April 10, 2012

The lamest home opener in Rockies history

By Dave Krieger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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April 9, 2012

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

By Dave Krieger

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

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

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

* The Mets are awesome.

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

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

“Offense overrated.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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April 8, 2012

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

By Dave Krieger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 11: v. Minnesota (1-1)

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

April 15: v. Houston (1-1)

April 16: at Houston (1-1)

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

April 21: at Phoenix (2-0)

April 22: v. Orlando (1-0)

April 25: at Oklahoma City (0-2)

April 26: at Minnesota (1-1)

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

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April 7, 2012

How Ubaldo’s suspension turned into a joke

By Dave Krieger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Baseball has at least two ways to fix its process:

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

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

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

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April 4, 2012

The two things Peyton Manning will need to survive in Denver

By Dave Krieger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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March 31, 2012

The good, the bad and the ugly of Rockies camp

By Dave Krieger

The Rockies open their season Friday in Houston and their roster is shaping up to be better than many of the experts are predicting.

Yes, I know. I’m always optimistic about the Rocks. Still, there are lots of good signs as spring training winds down. A few not-so-good signs, too, it’s true. So let’s break it down:

The Good

Wilin Rosario. Wow. The 23-year-old Dominican catcher with 56 big league at-bats has been the breakout story of the spring, collecting 18 hits in 39 at-bats through Thursday’s games, including a club-leading three home runs. He hit one rocket blast against San Francisco that one veteran talent scout called “freakish, absolutely freakish.”

He’s batting .462 with an OPS of 1.271. Sure, it’s a small sample, but the question going into camp was whether he was ready for the bigs or needed a year of seasoning at Triple-A, having played at Double-A last season. Barring a last-minute injury, not only will he make the big league club, if he keeps hitting like this he’ll end up sharing the catching duties with veteran Ramon Hernandez.

Juan Nicasio. The feel-good story of the spring, Nicasio has bounced back from the broken C1 vertebra he suffered last Aug. 5 after being hit in the right temple by a line drive off the bat of Washington Nationals shortstop Ian Desmond. In 23.1 innings pitched this spring, he has struck out 21 and walked 5, pitching to an earned-run average of 3.09.

As a power pitcher and a strike-thrower, he will cap a wonderful comeback story by coming north as a member of the starting rotation, probably pitching the final game of the opening three-game series in Houston. His fastball makes him good as he is. If he develops a change-up and breaking ball to go with it, he could be dominant. And because he isn’t afraid to throw strikes, the Rocks believe he’ll pitch deep into games, giving their bullpen a break.

Jorge De La Rosa. Nobody’s talking about him because he won’t be ready for the start of the season, but De La Rosa’s comeback from Tommy John surgery is right on track. The training staff, being conservative, projects a July return, but privately the Rocks believe he could be back by early June.

That changes the dynamic around the fifth starter question that has dominated camp. Whoever it is, that fifth starter might need to make only nine or ten starts before De La Rosa is ready to take his place. He would give the Rocks two power lefties, something very few big league clubs can boast.

Drew Pomeranz. Don’t be alarmed if the prize from the Ubaldo Jimenez trade gets skipped the first time around the Rockies rotation. After pitching just 101 innings last season, all but 11 of them in the minors, the 23-year-old, 6-foot-5 power lefty will be brought along carefully. The Rocks don’t want too dramatic a rise in his innings count for fear of the long-term effects. Because of the off day following their April 9 home opener, the Rocks can go with four starters until April 15, a Sunday afternoon home game against the Diamondbacks. If everything goes as planned — and that’s never a sure thing a week away from the opener — get your tickets to that one. This guy is going to be fun to watch develop.

Pomeranz has shown a nasty side this spring that augurs well for his chances to become a dominant big league starter. One snapshot: The other day, against the Angels, Brandon Wood was struggling at second base and allowed two base runners to reach that probably should have been outs (spring training being spring training, both were ruled hits). Pomeranz responded by striking out Howard Kendrick, shattering Albert Pujols’ bat on a ground out to third, popping up Torii Hunter on a 2-2 pitch and staring him down as he walked off the mound. When was the last time the Rocks had a pitcher like that? In 11 spring training innings, his ERA is 0.82.

