said. “If we can get people on people and get him some space, then he’s going to be very dangerous and it puts that much pressure on the other team. We really can look at it as another offensive weapon that when we do get in the return game, we have the ability to make some big plays.”

Indeed, the 5-foot-5-inch, 170-pound Holliday has been so impressive the Broncos are working him into the passing game. In Carolina, he had his first two NFL catches.

On the other hand, replays appeared to show Holliday flipping the ball away before crossing the goal line on the punt return. Neither the officials nor the Panthers noticed. Broncos coach John Fox told him to bring him the ball next time.

Meanwhile, Von Miller continued his ascent into one of the dominant defensive players in the league. Although he got credit for just one of the Broncos’ sacks after registering three the week before, he seemed to be in the Carolina backfield all day. He denied any special motivation going after the one player picked ahead of him in the 2011 NFL draft, but his teammates knew better.

“It was important not only for our head coach coming back here, but the first time Von has gone up against Cam,” said fellow linebacker Wesley Woodyard. “So it was exciting for him.”

Fox, of course, coached the Panthers for nine seasons and was less than thrilled when he was set up to fail with a stripped-down roster in his final season. But Fox, like Miller, declined to talk about his motivation publicly.

Broncos defenders credited with quarterback sacks in addition to Miller were defensive linemen Kevin Vickerson (two), Robert Ayers and Elvis Dumervil; and defensive backs Mike Adams and Chris Harris.

About the only negative for the Broncos was the running game, which put up only 65 yards, averaging three yards per rush. The starter, Willis McGahee, fumbled twice. Luckily, one rolled back to him. The other became his third lost fumble of the season.

Still, their turnover ratio continued to improve from a horrible start with interceptions by cornerback Tony Carter — a third-quarter pick six that extended the lead to 24-7 — and safety Rahim Moore. They improved to minus three on the season.

Combined with the Chargers’ loss to Tampa Bay, the Broncos’ fourth straight victory gave them a two-game lead in the AFC West with a chance to make it effectively four by beating San Diego next week and sweeping the head-to-head matchups, the first tie-breaker.

“It’s certainly a big game, and we all know how the game went last time,” Manning said, referring to the turning point of the Broncos’ season so far. It came at halftime of the game in San Diego on Oct. 15. The Chargers led 24-0 and the Broncos were 30 minutes from falling to 2-4. Instead, they came back with 35 second-half points and haven’t lost since.

“Everybody talks about the comeback, but we were down 24-0 for a reason, because they are a good team and they forced us into some mistakes,” Manning said. “So we’re going to have to play a whole lot better than we did last time . . . We need a good week of practice.”

Now 6-3 on the season, the Broncos’ record is beginning to reflect the quality of their game. One memorable stat that made the rounds last spring, just after Manning signed, seems increasingly relevant these days. Throughout his career, Manning’s teams have averaged 26 points a game. Throughout his career, Fox’s defensively-oriented teams have won more than 90 percent of the time when they score at least 26 points.

It’s working so far. When the Broncos have scored 26 points or more this season, they are 6-0. If the defense continues to improve at its recent rate, they could be as scary as any team when the playoffs get underway.

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November 4, 2012

This just in: Peyton Manning is not a cyborg

By Dave Krieger

Remember the ad with Albert Pujols where ESPN anchors call him by his nickname, The Machine, and his inner robot offers him the options of denying the allegation or eliminating the allegators?

When he chooses to deny, his inner robot asks in a Hal-like voice, “Why didn’t you eliminate them, Albert?”

The way the two players have performed since, Pujols ought to surrender the name to Peyton Manning. For weeks now, Manning has resembled nothing so much as a football-savant cyborg with a microprocessor just a little bit faster than anyone else’s and the robotic physical skill to execute its commands.

So it was almost reassuring to see him make a couple of mistakes Sunday in Cincinnati. Robots have come to surgery already, but not yet to sports.

Manning’s mistakes also allowed the Broncos to keep developing as a contender by overcoming a little adversity on the road, requiring another fourth-quarter comeback (Manning’s 48th). For good teams, such tests are mile markers of their progress.

In their third consecutive win, a 31-23 decision over the Bengals that left them with a record of 5-3 at the season’s halfway mark, the Broncos continued to hone a dynamic combination of elite veteran leadership and impressive, improving young talent.

In the area of veteran leadership, you don’t do better than Manning on offense and Champ Bailey on defense. If anyone in that locker room is inclined toward giddiness, they are swiftly corrected.

In the area of emerging young talent, the offense is benefiting from Manning’s increased confidence in receivers Eric Decker (eight catches, 99 yards, two touchdowns) and Demaryius Thomas (six catches, 77 yards).

The defense is benefiting from Von Miller, the outstanding second-year pass rusher who added three sacks to his previous six; Wesley Woodyard, the replacement for the suspended D.J. Williams who was in on 14 tackles; and Chris Harris and Tony Carter, unheralded defensive backs who have done a better job covering NFL receivers than a series of bigger names brought in over the years to help Bailey out.

“We had great coverage,” Miller said, sharing the credit for his sacks. “Chris Harris, Champ Bailey, Rahim Moore, all those guys had great games. They were able to give us time to rush the passer. And whenever you can get time to do your job, we’ve got to get there, and that’s what we did today.”

Remarkably, Manning was not sacked all day by a Cincinnati pass rush that led the AFC with 23 going into the game. Part of it was due to the offensive line, which lost guard Chris Kuper again to a reinjured left ankle, part of it to Manning for getting rid of the ball quickly, and part of it to the Broncos’ receiver corps, which got open fast enough to give Manning early targets.

The Broncos front office under John Elway has also made a number of key veteran acquisitions now contributing in bigger ways than may have been anticipated. Keith Brooking, imported at age 36 to see if he could add a little depth and leadership to the linebacking corps, is now the middle linebacker in the base defense. Dan Koppen, picked up after New England cut him, is now the starting center. Jim Leonhard is getting more time at safety.

And Trindon Holliday, the speedster the Broncos claimed off waivers from Houston last month, made the longest play in franchise history, a 105-yard kickoff return for a touchdown to open the second half.

The Broncos were on their way to a second consecutive comfortable win when Manning made his first mistake. Holliday’s return of the second half kickoff made it 17-3. The Bengals responded with their first touchdown, the big play a 52-yard reception by wide-open tight end Jermaine Gresham.

The Broncos marched right back down the field in that methodical way Manning had led them over the previous five weeks, when he totaled 14 touchdown passes and one interception (and even that, a misread on a hot route by receiver Matt Willis, wasn’t Manning’s fault). After driving from their own 17 to the Bengals’ 9-yard line, the Broncos looked poised to restore their two-touchdown advantage.

If Manning throws his pass into the end zone a foot or two to the right, it might have been caught by Decker rather than Bengals cornerback Terence Newman. That would have made the score 24-10. Instead, when the Bengals turned the turnover into a field goal, the Broncos’ lead was only 17-13. It wasn’t immediately obvious whose fault that first pick was — Manning’s for leading Decker a sliver too much, or Decker for letting the smaller Newman keep him from getting to his spot. Tony Dungy, Manning’s former coach, said on NBC that Manning and Decker would be watching the video on the flight home to correct whatever the problem was.

The second Newman interception, on Manning’s very next pass, from his own 3-yard line, overshot Decker, and Manning took responsibility.

“Obviously, the interception, the second one to Newman, was a poor decision on my part,” he told KOA. “I just can’t give them that kind of field position, put our defense in a tough bind. So that was a disappointing decision on my part. But offensively we responded.”

One thing you can say for Manning — interceptions don’t chasten him in the least. He keeps heaving it, and his completion rate remains spectacular. Despite the mistakes, he ended up with more touchdowns than interceptions in Cincinnati.

