November 14, 2012

Of Cy Young awards, the knuckleball and high altitude

By Dave Krieger

The first knuckleballer to win the Cy Young Award seemed as good a person as any to ask about throwing baseball’s most unpredictable pitch at high altitude. Or, yes, high elevation for you wordsmiths.

Regular readers may recall that we are building an inventory of conversations about the challenge of pitching at baseball’s highest level, no pun intended, with folks who actually do it. Here are a few of the earlier installments:

Matt Belisle.

Alex White.

John Smoltz.

So as Mets righthander R.A. Dickey was preparing to come to Denver last week to accept the Branch Rickey Award for humanitarian service, I got a chance to ask him about throwing the knuckleball in Colorado.

Dickey was one of three finalists for the Cy Young Award at the time. He was named the winner today, easily outpacing the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw and the Nationals’ Gio Gonzalez. Dickey received 27 of 32 first-place votes in balloting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

Phil Niekro and Wilbur Wood each finished in the top five of Cy Young voting three times, Joe Niekro (for whom the knuckler was a complementary pitch) twice, and Tim Wakefield once, but Dickey became the first pitcher whose primary pitch is the knuckleball to actually win the thing.

I raised the question about altitude because fascination with the knuckleball comes up sometimes in conversations about how to pitch at Coors Field. Desperately seeking a pitch or approach that might work there for longer than a season or two, fans periodically ask whether the knuckleball could be a solution.

Knowing that curveballs often lose their bite a mile high and even two-seam fastballs tend to get less sinking action, I assumed the knuckleball would be the ultimate victim of thin air, relying as it does on air resistance to do its inimitable dance. When I looked at Dickey’s career, I found he has never started a big league game in Colorado. But it turns out he has thrown the knuckler here, both in bullpen sessions at Coors Field and in games at Colorado Springs as a minor leaguer.

First, some background on how Dickey came to throw the knuckleball relatively late in his career.

“I started the first few years of my career as a conventional pitcher, and I came to the point in 2005 where I’d kind of run my course as a conventional pitcher,” he said on the Dave Logan Show.

“My velocity had dropped, and just through general attrition, I just didn’t have the stuff I once had. So if I wanted to keep chasing the dream of being a major league baseball player, I had to come up with something that was a weapon that I could use to face big league batters.

“Orel Hershiser was my pitching coach at the time (with the Texas Rangers) and he suggested that I go to a knuckleball full time. He had seen me kind of piddle around with it on the side and thought that it might be good enough. So that’s when it began for me. It took quite some time to learn how to throw it correctly. I mean, it wasn’t until 2008 or 2009 where I really kind of felt comfortable with it. So it took a good three and a half years for me just to really have a mechanic that I could depend on that would produce a ball that doesn’t spin.

“That’s what a knuckleball is, for the people out there that don’t know. It’s a ball that when you throw it, does not spin. It has about a quarter of a revolution on it from the time it leaves your hand ’til the time it gets to the plate, which is a lot different than every other pitch that’s thrown. A curveball, you’re trying to impart really a lot of revolution on the ball to get it to manipulate the spin; a fastball the same way. But a knuckleball’s tough to throw, and it took me quite some time.”

In fact, Dickey enjoyed the best season of his career this year at age 37. His 20 wins and 2.73 earned-run average were career bests. Like Wood, the Niekro brothers, Wakefield, Hoyt Wilhelm and Charlie Hough, Dickey’s knuckler danced to an unpredictable tune of its own.

“I think one of the things that makes a knuckleball effective is if I throw it and I don’t know which direction it’s going to break, well, the hitter surely doesn’t know,” he said.

“So I’ve got an advantage there. It may break like a curveball at one point, it may break like a screwball at one point, it may not break at all on another one. I can throw 10 knuckleballs and they may do 10 different things. That’s the advantage of throwing a pitch like that, is that it’s going to probably do something a little bit different every time, and a hitter can’t track that. It’s tough for them to anticipate where the ball’s going to end up and put the barrel on the ball. Once you learn how to throw a knuckleball, the next step is how can you throw it for strikes. And that took me quite some time.”