Jamie Moyer. Who doesn’t love this story? A 49-year-old coming off elbow surgery is now very likely to make the Rockies’ starting rotation coming out of camp, barring the physical setbacks that a 49-year-old can always suffer. In part, this is because the other candidates — Guillermo Moscoso and Tyler Chatwood — have been underwhelming. But it’s also because Moyer has been good — a 2.77 ERA and 11 hits surrendered in 13 innings.

It’s also because, sandwiched between the power arms of Nicasio and Jeremy Guthrie, Moyer can provide an interesting change of pace. He tops out at 80 miles per hour these days, with his breaking and off-speed stuff sometimes not reaching 70. And because of De La Rosa’s expected return, the Rocks wouldn’t be looking at him for 30 starts; more like half that many. Moyer’s soft stuff at Coors Field does make you wince a little in anticipation — he’s been rocked in two of his three starts there — but the Rocks have other options if he blows up. And if he can get credit for a win somewhere along the way, he’ll be the oldest man to do it.

Tyler Colvin. The former first-round draft pick by the Cubs became part of an exchange of disappointments over the winter when the Rocks acquired him in exchange for Ian Stewart. Trying to show off power he doesn’t have, he batted .150 a year ago. As soon as the Rocks acquired him, they went to work overhauling his swing. The results so far: a .365 batting average and .948 OPS with 12 RBIs in 52 at-bats. With Charlie Blackmon out with turf toe, Colvin has locked up the fourth outfielder job and provides an insurance policy in center field.

Michael Cuddyer. The veteran outfielder obtained from the Twins to provide run production and maturity has shown up so far as everything the Rocks were looking for, and a bit more. Two recent snapshots: Against the Giants, Mike Fontenot failed to clear the second base bag turning a double play and Cuddyer blew him up sliding in. Against the Angels, he hit a routine three-hop ground ball to short and turned it into a bang-bang play at first by busting it down the line.

In fact, he and Colvin have impressed enough that the Rocks now believe they can keep 38-year-old Todd Helton fresh at first by sprinkling in a liberal dose of lineups with Cuddyer at first and Colvin in right.

The Bad

Dexter Fowler. Remember the guy from the first half of last year? He’s back. Fowler was batting .118 in 51 at-bats through Thursday’s games, including sixteen strikeouts, two walks and one stolen base. Not exactly leadoff man numbers. So 36-year-old Marco Scutaro — batting all of .176 himself this spring — is probably the club’s leadoff man coming north.

This is a make-or-break year for Fowler with the Rockies. If he can hit his career average of .262, his defensive excellence in center field makes him worth running out there every day. But his long swing seems to make him susceptible to these long offensive funks. If his spring at the plate spills over into the regular season, the Rocks won’t hesitate to deploy Colvin in center.

Jhoulys Chacin. The numbers aren’t terrible, but the Rocks were looking for the 24-year-old Venezuelan right-hander to take another step forward this year and they haven’t seen it yet. He arrived at camp with biceps soreness and swiftly developed a blister on the index finger of his pitching hand. Rockies fans remember a couple of other pitchers who arrived at camp last year with what seemed like minor issues — Ubaldo Jimenez and Aaron Cook — and although the initial problems went away, they were a sign of things to come.

Chacin’s main problem is not throwing enough strikes, and that hasn’t improved so far this spring. Still, he has a lot of talent and the Rocks aren’t relying on him to anchor the starting staff, as they did last year after the Jimenez trade. For now, he’s penciled in to throw the home opener, four games in.

Rafael Betancourt. The 36-year-old closer — he’ll turn 37 at the end of April — hasn’t been effective this spring, but it’s a very small sample size and nobody seems concerned. With Matt Belisle and Rex Brothers poised to set up, the Rocks believe they’ll be OK in any event, but they are counting on Betancourt to return to form.

The Ugly

Casey Blake. It was sad to see the widely-admired veteran reach an age (38) that prevented him from ever really competing for the third base job, but it’s not as if it was unexpected. The Rocks signed him to a non-guaranteed contract for just that reason. He couldn’t get on the field for a while, and when he did he showed virtually no range at third. So he was released, leaving Chris Nelson and Jordan Pacheco to share the third base duties until Nolan Arenado, who turns 21 in April and will start at Double-A Tulsa, is ready.