“My father always talked about level zero, get back to level zero,” he told reporters afterward. “You’ve got to erase the play from your mind, a good play or a bad play, and move on to the next one. So, not the scenario that we wanted, anytime you’re on the road and you have a chance to put a team away, you’d like to. You hate to give them a little life, which we did. And give credit to them for responding. But when we had to, our team responded as well, and that was important.”

The Bengals turned his second turnover into a touchdown and a short-lived 20-17 lead. The Broncos responded with an 80-yard touchdown drive on five plays, the big ones a 30-yard completion to Decker, most of it after the catch, and a 29-yard pass interference penalty on Adam “Pacman” Jones on a pass in the end zone intended for Thomas.

The Broncos had the lead back, 24-20, and when Bailey came up with his first interception of the year on Cincinnati’s next possession — a pass to A.J. Green underthrown by Andy Dalton because of pressure from the Broncos’ pass rush, which had five sacks — Manning had a short field and turned it into another touchdown to make it 31-20.

“It’s hard to be at 100 percent every week, and so the good news is we’ve strung three wins together, and for us to continue that takes a lot of mental toughness, especially in the preparation to go on the road,” coach John Fox said.

NFL players and coaches know that plaudits from those of us in the cheap seats are less annoying than our second-guessing when they lose, but possibly more harmful. After consecutive wins over San Diego and New Orleans, everyone was already telling the Broncos how great they were. Exuberant internet columns predict they won’t lose again this season.

One of the encouraging things about these Broncos is they very firmly don’t want to hear it. This starts with Manning, who doesn’t even want to hear that he’s all the way back from last year’s injury.

“We feel good about where we are, but if we want to be a really good offense we’ve got to continue to improve,” said veteran receiver and Manning pal Brandon Stokley. “There’s things to clean up. We had a few too many drops today and we’ve got to put some more points on the board in the first half. So it’s still a work in progress.”

For the same reason, it’s probably better for the Broncos that Manning had those interceptions and the Broncos did not enjoy a second straight easy victory. No matter how much the veterans preach, complacency is a natural reaction to a series of lopsided wins. Instead, as Manning suggested, navigating some stormy seas may serve the team better in the long run.

“I think the more scenarios this team can get into, fourth quarter being down, two-minute drill to win it, whatever it is, this team needs to form its identity going through those type of situations, playing on the road in a hostile environment,” Manning said. “So any time you can persevere when you’re kind of doing it for the first time as a unit, to me that’s a real positive. So to get the win today was really key.”

It’s not often you can throw two interceptions and still finish with a passer rating over 100, but Manning finished at 105.8 by hitting 27 of 35 attempts (despite several drops) and throwing three touchdown passes, leaving him with a still-sensational ratio of 20 touchdowns and six picks on the season. He is leading his new offense, in his first year, by demonstrating personal accountability and demanding that teammates focus on the little things as much as he does.

And also playing really well, even if he does turn out to be human.

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October 29, 2012

Throw in a little defense and the Broncos look scary good

By Dave Krieger

Sitting in the shadow of the media scrum around Wesley Woodyard, the linebacker who gave the Broncos’ resurgent defense a face Sunday night, veteran Keith Brooking considered the question briefly, then bent over deliberately to tie his street shoes.

The question, of course, was how a defense that had looked so ordinary through the first six games — tied for 17th in points allowed, 24th in red zone touchdown percentage, 29th in third-down percentage — could suddenly dominate one of the NFL’s best offenses, as it did Sunday night against the Saints, powering a surprisingly easy 34-14 victory that left the Broncos alone in first place in the AFC West.

“It’s a new system,” Brooking explained. “We knew it was going to be a progression to get acclimated to Jack’s system and what he wants. We were going to get better week in and week out if we just believed in the system and what the coaches were telling us to do.”

The Broncos are familiar with this process of acclimation. Jack Del Rio is their seventh defensive coordinator in seven years.

“We obviously have the talent and the ability to play dominating defense,” Brooking said. “When you’re shown the film, you see the way we play. We play with great intensity, with great energy, with great effort. When you add that to talent and a great scheme and really good coaches that put you in position to make plays, I feel really good about where we’re at and, most importantly, where we’re going.”

Talk to enough veterans who have played this game at the highest level and you finally accept that the difference between good and bad is an episode or two of brain lock in a three-hour contest, the sort of thing that happens to many of us routinely in considerably less stressful circumstances. The newer and more complicated the scheme, the more of those there are likely to be.

“It does take a while,” said veteran cornerback Champ Bailey, finally part of a Denver defense that doesn’t require him to be the only playmaker. “It’s really getting a feel for everybody around you — the people you’re playing with, the coaches. It’s a big team thing. Once you get comfortable with your team and your teammates, I mean, the sky’s the limit.

“I’ve said for a long time how important practice is, but it’s getting the younger guys to understand the importance of it. And they bought in and they continue to buy in and everybody’s getting better, which makes our team better.”

In particular, young cornerbacks Chris Harris and Tony Carter have made an impression of late with starter Tracy Porter on the shelf, which should make for an interesting coaching decision when Porter is fully recovered from seizure-related symptoms.

Before you start checking into Super Bowl reservations, keep in mind that despite their gaudy offensive statistics, the Saints are a battered football team. Two of their players — defensive end Will Smith and linebacker Jonathan Vilma — remain tied up in a contentious dispute with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell over suspensions arising out of the team’s so-called bounty scandal. More important, the scandal cost the team its head coach, Sean Payton, for the entire season.

Sunday was the first game back for his replacement, interim coach Joe Vitt, who was suspended over the same scandal for the first six games. It’s all added up to a 2-5 start for a team that went 13-3 last season.

“I just met with our football team and I certainly share in their disappointment,” Vitt said afterward. “I told them quite frankly there was probably too much hype and not enough substance about me coming back last week. I’ve got to do a better job . . . .”

Vitt admitted a more sure-footed head coach might not have had to call timeout before going for it on fourth-and-two at the Broncos’ 47-yard line with the game tied at 7 midway through the second quarter. Woodyard, the defensive star of the game, leaped and intercepted a Drew Brees pass intended for tight end Jimmy Graham. Woodyard became the first Broncos linebacker with more than one interception in a season since Al Wilson in 2004.

“They ran that play earlier in that drive and I wasn’t there to make that play, so I knew I had to come back and make something happen,” the fifth-year linebacker from the University of Kentucky explained. Woodyard, who went undrafted in 2008, also had the Broncos’ only quarterback sack of the game.

But that wasn’t the last of the Saints’ coaching issues. Vitt also acknowledged he should have gone for it on fourth-and-six at midfield in the third quarter trailing 24-7, while his team still had a chance to climb back into the game. It’s rare that an NFL team is breaking in a new head coach at this stage of the season, but that’s part of the bounty scandal’s legacy for the Saints.

The Broncos, on the other hand, are coming together just as their schedule softens up a bit. They didn’t believe they were as bad defensively as they had looked, particularly against the Falcons, Texans and Patriots, but their inability to get off the field on third down overshadowed anything good they did on earlier downs.

Coming back from their bye week fresh and rejuvenated, their mission was to shut down New Orleans on third down. Mission accomplished. The Saints converted one of 12, or eight percent, a far cry from the 46 percent conversion rate the Broncos gave up through their first six games.

“I felt like you have to give their defense credit — they played well and made some plays — but overall I believe there were things that we did to ourselves in a lot of cases that prevented us from converting those,” Brees said.

“We’ve been preparing for third downs,” said Broncos linebacker Von Miller, who chased down Darren Sproles from behind for his 14th tackle of the season behind the line of scrimmage, putting him just one back of Houston’s J.J. Watt for the league lead.

“We were ranked 29th in the league on third downs and there’s no way we should have been ranked there,” Miller said. “We’ve got all the personnel on this team. We’ve got Champ and Elvis (Dumervil) and all these guys. We just haven’t had too much success on third downs. That was our mindset coming in this week, was to get off the field on third downs, and I think that was the key to the game today.”