So . . . about throwing it in Colorado. I mentioned that my research hadn’t turned up any Dickey starts at Coors Field.

“I’ve thrown bullpens in Colorado and I pitched in the minor leagues against Colorado Springs as a knuckleballer,” he said.

“It is tougher to throw at those high altitudes because there’s not much humidity for the ball to kind of resist against. At sea level, let’s say in New York, for instance, if I throw a mediocre knuckleball, well, it’s still going to move, it just might not move as sharply or as much. If I throw a mediocre knuckleball in Colorado, it’s going to be a b.p. (batting practice) fastball right down the middle that I’m going to have to either dodge or I’m going to just put my glove up for the umpire to throw me another ball because that one just went 450 feet.

“So it is tougher. You’ve got to be more perfect with your mechanic, with your release point, with the consistency of the rotation. You just have to be a little more perfect.”

So, no, sadly, the knuckleball is probably not a solution to the interminable search for an approach that will solve the riddle of making a career out of pitching at major league baseball’s only park a mile above sea level, home to the game’s highest team ERA (5.22) last season. It is that quest for perfection that has led to injury both physical and psychological in Rockies pitchers over the franchise’s first 20 years of existence.

Dickey might yet get the chance to give it a try on the hill at Coors. Though he just turned 38, the history of knuckleballers suggests he could be pitching for years to come.

“I do think that my body will be able to withstand pitching into my mid-40s,” he said.

“A knuckleballer is probably best when they are operating at about 70 percent capacity, which means you’re not taking a lot out of your arm. Now, other parts of your body can break down too, so it’s not only an arm issue, but most of the time the thing that stops someone from pitching another year is that they have arm problems or they just don’t want to deal with the pain that comes from pitching a game, throwing 120 pitches, and having to do it again in five days.

“Well, throwing a knuckleball takes away some of that concern because you’re throwing at about 70 percent capacity. So there’s less wear and tear, there’s easier recovery, you’re a little more resilient, and you’ve got a good mechanic where you could pretty much throw 300 or 400 hundred pitches and it would be no big deal. So that’s what’s different about being a knuckleballer and that’s why you can pitch deep into your 40s.”

Oh, and one more thing. About that humanitarian service that earned him the Branch Rickey Award and a banquet in Colorado.

“One of the things that I’ve always enjoyed about specifically playing in New York is that it gives you the platform to do things that might transcend the game, and I’ve always had interest in trying to use the platform of baseball to do that,” Dickey said.

“I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro last year in an effort to raise money for an outreach called the Bombay Teen Challenge, which rescues young girls and women from sex slavery and human trafficking in Mumbai, India.

“I had some exposure to that through a friend and he turned me on to the charity and I got involved intimately with the head of it. We raised over $100,000 for that outreach and they’re able now to purchase a clinic in the middle of the red light district in Mumbai, which was, ironically, once a brothel. It’s a really neat story and it’s a fantastic organization and it’s something that I’m thankful that I’m a part of.”

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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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November 3, 2012

Buffs hit rock bottom

By Dave Krieger

BOULDER — It was late in another painful post-mortem for second-year Colorado football coach Jon Embree when I asked about his longtime friend, fellow former Buff and current offensive coordinator.

Is it possible, I asked, for Embree to evaluate objectively the job Eric Bieniemy is doing running CU’s offense?

“Yeah, and I will do that with everybody, myself included, at the end of the season, and make sure that we’re doing things that give us the best chance to win,” Embree said. “It’s important that this program has relevancy.”

That final comment was the first clue that Embree understands just how many people are now tuning out.

Colorado has been blown out in its last five Pac-12 conference games: 42-14 to UCLA, 51-17 to Arizona State, 50-6 to Southern Cal, 70-14 to Oregon and, perhaps worst of all, 48-0 to Stanford on Saturday, the first time the Buffs have been shut out at home in 26 years.

That’s a combined score of 261-51 over the past five games. Ripping the program is now casual sport on social media. Twitter followers beg you to stop offering game updates.