Eric Young Jr. As usual, Young has been a disruptive dynamo offensively, batting .310 with six steals. “He’s like an automatic double,” says one observer. Unfortunately, the Rocks can’t find a place to play him in the field where his defense isn’t cringe-worthy. In the outfield, where he’s gotten most of his time, he still takes bad routes to balls that turn outs into hits. The Rocks love his energy and work ethic, but they can’t figure out what to do with him. He’s out of options and unless the club wants to come north with a short pitching staff, it will have to look for a deal or try to get him through waivers.

The Roster

To the extent anything can be said to be a lock a week before the regular season begins, the locks for the bullpen look to be Betancourt, Belisle, Brothers, Esmil Rogers and Josh Outman. If we assume the Opening Day starting staff consists of Guthrie, Nicasio, Chacin, Pomeranz and Moyer (with Moyer probably pitching the second game of the season to slot him between the hard-throwing Guthrie and Nicasio), that leaves six guys competing for two remaining spots: Moscoso, Chatwood, Alex White, Edgmer Escalona, Matt Reynolds and Josh Roenicke. All have options except for Roenicke.

Rockies brass is split on whether White is best suited to start or relieve in the long run, so they might bring him north as a member of the bullpen to check him out in that role. In that case, Moscoso and Chatwood would probably be sent down to Triple A Colorado Springs to continue starting and the last bullpen spot would likely go to Escalona or Reynolds.

The infielders seem likely to be a platoon of Nelson and Pacheco at third, Troy Tulowitzki at short, Scutaro at second and Todd Helton and Jason Giambi at first. Jonathan Herrera has had an excellent spring and seems likely to make it as a utility man. He and Nelson might seem redundant, but the Rocks are not high on Nelson’s defense anywhere but third, so Herrera would be the primary backup for both Scutaro and Tulowitzki.

The outfield is set with Carlos Gonzalez, Fowler, Colvin and Cuddyer.

The catchers are Hernandez, Rosario and Pacheco in a pinch.

That’s 12 pitchers, six infielders, four outfielders, two catchers and one infielder/catcher for a total of 25. Things could change in the next week, of course, but from here, that looks like a roster that could surprise, particularly if the young members of the starting staff look as good when the games begin to count as they have in spring training. This team should hit, and it should play pretty good defense. As usual, the Rocks’ fortunes should rise or fall with the pitching.

Almost time to play ball.

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March 28, 2012

The money stat about Peyton Manning and John Fox

By Dave Krieger

It was sort of an accident, really. The Broncos’ media relations staff came up with the statistic about Peyton Manning and John Fox that knocks your socks off as part of routine research before Manning visited Dove Valley a little less than two weeks ago.

It was part of a general briefing email the staff sent to Fox and John Elway two weeks ago today, the day the Colts released Manning. But this particular stat was also highlighted in a chance hallway meeting at Dove Valley between Fox and media relations director Patrick Smyth.

As soon as Fox heard it, he knew he had to make it part of his sales pitch to the four-time NFL most valuable player.

As Sports Illustrated’s Peter King reported in a fine blow-by-blow account of the courtship, Fox had requested certain information specifically, including some facts about the weather in Denver that would debunk its false reputation back east as a snowbound winter wonderland. That request, along with an Excel spreadsheet, produced the fact that the average starting temperature in 519 Broncos home games over the years has been 60.1 degrees.

Indeed, while they were at it, the Broncos broke down the average starting temperature for games in Kansas City, Oakland and San Diego — the Broncos’ AFC West rivals — and found it came to 61 degrees. Averaging the temperatures in Kansas City and San Diego in December may seem silly, but the exercise allowed the Broncos to tell Manning that the average starting temperature at the venues of 11 of his 16 games each season is in the 60s.

But the stat that made Manning and the Broncos look like a match made in heaven was not specifically requested. Rather, it grew out of earlier research Smyth’s staff had done when Fox was first hired almost fifteen months ago — the veteran coach’s record when his teams achieve certain markers, such as plus one in turnovers, plus two in turnovers; when they score 22 points, when they score 24, when they score 26, and so on. It’s the sort of standard stuff that appears in a team’s game notes throughout the season.