If you expected a shootout between two of the best quarterbacks in the game, you weren’t alone. I spent much of last week telling anyone who would listen to bet the over on an over/under of 55 1/2 total points in the game. After all, these were two of the NFL’s most prolific offenses, and two of its more pedestrian defenses.

So the performance of the Broncos’ defense — or, conversely, of the Saints’ offense — was the surprise. Averaging 29 points a game coming in, New Orleans managed only seven while the outcome was in doubt.

Denver’s offense, averaging 28, scored six more, perhaps predictably given that the Saints ranked last in defense by a number of metrics. In fact, they became the first team in NFL history to give up 400 yards or more to each of their first seven opponents. The Broncos piled up 530.

Slightly more than half of them came from the arm of Peyton Manning, who had another nearly flawless outing, completing 22 of 30 passes for 305 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions and a passer rating of 138.9. In the process, he passed Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers to become the top-rated passer in the league at 109.0 for the season.

“I’m a different player coming off the injury, I’m on a different team, and so I’m just working on kind of finding my way, and our team is finding our way,” Manning said modestly, referring to the four neck surgeries that forced him to miss all of last season.

“I keep mentioning finding our identity, and we’re starting to form it,” he said. “I still think there are some things we need to improve on, and we’re going to build off this win — build some consistency as an offense and hopefully I can just continue to make strides and be on the same page as the receivers.”

“You could just see his comfort level rising,” Bailey said of Manning. “I don’t know if he could be any better than he was, but after you see how he’s progressing and getting more comfortable with the guys around him, I don’t know how far he could go.”

Although his fondness for old friends and teammates Brandon Stokley and Jacob Tamme is undiminished, Manning’s top targets are emerging as the Broncos’ talented young duo of Demaryius Thomas and Eric Decker.

Decker had two touchdowns Sunday. Thomas had seven catches for 137 yards and a touchdown, including a 41-yard catch in the first quarter that served as the centerpiece of a 98-yard touchdown drive after a New Orleans punt had backed the Broncos up on their own 2-yard line.

“I feel like stuff can always get better, but I feel like I know what he wants and he feels like he knows what I can do and knows where I’m going to be, that I’m going to be in the right spot,” Thomas said. “So I think it’s good and can only get better.”

For the rest of the NFL, that now qualifies as a scary thought. The Broncos moved up to fourth in the league in scoring at 29.1 points per game. Manning now has 17 touchdowns and four interceptions on the season. People who doubted his arm strength are stubbornly sticking to their story, but he is making all the throws and, as usual, all the right reads. He bloodied his thumb on a defensive lineman’s helmet Sunday and played through it. After missing an entire season, toughness may be Manning’s most underrated quality.

Granted, the Saints are lousy defensively and the Broncos were coming off their bye week, fresher and friskier than usual. Nevertheless, seven games into the Manning era, they look like a team with a relentless offense and an improving defense.

The version in which they play five defensive backs, a previous weakness, became a strength Sunday by doubling down on speed. Woodyard and rookie Danny Trevathan, another University of Kentucky product, manned the linebacker spots while Miller put his hand on the ground and became a defensive end. Teams usually run against the Broncos’ nickel, but that didn’t work Sunday. New Orleans gained only 51 yards rushing compared to the Broncos’ 225.

“I tell my DBs all the time, ‘If you want to play, we’ve got to stop the run in nickel. We’ve got to make sure we don’t give up big plays,'” Bailey said. “It’s those little things that cause coaches to want to put the big guys out there. We (defensive backs) feel like we’ve got the best room on the team, so we’ve got to keep proving it every week.”

The biggest threat to the Broncos now might be feeling too good about their situation. Although they are on the road the next two weeks, their opponents get markedly less challenging than the first six weeks. The Ravens are the only team remaining on the schedule with a winning record.

Not only that, but San Diego’s unsightly 7-6 loss to Cleveland on Sunday left every team in the AFC West other than the Broncos below .500. At this rate, they might be able to sleepwalk to the division crown, but if they hope to be a threat in the postseason, that’s not how they want to do it.

“That’s about as complete as we’ve looked all year,” Bailey said. “One thing we can’t do is become complacent. That can happen after big wins. We’ve had two in a row and we just got to keep it rolling.”

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October 16, 2012

The turning point of a game, and maybe a season

By Dave Krieger

If the Broncos make the playoffs this year — and given the competition in their division, that’s probably the way to bet — they may well look back at halftime in San Diego as the turning point of their season.

Trailing 24-0, they were looking at a record of 2-4 and a two-game deficit to the Chargers. More important, they were looking thoroughly unable to get out of their own way. They couldn’t field a punt or a kickoff. They couldn’t get their passer and pass receivers on the same page. They couldn’t even run unmolested to the end zone without falling to the ground for no apparent reason.

“We had the big play to (Eric) Decker and that guy made a great tackle,” Peyton Manning deadpanned afterward. “I mean, the piece of grass made the tackle, excuse me. So when those things happen, you kind of wonder, hey, golly, is it meant to be? That’s the play we have to have in order to help this comeback.

“We put that play in and thought we could get that exact result, thinking more the touchdown though, not the 50-yard completion and fall down. That was frustrating, obviously, a potential 14-point swing. We’ve got a chance to get a touchdown and then (Quentin) Jammer makes a play and they go up 17. ”

This is what makes sports more intriguing than scripted entertainment, because it is so often utterly inexplicable. The Broncos were as bad as they could be in the first half, then about as good as they could be in the second. The Chargers were the opposite. By the end, it was the biggest comeback in the history of Monday Night Football.

So, naturally, everybody wanted to know what was said in the locker room at intermission. Some sort of Knute Rockne thing?

“There’s no magical words of wisdom, that’s for sure,” coach John Fox told KOA afterward. “I think as I looked in their eyes, and I told them this, I could see they thought they could come back and win the game. The whole thing is believing. They did, and we were fortunate after digging ourselves such a big hole to be able to come back.”

They did have one thing going for them — plenty of experience fighting back from large deficits.

“There’s no speech that causes that turnaround,” Manning said. “It’s simply a matter of will. I do think offensively the fact that we had been there before, we have shown the ability to score quickly. It was nice to finally get a lead there in the fourth quarter and give our defense a chance to play with the lead and they could really peel their ears back and rush the passer.”

The litany of mistakes in the first half made the Broncos look as incompetent as they had looked since Manning’s arrival:

— In his first attempt to field a punt for the Broncos — a fair catch, no less — Trindon Holliday, signed just last week after being released by Houston, dropped the ball. The Chargers recovered and kicked a field goal three plays later.

— Rookie Omar Bolden fumbled the ensuing kickoff. The Chargers kept trying to give the Broncos the ball and the Broncos kept giving it back. The Chargers required only two plays to score a touchdown, making it 10-0.

— Following a Jim Leonhard interception, the Broncos were driving when Manning and Matt Willis miscommunicated on a sight adjustment. Instead of completing a long drive with a score and pulling themselves back into the game, the Broncos watched Jammer, the Chargers cornerback, pick off Manning’s pass and run it 80 yards the other way for a 17-0 lead.

— As if to rub it in, Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers drove the ball down the Broncos’ throats in the final four minutes of the half, capping the drive with a touchdown pass to tight end Antonio Gates.

“We were really down,” said veteran receiver Brandon Stokley. “Anytime you’re down 24-0 in the first half and played like we played, we were disappointed. But we’ve got a lot of professionals in this room, a lot of guys with heart and character, and I knew we were going to come out in the second half and give everything we had, and that’s what we did.”

The Broncos emerged from the visitors’ locker room and drove the length of the field to their first touchdown, a 29-yard strike from Manning to Demaryius Thomas.

Just like that, everything changed. Now it was the Chargers making critical mistakes. When Broncos defensive end Elvis Dumervil got the first of his two quarterback sacks on San Diego’s first possession of the third quarter, Rivers fumbled the ball. Cornerback Tony Carter picked it up on the run and raced 65 yards for a touchdown. With 4:41 still to play in the third, the Broncos had pulled to within 24-14 and made it into a game again.