The Buffs rank dead last among 120 Division I teams in scoring defense. In fact, they rank 124th — below four programs transitioning to Division I status. Opponents are averaging more than 46 points a game against them.

On the other side of the ball, they also rank very near the bottom — 117th before being shut out Saturday. They are averaging barely 16 points a game on offense.

So I could certainly have asked the same question about defensive coordinator Greg Brown, but if you watch the Buffs you’re likely to end up feeling sorry for the defense. Against the high-powered offenses of the Pac-12, the CU offense gives its defense no chance. When you’re constantly giving the ball back to the likes of Southern Cal, Oregon and Stanford, your defense is going to pay the price sooner or later.

Saturday’s game was a case in point. The Buffs took the opening kickoff and went three-and-out. The defense came on and forced the Cardinal into a three-and-out.

The offense came back for its second series and made the game’s initial first down. Then quarterback Jordan Webb threw an interception in the middle of the field that Stanford safety Ed Reynolds returned 52 yards for a touchdown. The defense hadn’t given up a first down and the Buffaloes were already behind.

“It’s something you have to prepare for as a defense,” sophomore linebacker Brady Daigh said after the Buffs surrendered 436 yards of offense to the Cardinal and put up a meager 76 on 44 offensive plays themselves.

“You need to expect that something like that is going to happen. You still need to go out there and shut down their offense and get yourself off the field. It was tough, though. I was feeling a little tired out there and was missing a lot of tackles. That’s something I need to improve on.”

Stanford had the ball for more than 36 minutes Saturday; CU for less than 24.

From the standpoint of CU’s offense, it looked a little like a spring scrimmage. Embree tried all his quarterbacks — well, three of them, anyway — to no avail. Webb, the junior transfer who has started every game so far, started again, even though he’d been replaced last week in Eugene by sophomore Nick Hirschman. When he was ineffective against Stanford, he was again replaced by Hirschman. When Hirschman did no better, he was replaced by sophomore Connor Wood.

When I asked Embree what he might do next at quarterback, this was his reply:

“I’ll address that Tuesday and I’ll be very clear on that. I just don’t want to say anything right now because I don’t want it to seem like people are being blamed. But Tuesday I’ll announce some stuff. I just don’t want to do it now.”

Embree’s announcement that Webb would start this week came late Friday. When I asked why he elected to stay with the transfer from Kansas, this was his reply:

“He was the better guy, clearly, during practice. But I’ll talk more about that whole situation Tuesday.”

I’m speculating, of course, but I’m not sure a discussion and announcement Tuesday would be necessary if he were sticking with Webb, so perhaps a change is coming.

There wasn’t much to distinguish the candidates Saturday. Webb completed four of 10 passes for 19 yards. He was intercepted once, as I may have mentioned, and took three sacks. Hirschman completed four of six for 12 yards. He, too, was sacked three times. Wood was four of seven for 66 yards and took just one sack. Wood engineered the only drive that crossed midfield.

Embree has tried to install principles of the spread option on the fly over the past three weeks as he has realized that his offensive line isn’t good enough to match up and consistently block the defensive lines of the Pac-12. But not one of his quarterbacks is known as a runner, which means defenses don’t honor their run fakes. The three of them combined for four yards rushing Saturday.

With his team now 1-8, with nothing to lose, I asked if Embree has considered putting a running back at quarterback as Bill McCartney did in 1985 with tailback Mark Hatcher when he converted to the wishbone.

“No, I haven’t,” he said. “We have to get it out of one of those three guys.”

So I followed up by asking if he thinks it’s possible to run the spread option successfully with a quarterback who’s not a runner.

“If he can get you four (yards),” Embree said. “That’s really what you need out of him right now. When you look at some of those teams that do it, it’s not necessarily the quarterback being a great rusher. It’s the threat of him running it.

“You force defenses to do some things — play zero and man coverage. But then you’ve got to be able to take advantage of that. That’s where we struggle sometimes, too, getting some man match ups and being able to take advantage of it. So it’s a combination of things. Unfortunately, it’s not something you fix overnight. But we’ll keep chipping away at it and keep trying to give our kids the best chance to have success on that side.”