The first time I heard the money stat was six days after it made that internal Dove Valley memo, when Fox came on the Dave Logan Show following the press conference introducing Manning as the Broncos’ new quarterback on March 20.

Fox has long had a reputation as a conservative, defensive-minded head coach, a guy who likes to run the ball and whose teams play a lot of low-scoring games. But when I discussed that reputation with him in the middle of last season, he said it was a matter of circumstance, not conviction. And when you look at his teams, it’s true that he’s never had a quarterback likely to gain admission to the Pro Football Hall of Fame without a ticket.

“I’ve never had that guy,” he told me then. So, following the Manning press conference, I asked him how different the Broncos’ offense was likely to look now that he finally has a Canton-bound quarterback.

“You do the best you can with what you got,” he replied. “Unfortunately, that’s been a little bit more run-oriented for me in my ten-year head coaching career. Balance is the thing that’s tough to defend, being a defensive coach most of my career. Getting a guy like Peyton, a guy that’s got those experiences and getting you into runs or passes based on what the defense is doing, you definitely become more two-dimensional and you get that balance.”

That’s when he unloaded the stat:

“As I mentioned to Peyton in the process, he’s averaged 26 points a game over his fourteen-year career in Indy, and in my ten-year coaching career when we’ve had 26 points or more, we’re 39-3. So hopefully that will be more the ratio moving forward.”

Actually, the count is 38-3, but let’s not quibble. The bottom line is this: Over the course of his career, when Fox’s teams score 26 points or more, they win more than 90 percent of the time.

Of course, the stat also demonstrates just how rare that’s been for Fox. In ten seasons, he’s coached 160 regular-season games and ten playoff games, so his teams have scored 26 points or more less than 25 percent of the time. Last season, for example, the Broncos scored 26 points or more only three times — and went 3-0 in those games.

What turns it into a money stat for the marriage of Manning and the Broncos is that 26 is Manning’s career average. In 2010, the last season he played for the Colts, his team scored 26 or more ten times.

As King points out, the key factor in Manning’s decision to sign with the Broncos was his comfort level with the people, Elway and Fox in particular, the city and the organization. But that stat is an intriguing part of the promise of this marriage because what it says is this:

If Manning can be approximately the player he’s been throughout his career, and if Fox can be approximately the coach he’s been throughout his career, it could be an almost unbeatable combination.

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March 26, 2012

Tiger sets his sights on Augusta

By Dave Krieger

Luke Donald is:

a) the governor of a midwestern state who declined to run for president;

b) Donald Trump’s long-lost half-brother;

c) the guy who played Hawkeye in the movie version of M*A*S*H;

d) the top-ranked professional golfer in the world.

No personal offense intended to the apparently nice, 34-year-old Englishman, but the actual answer is:

e) the reason golf so desperately needs Tiger Woods to return to contention.

Donald is the No. 1 golfer in the world, according to the rankings, and if you could pick him out of a lineup give yourself a golf clap.

Also in the top ten are Lee Westwood, Martin Kaymer, Steve Stricker, Charl Schwartzel, Justin Rose, Webb Simpson and Adam Scott. It is not just nostalgia that has the sport’s older hands pointing out that this list does not have quite the ring of Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Tom Watson and Lee Trevino, the challengers to Jack Nicklaus’ supremacy in golf’s golden competitive age.

Today, the compelling figures are Woods and Phil Mickelson, with young Rory McIlroy perhaps poised to join them.

So Woods’ first PGA tour win in two and a half years, Sunday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando, was not just good news for Tiger, who can resume his pursuit of Nicklaus’ record for most major championships at the Masters the weekend after next. It is good news for the Masters and the sport itself, which can expect the escalating interest and television ratings that Tiger used to generate as he takes on a field of challengers that is largely anonymous to the outside world.

Woods answered questions for nearly fifteen minutes at a press conference following his win at Bay Hill, but never once did he let down his guard. If you thought the Shakespearean tale that intervened between his last two tour victories would change his public persona, think again.