“DBs are taught to scoop all balls, whether it’s a fumble or not, so we were just doing something carrying from the practice field to the game field,” Carter said.

“We’ve been working on that since OTAs,” Dumervil said. “It was like a domino effect. We finally got one and they just started coming in bunches. That’s just the way it works with turnovers, man, and sacks and interceptions. They come in bunches and at this point now we’ve got to stay consistent with it.”

“We kind of unraveled after that,” Rivers said. “They scored and made it 24-7 and we were driving, just kind of moving right along down the field and they got us in a third down and they brought an all-out blitz. I was trying to just lose a little ground and lay it to Malcolm (Floyd). I was throwing it really to be incomplete or maybe get interference or anything. Malcolm’s one-on-one. We either punt or try a long field goal there. And then obviously that play happens and then we go three and out and then they score again and then we throw an interception and they score again. It kind of unraveled after that play.”

Decker, who had fallen down with nothing but green grass between him and the end zone in the first half, carried three San Diego defenders with him across the goal line early in the fourth quarter to cut the deficit to three.

On the Chargers’ next possession, the Broncos produced yet another turnover, this one an interception by Carter. Four plays later, Manning approached the line of scrimmage and spied single coverage on Stokley, his old friend, and checked off at the line of scrimmage.

Manning was so busy changing the call he almost ran out of time. Center Dan Koppen had to motion to him to get back into the shotgun to take the snap before the play clock ran out. Manning turned to his right and launched a perfect fade into the end zone. The 36-year-old Stokley went up and took the ball from cornerback Marcus Gilchrist to give the Broncos their first lead at 28-24.

“I’ve thrown that route to Stokley quite a few times,” said Manning, who played four seasons with Stokley in Indianapolis. “That’s one of those that all the years and all the practice repetitions, it sure does pay off.

“We got man-to-man coverage, got him in press coverage, and I’ll take Stokley in the slot over anybody. I love Wes Welker and some of the all-time slot greats, but he’s my favorite, he’s the best in my opinion, and he’s really hard to cover there.

“I just gave him a little fade route and the guy really had pretty good coverage. It was kind of an in-between decision whether to throw the fade or to throw that back shoulder, and I decided to give him a chance to make a play on the ball. The fact that he caught it and got the feet in bounds, it sure was an awesome play and the team sure needed it at that point in time.”

“Peyton made an audible at the last second and actually made a great throw. I guess the catch was all right,” Stokley said.

“We’ve been talking about starting fast and starting fast and starting fast and we just didn’t start fast. So that was disappointing to come out the gates like we did. But we’ve shown all year we’ve got a lot of heart. That first half was embarrassing, but we fought back.”

Cornerback Chris Harris, elevated to the No. 2 cover position with Tracy Porter home in Denver nursing an illness, ended each of the next two Chargers possessions with interceptions. He returned the second 46 yards for the clinching touchdown.

Rivers finished with a remarkable five second-half turnovers — three interceptions and two fumbles.

“Mostly just poor throws,” Rivers said. “I wasn’t fooled out there once today. The first interception, I didn’t see exactly how it ended, but I know I gave (tight end Antonio) Gates a chance down there and they ended up with it. The other ones were bad throws. There’s really no other reason for them.”

Even after adding three turnovers to their own mounting season total in the first half, the Broncos ended up winning the turnover battle.

“You get what you emphasize,” Fox said. “After that first half, I was like, I’m not sure that really worked. But it’s kind of how you finish and I was proud of the way our guys pulled together as a football team. That’s as good a second half as I’ve ever seen.”

“I think the identity is slowly starting to come,” Decker said. “I think we understand who we are and what our strengths are and what our weaknesses are. I would say offensively, if we don’t hurt ourselves, we’re an explosive team. Defensively, if we can make plays on third downs, we can stop anybody. That’s our mindset. That’s the attitude we have.”

The Broncos still aspire to play well enough early in games not to require all these big comebacks. But as a gut check and a turning point, Monday night in San Diego will do nicely. Maybe it was a halftime speech after all.

“Coach Fox just told us we’d better pick it up,” Decker said. “Otherwise it’s going to be a sad, sad bye week.”

Instead, the Broncos head into the bye week with reason to believe.

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October 15, 2012

Archie Manning: ‘It’s been a big transition for Peyton’

By Dave Krieger

In sports these days, as in pretty much everything else, we are all about immediate gratification, and Archie Manning knows it. He also knows a Broncos record of 2-3 going into tonight’s game at San Diego opens the door for skeptics to suggest his middle son, Peyton, is over the hill at 36.

A former NFL quarterback himself, Archie’s prescription for Broncos followers calls for a quality in short supply among sports fans these days: patience.

“I know it’s been a big transition for Peyton,” the elder Manning said on the Dave Logan Show. (You can listen to the full interview here.)

“And I’m not sure what’s the bigger transition — coming back from four neck surgeries or changing to a new team, new city, new system, new players, that type of thing. You know, (after) 14 years in one place.

“I know a lot of people are disappointed at a 2-3 record, but I’ve said from the get-go when people asked me, I said I think if this group of people can stay healthy, it’ll definitely be a better team in the second half of the season than the first half of the season.

“A lot of times, you say that about a new team or a new coaching staff. And I know the coaching staff was there last year, or some of them were, but I did look at this as kind of a start-over situation. I know the system changed from last year and a lot of the players.

“Somebody asked me (two weeks ago), ‘Is Peyton excited about going to New England and playing the Patriots?’ I said, ‘I think he could think of four or five other teams he’d rather be playing.’ The schedule is brutal, guys. I mean, it’s really tough. But it’s the NFL and I think it’s a matter right now of kind of hanging in, getting better, keep coming together as a team, offense and defense.

“But back to Peyton, I think Peyton’s happy. He’s not happy with losing three games, but I think he’s happy with the guys he’s playing with and everybody working to try to make progress.”

Archie Manning is one of the few people who can relate directly to what Peyton Manning is going through. Like his son, the elder Manning missed an entire season in the midst of his NFL career, sitting out the 1976 campaign with a shoulder injury. I asked him what he found to be the biggest challenge coming back after a year off.

“I think just kind of getting the rust off,” he said. “Probably somewhat similar to Peyton in that mine was, I had biceps tendinitis and had two operations on my throwing arm. His surgery wasn’t on his throwing arm, but still the neck surgeries did affect his throwing to the point where he basically just started all over again with his rehab. He went to Duke and teamed up with his old college coach and just started from scratch.”

Duke coach David Cutcliffe was Manning’s quarterback coach and offensive coordinator at the University of Tennessee from 1994-97.

“It’s a rust situation,” Archie Manning said. “I don’t care how much you’ve played before, when you miss a whole year and you’re dealing with your arm, which is the reason you’re there as a quarterback, you’ve got to kind of prove to yourself that you can do this, you can make this throw, make that throw. So it’s been a process. He’s my son, but I’m really proud of Peyton, the way he’s dealt with everything.”

I asked if he was surprised that after an abortive free agent tour, Peyton ended up in Denver.

“I can’t say it surprised me,” he said. “That was the first visit. What was so tough for Peyton, the Indianapolis thing was hard. I think he’s a pretty loyal person and he felt like he needed to be loyal to Indianapolis, and he was going to stay. Well, it didn’t work out that way. So when he finally came to the realization he was going to be gone, it was kind of tough. There were a lot of ties there, 14 years.

“So he does that breakup one day and has got to start this tour the next day. I thought that was really hard on him. So I think the place that he made his first visit was where he knew he’d be comfortable for a visit, and that was with John Fox and John Elway and the Broncos. And then he did the rest of it.

“Now, he didn’t go on all the trips. He called and said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ He’d been to Arizona, he’d been (to Denver), and he said, ‘They’re going to have to come to me. I just can’t make this tour.’

“And I said, ‘Well, where are you going?’

“He said, ‘I’m going home.’