Everyone knew the Buffs would struggle in the early days of Embree’s tenure because former coach Dan Hawkins left the cupboard pretty bare. But falling to the bottom of Division I in both offense and defense is something else. Getting blown out week after week is something else. The Buffs are rapidly becoming a laughingstock, if they’re not already, and Embree knows he and his staff can’t survive for long playing the worst football in the nation.

Bieniemy’s offense is fooling no one. If you can’t measure up in talent, you have to be smart enough to fool opponents with trickery or misdirection or the various disguises provided by option football. The Air Force Academy has been doing this for years. The Buffs don’t do any of that. They try to run a classic pro set and it’s going nowhere. They did try a few spread option fakes in the run game Saturday, but they fooled no one. Week in and week out, they keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

At least Embree knows that relevance is now an issue. In a stadium that was barely half full for homecoming Saturday, season-ticket holders have little incentive to renew and the effort to sell luxury boxes has become an uphill battle.

Embree expressed faith that redshirt freshman quarterback Shane Dillon will become a factor in spring practice. He expressed faith that new recruits on the offensive line will address his team’s issues in pass protection. Perhaps conversion to the spread will improve the ground game.

Shut out at home for the first time since 1986, the Buffs have hit bottom. Now it’s up to Embree to prove he and his staff are capable of bouncing off the floor rather than just lying there. It’s only their second season, but the Buffs’ helplessness is shortening the normal timeline. Embree is now 4-18 as a head coach, 1-8 this year.

This can’t go on. Changes have to be made. Embree and his staff must signal to fans that the status quo is unacceptable. It begins with whatever Embree plans to announce Tuesday.

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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 27, 2012

Bad to the ‘bone: Should Colorado pull a 1985?

By Dave Krieger

Colorado suffered its fourth consecutive blowout loss to a Pac-12 opponent today in Eugene, falling to 1-7 on the season.

Three days ago, Chaparral High School tight end Mitch Parsons, one of the state’s top recruits, withdrew his verbal commitment to CU.

Parsons posted his announcement (sans punctuation) on Twitter: “Well Im no longer committed to Colorado still going to stay in contact with the coaches but I need to figure some things out #SoMuchOnMyMind”

Parsons was one of three in-state commitments for the recruiting class of 2013, along with running back Phillip Lindsay of Denver South and offensive lineman John Lisella of Columbine.

Two days before Saturday’s loss in Eugene, I asked second-year CU coach Jon Embree if he would consider a radical change in philosophy similar to the one Bill McCartney adopted in 1985 after the Buffs went 1-10 in 1984 with a conventional offense.

McCartney moved his freshman tailback, Mark Hatcher, to quarterback and installed the wishbone. In McCartney’s fourth season, the Buffs improved immediately, and dramatically, finishing 7-4 and earning an invitation to a bowl game, the Freedom Bowl, for the first time in eight years. McCartney never presided over a losing season again.

“We were 1-10,” McCartney explained at the time. “At that point, we were ready to sink our teeth into something new.”

As his talent improved, McCartney’s offense morphed into a variation of the wishbone he called the I-bone in 1988 and finally back to a pro set for the 1991 Blockbuster Bowl as he looked ahead to the 1992 season.

Embree, who is now 4-17 in a season and a half as CU’s coach, remembers the feeling. He was midway through his Buffs playing career at the time.

“Coach Mac went to the wishbone the spring going into my junior year,” he recalled. “When you run option-type football, whether it’s the spread (or another kind), it does help you because you don’t have to block people. You read people. It gets you in space and allows you, if they make a mistake, a chance to make a good play.

“Last week against USC I put in some spread principles and we were able to move the ball. We moved it better. And we’ll do some of that this week also.”

The Buffs managed 150 yards rushing against Oregon, small consolation next to the Ducks’ 439 yards on the ground and 618 overall.

For years, the Air Force Academy has used a run-heavy attack based on some form of option football to compensate for generally smaller linemen and a smaller pool of potential recruits given the service commitment required of Air Force cadets. Not only does it force opponents to prepare for a style of play they are likely to see only once all season, it also eats clock and deprives opponents of possessions.