There was one moment in particular that seemed ripe for an endearing bit of self-deprecating humor. Someone asked him to contrast Sunday’s victory to his last tour win, at the BMW Championship in September 2009. That victory came a few weeks before he ran his car into a fire hydrant, launching a stunning fall from grace that saw his marriage dissolve and preceded a series of injuries that suspended his quest to break all of golf’s most important records.

He could have flashed that rare and famous smile and said the BMW was so long ago it was hard to remember. He didn’t, of course. Tiger doesn’t do self-deprecation.

“I guess they’re all slightly different,” he said without the hint of a smile. “I’ve had the lead before and I’ve won. The goal today with obviously the wind conditions as they were, coming out of the west, this is the toughest wind we’ve got. And I just felt that anything under par was going to be a very good score today. That was my goal, my mindset today, and after the first hole my lead went from one to three. So that certainly changes things. So now let’s just try to make a lot of pars and see what happens. Let’s make a stray birdie here and there.”

It is all about the golf for Tiger, and always has been. When he was asked whether the most difficult hurdles over those 924 winless days were mental or physical, the closest any of golf’s scribes came to referencing the dissolution of his marriage, he said it wasn’t even close.

“Oh, it’s by far the injuries, because you can’t practice,” he said. “I haven’t been able to put in the time. You can’t make a swing change and make all the adaptations we need to make unless I can practice and I haven’t been able to do that. I was sidelined most of last year — it was tough. Finally started showing signs toward the end of the year in Australia, and moving forward.”

So competitive is Woods, and so unwilling to accept even the golf world’s definition of the longest drought of his career, that he refused to acknowledge Bay Hill as his first win since everything came crashing down. Somebody asked him what he would say to those who predicted he would never win again.

“Well, it’s my second win,” Woods said, referring to the Chevron World Challenge, a charity offseason tournament he and his foundation host in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

“Officially,” replied his questioner, knowing, as Woods does, that the charity event does not count as a tour win.

“I got official world ranking points, didn’t I?” countered Woods, who fell as low as No. 58 in those rankings last fall, but has now climbed back to No. 6.

He regarded his interrogator in triumph. “You can’t win this one, can you?” he said, a wide smile creasing his face.

When questioners suggested he confirm their story lines that he needed a win, Woods rejected the narrative.

“As far as needing to win, no, you don’t need to win,” he said. “You want to win. I think that’s a misperception I think people get into. I know I have a desire to win and that’s why I enter these events, is to do that. And ultimately, this week was one of my weeks.”

Someone else suggested he’d like the Masters to start immediately, as if giddiness over Sunday’s win might be an asset. Woods shook off yet another story line.

“I still need some work,” he said. “And it’s going to be good to get a week off and work on a few things. I enjoyed the progression we made this week. Each day there was a little bit of fine tuning here and there and we were able to make those adjustments, which was good. And especially with the conditions getting more difficult all weekend, I was able to hit some really good shots the last two days. That’s a very good sign going into Augusta.”

A very good sign. Consider the confidence Woods exuded when asked toname his best shot of Sunday’s final round:

“I hit a lot of good ones today. Not one shot stood out because I hit, I thought, a boatload of good ones. I had really good control of my ball all day. I was shaping it both ways, changing my (trajectory), and it felt so comfortable. I can’t pick out one shot, sorry.”

At 36, Woods appears poised to resume his pursuit of Nicklaus on all fronts. His 72 tour wins are just one back of the Golden Bear and ten behind Sam Snead, the all-time leader. He could tie Nicklaus with a win at the Masters, but that’s not the record he’s looking for.

“Yeah, well, that’s nice, but I’m looking forward to more the green jacket part of it than tying Jack in that regard,” Woods said. “Jack’s had an amazing career and he’s won a bunch of tournaments, but also he’s won more majors than anybody else either. So I’m looking forward to my opporunities this year to . . . there’s four of them this year, and hopefully I can peak at the right time for all four of them.”

Four, of course, is Woods’ deficit to Nicklaus in majors — 18-14 — and if it sounds like he’s thinking a grand slam to tie is possible, well, he probably is. That’s Tiger.

“Good to see him back winning tournaments again,” said Graeme McDowell, the runner-up Sunday. “I think he really kind of nailed home his comeback.”

“It’s a big moment in golf and it sure sets the scene for Augusta,” said analyst Johnny Miller. “Watch out, boys on the PGA tour, Tiger is back.”