“And I said, ‘Well, where’s home?’

“And he said, ‘Duke. Duke is now home.’ So that’s where he was comfortable, with his old coach and some support there.

“He was 36 years old. I did not stick my nose in it. Sure, we talked some, but the only thing I told him, and I think that’s what you tell a (son), kind of like back during recruiting: ‘Go with your heart. Go with your heart.’ And I think that’s what he did.

“And never look back. And I don’t think he ever will. I know it’s not what everybody wanted, but still there’s been some progress made here for everybody, and if everybody can stay healthy, it’s going to get better.”

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October 7, 2012

Broncos remain a work in progress

By Dave Krieger

The local pro football club entered Week 5 ranked ninth in the NFL in rushing defense, surrendering an average of 87.5 yards a game on the ground. Needless to say, that ranking will tumble after the Patriots steamrolled them for 251 rushing yards Sunday on their way to a 31-21 victory.

In fact, Denver’s defense as a whole looked Charmin soft most of the afternoon, especially on third down, when the Patriots made an interminable series of big plays. New England’s three longest gainers came on third down, as did the ultimate humiliation of Denver’s defense — a third-quarter running play on third-and-17 that gained 19.

Whatever the Broncos are doing defensively on third down, they need to re-examine it. In fact, it wouldn’t hurt to do a top-to-bottom review of a defense that gave up 444 yards to the Patriots.

“You’ve got to translate things from the meeting room and practice field to the game,” cornerback Champ Bailey told KOA afterward. “Coaches can’t go out there and play for us. We’ve got to make sure we put ourselves in the position to make plays and get off the field on third downs or whatever it may be. We worked on everything they did to us. It wasn’t no surprises. They just hit us in the mouth and we didn’t hit back hard enough.”

On the bright side, if it weren’t for three killer turnovers, the offense might have kept pace with the Patriot juggernaut. When he could get on the field, Peyton Manning was excellent, completing 31 of 44 passes for 345 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions. His passer rating on the day (116.2) was slightly better than Tom Brady’s (104.6).

Down 31-14 early in the fourth quarter, the Broncos were driving when running back Willis McGahee dropped an easy swing pass on fourth-and-one to end the possession. Still, after the Patriots turned the ball over on downs on their ensuing series, Manning drove the Broncos offense 43 yards in six plays and hit Brandon Stokley with a short touchdown pass to make it 31-21 with more than six minutes remaining.

Three plays later, Von Miller, who was the Broncos’ only defensive playmaker in Foxborough, stripped the ball from Patriots running back Stevan Ridley for Denver’s only takeaway of the afternoon. Manning drove the offense another 54 yards in less than two minutes to the New England 14. With 3:48 to play, the Broncos had a chance to get within one score and set up a potentially memorable comeback.

Instead, Patriots linebacker Rob Ninkovich stripped the ball from McGahee at the New England 11 for the Broncos’ third giveaway and that was that.

“Man enough to admit I messed the game up,” McGahee posted on Twitter soon after it was over. “Put it on my shoulders. I can handle it.”

Between the defensive softness and the offensive turnovers, the Broncos demonstrated that they are still a work in progress and not quite ready for prime time (although they’ll have a chance to dispute that assessment in prime time next Monday night, when they face off against the Chargers in San Diego).

The continuing deficits in the turnover battle are a growing concern. New England entered the game first in the AFC in turnover margin at plus 8 and improved to plus 10. The Broncos were tied for 12th at minus 4 and are now minus 6.

Wide receiver Demaryius Thomas, in particular, needs a crash course in ball security. If anyone doubted Thomas’ vast potential as a playmaker, those doubts should have been erased by his nine catches for 188 yards, including a couple of sensational grabs where he looked like a man among boys. But after fumbling a ball last week while switching it from one hand to the other to short-circuit an apparent touchdown, he prevented the Broncos from getting off to a quick start Sunday by fumbling at the New England 10 on Denver’s first possession of the game.

There’s no telling how that might have changed the complexion of the game. As it was, the Patriots scored first and ultimately built a seemingly prohibitive 31-7 lead.

The Broncos’ second giveaway was a Manning fumble when Ninkovich beat right tackle Orlando Franklin on a pass rush and came up behind Manning to slap the ball out of his hand. The third was McGahee’s fatal fumble with 3:48 to play.

“They are a good team, and when you play a good team at their place, you don’t have to play perfect football, but you have to eliminate mistakes and be sound and can’t have self-inflicted wounds,” Manning said. “We had a couple of those today which kept us from having a chance to get back in the game. It’s tough when you do that against a good opponent.”

If the turnovers were maddening, the defense was mostly frustrating. The Patriots converted 11 of 17 third downs (65 percent) and the Broncos couldn’t get them off the field for long stretches of the afternoon.

New England had the ball for 35 minutes and 49 seconds of the available hour, the Broncos for the remaining 24:11. When you have two of the best quarterbacks of all time facing off, you’d like to give them roughly equal time to do their stuff. The Broncos were unable to manage that.

The Patriots’ three longest plays of the game came on third down:

— On third-and-14 from the New England 11-yard line in the second quarter, Brady’s short pass to Danny Woodhead went for 25 yards with safety Mike Adams and linebacker Joe Mays finally making the tackle.

— On third-and-12 from the New England 18 to start the fourth quarter, wide receiver Deion Branch beat cornerback Tracy Porter up the middle for another 25.

— On third-and-one from the New England 45 late in the second quarter, Brandon Bolden rumbled 24 yards to the Denver 31.

But the third down conversion everyone will remember was the third-and-17 from the New England 43 midway through the third quarter. The score was still 17-7 at that point and the Broncos had an opportunity to get the ball back with plenty of time to make up the deficit.

The Patriots seemed to concede the change of possession by calling a running play. Woodhead, their 5-foot-8-inch bowling ball, rambled around left end for 19 yards and a first down. Eleven plays later, the Patriots scored on a quarterback sneak to make it 24-7.

“They’re a good offense,” said Miller, who had two of the Broncos’ four quarterback sacks in addition to their only forced fumble. “We knew that coming into the game. We prepared for the type of offense that we knew they were going to run. I felt like we were very prepared coming into this game. We just didn’t execute. Another week we didn’t execute and we put ourselves in situations that we can’t get out of.”

Some of this is to be expected. The Broncos have a new defensive coordinator again — Jack Del Rio is their seventh in seven years — so his schemes may take some getting used to. Still, it seems clear that Del Rio and head coach John Fox, a former defensive coordinator himself, need to sit down together in a video room early this week and figure out what’s going wrong with their third-down defense.

For some time, the Broncos have had a dilemma on third down. Last year, when they went to their nickel defense in passing situations, the fifth defensive back took the place of middle linebacker Joe Mays, who plays the run a lot better than he plays the pass.

Opponents reacted by running the ball against the Broncos’ nickel, often with great success. So this year the club has experimented with keeping Mays on the field in the nickel. Opponents have responded by targeting him in the passing game.

Sunday, it didn’t seem to matter who the Broncos had on the field. The Patriots ran it down their throats at will. But the tendency to give up big plays on third down is not one that can continue if the Broncos hope to climb into contention.

Fox and Del Rio need to diagnose what went wrong and be willing to make whatever changes to their schemes or personnel that diagnosis demands. Surrendering 251 yards on the ground is an embarrassment, or should be.

“It’s a disappointing loss,” Manning said. “We’re 2-3 and we’ve got a pivotal division game (coming up). I just made a little talk to the team. We have to learn from this. It hurts. It just rips your guts out to lose a game against an AFC opponent, but we have to learn from it, have to find a way to get better from it. I think we’ll see some things on the film that were good, some guys made some big plays at some pivotal times. We just need to have more consistency throughout the 60-minute game.”

There’s a tendency to overreact to whatever has happened most recently in the NFL, but it’s worth remembering that it’s still early. A win in San Diego next week would keep the Broncos in touch with the division leaders while they wait for their schedule to lighten up, which it does on the back end.