The Falcons rushed for 461 yards Saturday in a win over Nevada that improved their record on the season to 5-3. They came into the weekend ranked second in the country in rushing.

In another case, Bill Snyder has Kansas State ranked among the top five teams in the country just four years after his return to the Wildcats. He’s done it behind a read-option attack built around quarterback Collin Klein of Loveland, Colorado, who is suddenly a serious candidate for the Heisman Trophy.

Without any star performers and a stable of uninspiring drop-back passers, the Buffaloes’ pro-style offense has floundered against faster, more talented Pac-12 opponents. In their last three conference games, the Buffs have given up 51 points to Arizona State, 50 to Southern Cal and 70 to Oregon, not to mention the 69 Fresno State piled up back in September.

Given these dispiriting results and their likely effect on recruiting, I asked Embree if he would consider going back to the future, as McCartney did nearly 30 years ago, and adopting some form of option offense for next year in an effort to restore the Buffs’ competitiveness. He didn’t rule it out.

“At the end of the season, we’ll sit there and evaluate everything that we’re doing on offense, defense and special teams and see what it is that we can do with the people we have and get an idea of really where we are and whether it’s wholesale changes or just implementing a little more or less, whatever it is, get those issues addressed,” Embree said.

Inevitably, seasons like this one sap strength from a program and support from a coaching staff. After going 7-25-1 in his first three seasons in Boulder, McCartney was ready to sink his teeth into something new. When this season is finally over, will Embree feel the same?

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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 12, 2012

This just in: Turning around a college football program is hard

By Dave Krieger

Our two pre-eminent state universities, Colorado and Colorado State, both sport football teams, although only the truly committed or slightly daffy pay much attention to them these days. From the outside, both appear to be stalled on the trip back from nowhere, spinning their wheels before hopeful fans who generally find an excuse to excuse themselves from the proceedings long before the game is actually over.

Each team saw its record fall to 1-5 with its most recent loss — Colorado’s to Arizona State by the woeful score of 51-17 on national television Thursday night, and Colorado State’s to Fresno State by the less embarrassing final count of 28-7 last Saturday.

Fresno thumped Colorado by a score more common to children’s basketball games — 69-14 — a month ago, so losing to the Bulldogs by just 21 was something of an in-state victory for the Rams, their second counting their only actual victory, over Colorado, in the first game of the season, when hope still shone through the clouds of their common plight.

A year ago, Jon Embree, then CU’s first-year coach, was an emotional wreck after each of his team’s 10 losses. He was devastatingly honest about his team’s failings, enumerating them in what seemed a combination of public contrition and confession. Hired in large part because of his connection to the program’s better days — he played under Bill McCartney and coached under McCartney, Rick Neuheisel and Gary Barnett — Embree seemed to take personally his inability to get his players to perform as well as those teams of yore.

This year, in Embree’s second season in charge, the results haven’t changed much but his demeanor has. He is much more equanimous after losses, owning up to his team’s failures matter-of-factly, often with a rueful smile, as if he has come to terms with the fact that good players make good coaches, and not the other way around.

When I pointed out this change of demeanor to him following Thursday night’s loss, he smiled.

“So you’re saying I’m boring now, huh?” he replied.

I asked if his greater calm in the face of adversity reflected merely the difference between a first-year coach unaccustomed to losing and a second-year coach facing reality, or more an understanding that his players — still college kids, after all, most if not all of them destined to make a living outside the sport — were trying as hard as they could, even if that effort didn’t mean much to the scoreboard.

“I think it’s a combination of those factors,” he said. “I do believe these kids are giving me everything they have, I really do. I see the hurt. The way they come out and prepare every week, what they do in the weight room, how they are pre-game. There’s no doubt that they’re giving us all we have. Like I told them, we’re not going to let up. We’re going to keep working hard. We’re going to keep preparing just like if we were undefeated.