It’s also worth remembering that the three teams they’ve lost to — Houston, Atlanta and New England — are three of the best in the league. Such losses early in the season, while you’re getting acclimated to a new quarterback and defensive coordinator, are not particularly surprising. Lots of experts figured if the Broncos could make it through a difficult first half schedule at 4-4, they’d be in good position to make some noise in the second half of the season.

But if they want to be ready to make a move following their bye week, they need to address their defensive issues now, while there’s still time.

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September 30, 2012

This is how good the Broncos can be

By Dave Krieger

If you’ve listened to various Broncos coaches perform the required post-mortems after being sliced and diced by Peyton Manning over the years, the words coming from Raiders coach Dennis Allen on Sunday should sound familiar.

“They out-coached us, they outplayed us, they beat us in every phase of the game,” he said after the Broncos routed the Raiders 37-6.

“The time of possession is killing us. We’ve got to be able to get off the field on third down defensively so we don’t play so many plays.”

The Broncos had the ball for 37 minutes, 25 seconds of the available 60, the Raiders for the other 22:35. You may recall the Broncos winning the coin toss in Indianapolis under former coach Josh McDaniels and deferring, giving the ball to Manning to open the game. Allen did the same thing Sunday, with the same result. Manning took the ball on the opening possession and marched it down the field to give the Broncos a lead they would never relinquish.

One of the unwritten rules in the NFL is you’re not allowed to make excuses, so one very relevant fact got almost no attention after Manning’s best game yet as a Bronco — the Raiders’ secondary was in tatters. Oakland was without both of its starting cornerbacks and Manning exploited this weakness at will.

When I mentioned to Allen that it’s hard to play Manning without either of your starting corners, the former Broncos defensive coordinator said what he was required to say.

“Well, it’s hard to play against Peyton Manning no matter what. He’s a good quarterback. He’s a Hall of Fame quarterback and there’s a reason why he’s a Hall of Fame quarterback. But we’ve got the guys that we have and that’s who we’ve got to go out and play with. And we’ve got to play at an NFL level. So we’re not going to use injuries as a crutch. That’s all of us.”

The Raiders signed a pair of 30-year-old free agent cornerbacks during the offseason. Ron Bartell lasted one game, breaking his left shoulder blade in the Raiders’ opener against the Chargers. Shawntae Spencer lasted twice as long, sustaining a foot injury in Week 2.

So the Raiders rolled into Denver with backup Pat Lee at one corner and safety Michael Huff at the other. Manning feasted, completing 30 of 38 passes to eight different receivers for 338 yards, three touchdowns and a passer rating of 130.

“They’re still professionals out there and they’re still NFL players,” said veteran Broncos receiver Brandon Stokley. “You have to go in with the same mindset every game. I think we did that this week. We knew if we went out there and executed, there’d be some plays to be made. And that’s what we were able to do.”

Behind Manning, the Broncos converted 10 of 16 third downs, a remarkable 63 percent. Behind Carson Palmer, the Raiders converted one of 12, or 8 percent.

For a while, it looked as if the Broncos wouldn’t take full advantage. Demaryius Thomas was on his way to the end zone early in the second quarter when he fumbled the ball trying to shift it from his right hand to his left.

On their next possession, the Broncos had a fourth-and-one at the Oakland 36-yard line. Head coach John Fox had at least three choices: Let Manning go for the first down, as he had, successfully, on a fourth-and-one in the first quarter; let kicker Matt Prater try a 53-yard field goal, well within his range, especially at altitude; or fake the field goal and let Prater try to get the first down.

Inexplicably, Fox chose the latter, which produced a bizarre spectacle of the place-kicker rolling to his left and lofting a pass apparently intended for offensive guard Zane Beadles.

“I’m not sure it will go down with Montana-Rice or any of those great passing combinations,” Fox said. “We probably won’t see that one again for a while.”

Following the coach to the podium, Manning deadpanned: “Well, Fox took my line . . . I just kind of told them to maybe give Manning-to-Stokley a chance, maybe before Prater-to-Beadles. It’s one of the all-time great combinations, right? Kelly-Reed, Montana-Rice, Prater-Beadles, you know.”

It was easy to laugh because the Broncos erased any regrets in a fabulous third quarter. For the first time this season, offense, defense and special teams all reached the top of their game at the same time.

Having deferred to the second half, the Raiders got the ball to open the third quarter. The Denver defense forced a three-and-out, the big play a tackle by nickel back Chris Harris of Raiders receiver Denarius Moore one yard short of the first down. Manning and the offense responded with a nine-play, 79-yard touchdown drive capped by Manning’s 17-yard scoring strike to Eric Decker.

The Broncos kicked off and the defense forced another three-and-out. Champ Bailey put Oakland in a hole right away by tackling fullback Marcel Reece four yards behind the line of scrimmage on first down.

When Shane Lechler tried to punt the ball back to the Broncos, special teams ace David Bruton got his hand on it. Because the ball traveled two yards beyond the line of scrimmage, it didn’t count as a block, but no matter — the Broncos got the ball at the Oakland 18 and four plays later had another touchdown.

“They know what I did,” Bruton said. “They know what it is. It doesn’t bother me at all.”

In fact, Bruton wasn’t going for the block until the Raiders invited him in.

“I wasn’t even supposed to rush on that punt,” he said. “I was supposed to just pin the wing inside. He gave me a soft shoulder and I just ended up reaching over his shoulder and got my hand on the ball.”

I asked Bruton to describe the feeling when he felt his hand meet the ball. “Can’t nobody block me, that’s the feeling,” he said with a broad smile.

“And they can’t!” said safety Rahim Moore, eavesdropping from the next locker.

A third consecutive three-and-out for Oakland followed. This time linebackers Von Miller and Wesley Woodyard did the honors, stuffing Raiders running back Darren McFadden two yards behind the line of scrimmage on a third-and-two.

As night follows day, it produced yet another Broncos touchdown, this one taking only five plays to cover 63 yards. That made it 31-6.

In less than 12 minutes of game action, the Broncos had turned a nail-biter into a blowout. That’s why coaches talk so much about the three phases of the game working together. When they do, your players start to feel like a bunch of supermen.

But just as some fans overreacted negatively to the Broncos losing back-to-back games to Atlanta and Houston (which are now a combined 8-0), some are liable to overreact positively to the rout of the Raiders. Next up, the Broncos travel to New England to take on the Patriots, who put 52 points on Buffalo this week. The last time the Broncos played in New England . . . well . . . you probably remember.

“I think the key that I’ve said all along is just trying to keep making progress somehow,” Manning said. “That doesn’t always show on the scoreboard. You’d like to win every game as you’re feeling your way and learning about your team and learning about yourself a little bit. So there’s still a lot of that going on, for me out there as the quarterback and for our team, sort of figuring things out. But I think today we learned some things. We still have some things to improve on, but anytime you can be working on things and get a win at the same time, that sure is nice.”

“He’s getting more comfortable,” Fox said of Manning. “Let’s not forget he didn’t play all last season. This is a new team, a new coaching staff, a new city, a new field, a new everything for him. The type of guy he is, he’s just going to get better and better. He’s a championship guy and he’s going to get used to his teammates, our players. He just was better at it today than earlier.”

As Manning adjusts to Denver, Denver adjusts to Manning. Running the offense almost exclusively out of the no-huddle Sunday, several times Manning had to shush the excitable Orange Sunday crowd so his teammates could hear him calling signals at the line of scrimmage. This produced a novel instruction from the video screens, which often exhort crowds to make noise. “Quiet,” the boards instructed.

There will be more ups and downs, of course. It’s the NFL. But this was more than the Broncos’ most lopsided win over the Raiders in 50 years, more than putting a stop to four years of struggling at home against their longtime rivals from Oakland, more than a good start to the competition within the AFC West.

This was a template for how good this Broncos team can be. Everything came together, including a little bit of luck in the form of the Raiders’ banged up secondary. The question now is how often they can live up to it.

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September 24, 2012

Broncos melodrama: Does Del Rio know what he’s doing?

By Dave Krieger

Tracy Porter, the Broncos’ starting right cornerback, departed Sunday’s loss to Houston slightly before the end of the first half. He did not return.

Neither did he disappear into the locker room to get urgently-needed medical attention. Every time my binoculars found him on the Broncos sideline, he was sitting on the bench or standing and watching the action.

Perhaps he was injured, as head coach John Fox said afterward. “Knee,” Fox said by way of explanation, and Porter was indeed limping as he walked off the field at the end of a 31-25 home loss, although he was still in his uniform pants and there was no evidence of ice or any other treatment during the intervening two hours or so.

Normally, there’s little doubt about injuries because we see them take place or the club announces them in the press box or both. Neither occurred in the case of Porter. The Broncos announced injuries to linebacker Nate Irving and running back Willis McGahee during the game, but made no mention of an injury to Porter, leading to the conclusion that he he’d been benched.

After all, he came out of the lineup after Texans quarterback Matt Schaub completed a pair of long touchdown bombs to receivers Porter was covering. Andre Johnson caught a 60-yard scoring pass in the middle of the first quarter to give the Texans their first lead at 7-5 and Kevin Walter caught a 52-yarder in the middle of the second to make it 21-5. These were the biggest plays of the afternoon.

“They challenged us, played a lot of man coverage,” Texans head coach and former Broncos quarterback and offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak said afterward. “Jack got very aggressive in some of the things he did, so I tried to give us chances to make big plays, and we did.”

He was referring, of course, to Jack Del Rio, the Broncos’ first-year defensive coordinator, long known for aggressive defensive schemes.

“Andre makes a big play on the boot throwback early in the game,” Kubiak continued. “The throw that Matt made to Kevin for a touchdown was a tremendous play. But we knew we were going to have to make some big plays. It wasn’t a percentage-type throwing day because of the way they played us. But it was a big-play throwing day, so we were able to make those plays.”

Porter was the AFC defensive player of Week 1, largely for the pick six that sealed the Broncos’ opening night victory over the Steelers. Del Rio made it clear that night that he was not flipping the coverage to keep Champ Bailey on the opponent’s top receiver, which the Broncos did routinely before Del Rio’s arrival. For one week, anyway, it didn’t hurt them.

Sunday, it did. Once Porter went out, nickel back Chris Harris took his place as the second cornerback. Tony Carter moved up to nickel back.

At that point, Del Rio allowed Bailey to return to the old formula. He generally shadowed Johnson for the rest of the game, shutting him down without a catch until Schaub found him on a short out with just over two minutes left in the game.

So I asked Bailey afterward if, given a choice, he would cover the opponent’s top receiver all over the field, wherever he lines up.

“I really just do what my coaches game plan for the week,” said the 11-time Pro Bowl selection. “I think everybody in the world knows I always want the best guy. I’ve never been shy about saying it. It’s really their call. I can’t just go against them.”

So there’s the challenge for the Broncos’ defensive coaches. If Del Rio wants to play aggressive defenses that leave his corners on their own, perhaps he should take some advice from one of the best to play the position.

“As a corner, that’s one thing you just don’t want to do, is give up the deep one,” Bailey said. “They could throw a hundred comebacks or curls, but don’t give up the deep one. It’s tough out there on that island, I’m telling you, but it is what it is. We’ve got to learn from it and try to get better.”

On the bomb to Johnson, it looked as if Porter was expecting help over the top from safety Mike Adams. The touchdown throw to Walter looked like basic man-to-man coverage.

Adams offered no insight: “I got to go back to the film and see what happened,” he said. “I just saw the (still) pictures and that didn’t help me much.”

The last time a cast wanted to see the film as much as these Broncos, Francis Ford Coppola was making the original Godfather.

“You never really feel like somebody’s better than you,” Bailey said. “It’s just we’re killing ourselves because we know what they’re going to do but our eyes aren’t in the right place, and that makes you look bad. That’s how they make plays. I mean, their offense is set up off that run game and if you don’t stop the run effectively they can eat you up in the boots and play-action and stuff like that.”

That’s what happened on the first-quarter touchdown to Johnson.

“It was just a double move,” Johnson explained. “They had the perfect coverage. There wasn’t anybody on the other side of the field.”

The Broncos thought the rebuilt back end of their defense was good enough to play man coverage and let Del Rio play the run and go after the quarterback with everybody else. So far, it looks like they were wrong.

Schaub threw four touchdown passes against Del Rio’s defense. That’s a lot. The Broncos’ front seven was victimized by the zone blocking, cut blocking scheme other teams complained about for many years when the Broncos ran it under Mike Shanahan, Kubiak’s former boss.

“You try to practice and prepare for it as much as you can, but you can’t practice (cut-blocking),” Broncos rookie defensive lineman Derek Wolfe said. “You can’t practice the back cutting on you like that. So that was definitely something new for us. I thought we handled it well at times, but there were just some misfits here and there. We got out-schemed, I think.”

Schaub’s shortest touchdown flip was a three-yard swing pass to running back Arian Foster. Somehow, 330-pound defensive tackle Kevin Vickerson seemed to have coverage responsibility. I have no idea what scheme that is, but it may need further review.

Schaub also had a scoring strike to Owen Daniels. Covering tight ends has not been the Broncos’ forte through the season’s first three weeks.

And then there were the two big plays. Kubiak denied he was going after Porter.

“I wouldn’t say we target anybody,” he said. “We’re attacking scheme, attacking what they’re doing on the back end, whether it’s quarters, quarter-quarter-half, or man. But we knew that we would have to try to get the ball down the field because they had a lot of people committed to the run. We just came off a game where we played a team that played us in a bunch of two-deep and we had to play the game totally different. So we did what we had to do to win. Convinced them to make some big plays and they did.”

If this is the sort of defense that Del Rio intends to run — a high-risk, gambling unit that leaves corners on their own — he’d better make sure his best cover corner is covering the other team’s most dangerous weapon.

Yes, Schaub completed a key 12-yard pass for a first down to Johnson with Bailey on him at the end, but that’s still the matchup you want if you’re a Broncos fan.

On the other side of the ball, the Broncos were uninspired and uninspiring for most of the game. Offensive coordinator Mike McCoy seems determined to use the no-huddle as a change of pace, so the Broncos go long stretches huddling conventionally and looking thoroughly mediocre. Then they’ll break into the no-huddle and start moving the ball.

For most of the afternoon, Peyton Manning was clearly the second-best quarterback on the field. Through three quarters, he had completed 17 of 35 passes for 210 yards, no touchdowns and a pedestrian passer rating of 67.6. The one saving grace was he eliminated last week’s interceptions.

In the fourth quarter, against a Texans defense protecting a 20-point lead, he finally connected on a 38-yard touchdown to Brandon Stokley, his old Colts teammate, to cut the lead to 13.

“It was just a seam route,” Stokley said. “Peyton made a great throw right over the top of the guy. I thought we were able to get some stuff going after that. It kind of got our confidence going maybe and the defense started playing well and we were able to claw our way back into the thing.”

Fired up, the Denver defense delivered a rare three-and-out. Freed by the urgency of the no-huddle, the offense marched down the field with Manning leaning heavily on Stokley, the most familiar of his receivers. When his throw for Eric Decker was deflected into the waiting arms of tight end Joel Dreessen in the end zone, it seemed karmic compensation for Demaryius Thomas’ failure to get two feet down on a perfect touchdown throw five plays earlier.

Suddenly, the Broncos were down only six, just as they were a week earlier in Atlanta. Using their timeouts, they forced the Texans into a third-and-five with 2:49 on the clock. Johnson pushed Bailey off him at the line of scrimmage far enough to give him room to break to the outside. Schaub placed the ball perfectly, just beyond Bailey’s outstretched arm.