“You can’t let your circumstances dictate how you prepare. It’s got to be an attitude, a mindset. It’s got to be who you are as a person. Because you’re going to have times that things don’t go your way, and if you don’t have that resolve about you, then you let those circumstances dictate what you’re going to be and how successful you can be. I know these kids want to have success and they know that they’ve worked harder and they’ve put in a lot more than they have in the past.

“But what we need to understand, and what I think they do understand, is that all that does is give you an opportunity. It doesn’t guarantee you anything.

“And now we have to find a way to play four quarters. I told the team right now we’re about a three-quarter team. We play well for three quarters, when it’s all said and done. And with the level of competition that we’re playing and the situations that we’re in, we’ve got to play four quarters to have a chance. So we’ll keep grinding. We’re going to keep working.”

Frankly, this is a kind assessment, and Embree knows it. Even if you take CU’s best three quarters of each game, it’s not good enough. That’s because, harsh as it sounds, the players aren’t good enough. In particular, the quarterback play isn’t good enough, and Embree knows that, too.

When I asked him what he thought of his offense, he stopped short of a John McKay condemnation, but he didn’t sugarcoat it, either.

“I’m not happy with it,” he said. “I’m not happy where we are offensively. There’s some things that you’d like to do and there’s some guys that (will) come in that we’ve recruited that’ll help some of it, but I’m not happy at all with what we’ve done offensively. So as an offensive staff we’ll take a look at some of that tomorrow.”

Whether that last line was his oblique way of saying he would look, again, at shuffling the depth chart, wasn’t clear. What is clear is that college football, like the professional version, is all about quarterback play. And Jordan Webb, the junior transfer from Kansas, is clearly a bridge at the position until Embree finds someone better.

Asked if he knew why Webb so often misses connections with open receivers, particularly on the deep routes that might produce big plays, Embree returned to his native honesty:

“I don’t. I know he’s had a thumb issue on his throwing hand. I don’t know if that’s it. That’s something maybe you’d have to ask him. But the way we are offensively right now, we don’t have a lot of room for error. So when you create those opportunities and matchups, you’ve got to hit on almost all of them, and right now we’re hitting maybe 25 percent of them. And it has to be the other way. It has to be at least 75, 80. But I don’t know why.”

Up the road in Fort Collins, first-year coach Jim McElwain is something of a cross between the first-year Embree and the second-year Embree. He shows the emotion and reverts to the philosophizing of the first-year Embree, but rather than lapse into despondency, he tries to laugh at it.

“How miserable am I?” he asked rhetorically after Saturday’s loss, the Rams’ fifth in a row. “I am miserable! You want to know how miserable? I’m miserable, OK? But I’m not ready to jump off the cliff because I saw in that room and I saw the fight in the comeback from what they should have been just embarrassed about the week before. So there was some resolve, I think is the correct word, even though I’m not sure I can give you the dictionary definition. But there was resolve. And there was a huge disappointment because I know what they put into it. But, as they know, we come back to work and we keep moving forward. And the guys that are on board, they’ll be out there.”

A blocked punt in the final two minutes of the first half allowed Fresno to tack on a second score to what was a manageable 7-0 CSU deficit to that point. For McElwain, that symbolized everything he’s trying to excise from the program he found when he arrived.

“It’s like, ‘Now what? Here we go again.’ Right? Which is what you’re trying to bleed out of them. You know what I’m getting at? I mean, that’s what we’re trying to bleed out of the program right now. It’s not the ‘Here we go again.’ It’s not your dad’s same old Chevy, right? This is the new Rams. And we’ve got to bleed the bad taste, we’ve got to bleed the cancer, we’ve got to get rid of it.

“It’s just not how you think. To be successful, you just can’t think that way. So, you know what? Sometimes you’re going to get knocked down. My problem is I’ve probably been knocked down more than I’ve been stood up. But you know what? You keep getting up and you keep firing. And that’s what we’ll do.”

McElwain faces a challenge greater than Embree’s with respect to fan support. Colorado’s attendance is not what it would like, but Folsom Field, which holds 53,613, still draws roughly 40,000 fans for most of CU’s home games, even if the crowd tends to thin out in the second half of blowouts.