“We lined up in one formation and shifted to another,” Johnson said. “Champ was playing outside of me and I knew I had an out-breaking route. I started outside and pushed back up and broke out and Matt gave me a chance.

“I went to Matt earlier, before we got the ball, and said, ‘I’ve been playing (badly). Just give me a chance. Don’t give up on me.’ He came to me and said that I’ve been playing too much football to get down on myself. He gave me the opportunity and I was able to make a play.”

Johnson was referring, probably, to a couple of earlier near-misses — a bomb down the right sideline broken up by Bailey that Johnson appeared to catch momentarily with one hand, and another that he almost juggled into Adams’ arms. But it’s instructive that despite his early touchdown, he was frustrated enough at the end to apologize to Schaub before his third-down catch, just his second of the game.

“I was right there,” Bailey said. “It’s just two good players making a play. His quarterback put it right where I couldn’t get it, so I’ve got to give him a lot of credit. Once I started following him around, he didn’t have a catch. In crunch time, he made it happen, so you’ve got to give him a lot of credit for that.”

If an opposing receiver can beat Bailey, the Broncos will have to live with it. He’s the best they have and one of the best there’s ever been.

If, on the other hand, they lose because an opposing No. 1 receiver beats their No. 2 cornerback, as Johnson did in the first quarter, that’s like a pitcher getting beat on his second-best pitch. That’s a mistake.

The Broncos may well need to play the high-risk defense Del Rio called Sunday. They may still not be stout enough up front to shut down the ground game and pressure the quarterback with four down linemen and the occasional linebacker, as the Texans were able to do.

But one lesson of Sunday’s loss seems pretty obvious: If that’s how they’re going to play, they need to let Champ Bailey cover their opponent’s best receiver until somebody else proves he can do it better.

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September 18, 2012

What, you thought the Broncos would go undefeated?

By Dave Krieger

In his bewilderment during last night’s first quarter, Peyton Manning looked as if he’d just stepped out of a retrofitted DeLorean and was trying to figure out what year it was.

Clearly, it wasn’t the next year after he played last, as it had always been before. That would have been 2011.

Just as clearly, the people around him were not the same as those he played with last. That team is gone.

The NFL’s Rip Van Winkle awoke to find himself in entirely new circumstances. And while he was gone, it was evident his opponents had been studying up. By the time he figured out he had morphed from the tricker to the trickee, he had thrown three interceptions in a first quarter for the first time in his career.

“We were able to disguise our coverages very well,” Atlanta coach Mike Smith said after the Falcons’ 27-21 victory dropped the Broncos to 1-1. “That’s something we said all week we’d have to do. You can’t give the quarterback a pre-snap read, and we were able to do that early in the ballgame. He made some throws we were able to convert, and make plays on the ball.”

When Manning last played, disguising coverages mostly meant showing blitz when you didn’t plan to blitz or the opposite, showing vanilla and then bringing the house. What Falcons defensive coordinator Mike Nolan did was more sophisticated. He disguised not merely the defensive play call but the defensive scheme as well.

Former quarterback and ESPN analyst Trent Dilfer called it a “walk-around, amoeba defense” that produced “a lot of brain clutter.” There was no base defense in position before most of those first-quarter snaps, just a bunch of guys wandering around.

“William Moore lines up as the (middle) linebacker, drops as the hole safety,” Dilfer said, referring to the Falcons’ strong safety, who made the first of the three interceptions. “Peyton Manning thinks he has a defined look at the snap; the look changes post-snap, (he) makes a big mistake.

“I think what you saw was Mike Nolan win the chess match and his players execute a scheme beautifully designed for Peyton Manning. They gave him these pre-snap looks, where Peyton usually wins, and then, as the ball is snapped, that look becomes totally different. Playing the game after the snap is much different from playing it before the snap and this is a guy that hasn’t played football in a year.”

That’s the most important fact to remember. For perhaps the first time since his rookie season in the league, Manning is actually behind the NFL learning curve, trying to catch up after spending a year undergoing multiple neck surgeries and undertaking a grueling rehabilitation process.

Nolan will not be the last defensive coordinator to try to take away his pre-snap advantage. In Week 1, Pittsburgh’s Dick LeBeau limited his disguises to the usual suspects: Where would safety Troy Polamalu be? Nolan’s walk-around scheme meant almost anyone could end up almost anywhere, and they frequently did.

Still, Manning eventually figured it out and brought the Broncos back to the point where a defensive stop with two minutes remaining would have given him and the offense a shot at a come-from-behind win. It didn’t happen, but the fact it was even possible after turning the ball over four times in the first quarter — Manning’s three interceptions and Knowshon Moreno’s fumble, awarded to Atlanta by replacement referees even after Broncos tackle Orlando Franklin emerged from the pile with the ball — showed how competitive the Broncos can be.

“You’ve got to remember, Peyton Manning’s a new quarterback in our system,” Broncos coach John Fox said. “He’s adjusting to teammates, adjusting to the things we’re doing. It’s not going to happen overnight. He’s just going to get better.  I think we learned a lot about our football team tonight.”

Much of what they learned was good, actually. The Falcons are an excellent team, a likely contender for the NFC title. Yet even after spotting them four turnovers, the Broncos ended up with more first downs (24-22), more total yards of offense (336-275) and a much better ground game (118 yards to 67).

Beyond the turnovers, Denver’s two most obvious weaknesses were the lack of a pass rush on Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan — he was sacked once — and an inability for the second week in a row to cover an opposing tight end (Tony Gonzalez had seven catches for 70 yards and a touchdown). But even those problems probably could have been overcome without the 4-0 disparity in giveaways.

“Those first three interceptions, he was flat out tricked by the coverage,” Dilfer said of Manning.

“Obviously, I’d like to have all three of them back,” Manning said. “Just three bad decisions. I’m sure when I see the film I’m sure I’ll see somebody open short, underneath, on a check-down. So I’d love to have all three of them back. But I’ll learn from them and I think our team will learn from them and I would hope to be better for it.”

Almost as compelling as the unfamiliar sight of a confused Manning was an excruciating performance by the crew of replacement referees, who were nearly as bad as the Broncos’ offense early on.

Although it’s easy to mock these refs, who were asked to fill in when the NFL locked out its regular game officials, it’s not their fault. These are referees from lower collegiate divisions most of whom would not even be candidates to form a new pool of referees if all the locked-out referees were suddenly fired. Such a pool would consist of Division I college refs, who can currently be found working Division I college games on Saturday afternoons.

Late Monday night, long after the game was over, Steve Young, the retired quarterback and ESPN commentator, offered a devastating but honest appraisal of why the NFL allowed the administration of its game to get as bad as it was at the Georgia Dome:

“I can say this because league officials have gone to sleep, so let me just go right at this. There’s a lot of people in the league that would rather break the (referees’) union. There’s a lot of people who don’t feel like officiating is on-field personnel; they feel like it’s a commodity.

“But more importantly, everything about the NFL now is inelastic for demand. There’s nothing they can do to hurt the demand for the game. So the bottom line is they don’t care. Player safety doesn’t matter in this case. Bring in Division III officials — doesn’t matter. Because in the end you’re still going to watch the game. We’re going to all complain and moan and gripe and say there’s all these problems. All the coaches will say it, the players will say it. Doesn’t matter. So just go ahead, gripe all you want. I’m going to rest. Let them eat cake.”

This is actually something to worry about. If the NFL doesn’t figure out that the integrity of the game requires referees with a clue, the chaos on the field in Atlanta will be replicated on gridirons across the country. In fact, it may get worse. At one point, the Broncos’ head coach found himself on the field trying to break up a scrum that looked about one short fuse from turning into a brawl.

By comparison, Manning’s bad quarter should cause very little concern. In fact, you could argue that by November, he’ll be thanking Nolan for helping bring him up to speed.

The four-time Most Valuable Player has been back for two games after missing a full season — an eternity in sports. He’ll adjust. It’s what he does best.

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