At CSU, Sonny Lubick Field at Hughes Stadium holds only 34,400 and usually draws considerably fewer. Saturday, the announced attendance was 25,814, but the stadium’s famed red-light brigade — three lines of taillights headed east, toward the only street that provides access — was in full force at halftime of a 14-0 game. McElwain goes out of his way to praise the fans who come out, trying desperately to cultivate a following for a program that hasn’t won more than three games since 2008.

This is at least part of the reason why university president Tony Frank and athletic director Jack Graham have launched a fund-raising bid to build a new stadium on campus. For students, faculty and staff, gathering at an on-campus stadium on an autumn day has an appeal that transcends the quality of the team they will see. Driving off campus to the egress nightmare and isolation of Hughes does not.

But in the meantime, they must make do with what they have, so McElwain encourages the few, the proud, the Rams loyalists.

“Very disappointed for the fans,” he said after Saturday’s loss. “I mean, this was a fantastic turnout, guys. It was the first cold night we’ve had and they were into the game. I want to really say thanks to the people who came out to the stadium because they helped on third downs and it was exciting. It’s disappointing that we’re not giving them something tangible to hang their hats on and feel good about, and, as I’ve said, I see what we’re doing and I see the guys we’re doing it with and you know what?”

He paused for a moment and frankly, I don’t know him well enough yet to know whether it was theatrical timing or actually needing a beat or two to check his emotions to keep his voice steady.

“The Rams are going to be a force to reckon with here in the future,” he said finally. “I can tell you that. And I guarantee that.”

As with Embree’s Buffaloes, the truth of the matter is disarmingly simple. CSU’s players aren’t good enough to comprise a winning team. Like Embree, McElwain found a cupboard full of holes when he arrived. His sophomore quarterback, Garrett Grayson, broke his clavicle two weeks ago, so M.J. McPeek, a senior who had never started before, got the call against Fresno. Asked how much responsibility McPeek bore for CSU’a anemic offense, McElwain went out of his way to absolve him:

“That’s a valid question, and I say none. M.J. did some good things; he’s going to want some things back. I’ll take the responsibility on that. We’re not doing what we need on offense to get it taken care of. And it’s obvious. I mean, shoot, let’s call it the way it is. And that’s my responsibility as a head ball coach. We’ve got to get a running game going, plain and simple, to be a successful football team. I mean, the team we just played, as much as they threw it, you know what, they ran the ball effectively, right? That’s where it starts and we’ve just got to get it going. And that’s not M.J. We’ve got to give him some help, all right?”

Like Embree, McElwain basically acknowledges his team’s lack of talent while honoring the effort of the kids in his charge.

“What you do is you keep working and you keep moving forward,” he said. “There are no quick fixes. I checked the waiver wire and they didn’t allow us to take any. I’m going to see if (Broncos) coach (John) Fox up in Denver might be able to throw us a couple, but you know what, I don’t want anybody else. I want these guys. I want these guys to get to where they’re going. That’s where we’re at.”

When he was finished dissecting the particulars of the latest defeat, I asked McElwain, whose last job was offensive coordinator for a national championship team at Alabama, to name his biggest challenge as coach of a 1-5 team.

“I think the biggest challenge is to keep them working every day and not stepping back,” he said. “That to me is going to be the challenge. And we’re going to be able to see the true character of a lot of individuals when you get in this situation. Everything you do in life throws you a challenge. Now, how you decide to step up and accept the challenge says a heck of a lot about who you are and what you’re all about. And there’s a lot of great lessons in that. And you know what? We’ll find out in those lessons who’s strong enough to persevere and see the things we need to make sure we get better at. And like I say, I’m not in any way, shape or form putting it on them. I’m saying, we’re going to do this together.”

It takes four years for a college coach to populate his team with his own recruits. This is the minimum timeframe required to determine if he has the wherewithal to attract players good enough to build a winning program. Whether Embree and McElwain are destined to turn around their respective programs remains a mystery. But there are no shortcuts. Both of them are learning that the hard way.

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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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