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March 22, 2012

Tebowmania changes time zones

By Dave Krieger

Tebowmania in Colorado was as much a cultural phenomenon as a sports story, which is why limiting it to sports makes it almost impossible to understand.

Take the Broncos’ trade of Tebow to the New York Jets, finally consummated last night after a day of dickering over a $5 million payback provision in Tebow’s contract.

The Broncos traded three draft picks — one each from the second, third and fourth rounds — to move up into the first round in 2010 to draft Tebow with the 25th pick. In the 23 months he was a Bronco, Tebow became a national phenomenon, topped all NFL players in jersey sales for a while, won more games than he lost and led his team to an unexpected playoff berth and a more unexpected playoff win.

Yet, after all that, his value in the NFL marketplace depreciated substantially. John Elway dealt Tebow and a seventh-round draft pick to the Jets and for a fourth-round pick and a sixth. If Tebow’s name were not attached to it, that would be a minor trade on the books of both teams.

Already reviled by Tebow’s most ardent admirers, Elway can now expect criticism for not getting enough in exchange for him, but the consensus among personnel executives around the league over the past two weeks was that Tebow would fetch either a third-round pick or a fourth straight up. So a fourth and a jump from a seventh to a sixth was basically the market price.

But why was that the market price? Why wasn’t a quarterback who pulled off last season’s serial miracles more valuable than that?

Three reasons:

1. The consensus within the league, right or wrong, is that Tebow’s results with the Broncos last year were a fluke, the product of a gimmick offense no one was prepared to defend. The most important stat to NFL club officials is not the record (Tebow was 8-5 including playoffs) or even the completion percentage (46.5 percent last season), although they do cite the latter number with regularity, suggesting it is so low that even dramatic improvement will yield only a mediocre result in a league in which the top four passers last season had completion percentages of 68, 71, 65 and 66.

The most important stat to many league execs is that Tebow won seven of his first eight starts and lost four of his last five. The consensus is that defenses, with the exception of the stubborn Steelers, figured out how to play him — less aggression yielded better results — and would have refined the approach this season.

2. The offense the Broncos built for Tebow required him to be part quarterback, part running back. Taking that many hits, it’s only a matter of time until he’s injured, league executives believe, at which point they would have to revert to a conventional NFL offense or commit totally to an option offense by signing more than one quarterback who can run it. The injuries Tebow suffered in the playoffs against New England — he would not have been able to play in the AFC championship game had the Broncos won — only served as confirmation of this view.

3. Tebow brings with him a legion of followers who believe all of the foregoing is pure hogwash. Winning is what Tebow does, they insist. The end-of-game miracles are a bonus. At the least, those in the NFL who can’t see this are blind. At the most, they might be anti-Christian, turned off by Tebow’s evangelical zeal. As a result, any perceived slight of Tebow becomes a public controversy. A significant number of league executives simply don’t want that headache.

That last part, not to mention celestial explanations of the miracle finishes by Tebow’s more zealous followers, moves the story into religious and cultural areas that perplex and frustrate NFL officials, many of whom spend so much time in their bunkers they couldn’t tell you who’s running for president, let alone who’s trending on Facebook or Twitter. If Elway, a Denver icon, can be drawn and quartered for his treatment of Tebow, what’s the upside of a mere mortal front office type wading into this pond? Not a single team expressed interest in acquiring Tebow to be its starting quarterback.

Still, as a sports story, the dispute cries out for resolution, which is why following Tebow’s career from a distance will remain interesting. The Jets just extended the contract of their starting quarterback, Mark Sanchez, to a five-year deal that includes $20.5 million of guaranteed money. Tebow was acquired to be his backup and to operate variations on the wildcat offense as a change of pace.

Jets coach Rex Ryan and offensive coordinator Tony Sparano have both run the wildcat with some success, Ryan with Brad Smith in New York and Sparano with Ronnie Brown in Miami. The fact that Tebow beat both of them last season (Sparano was coaching the Dolphins then) didn’t hurt.

Why the Jacksonville Jaguars didn’t trump the Jets’ offer remains something of a mystery. Tebow was a natural for the Jags. He played his high school football in Jacksonville and is immensely popular there. The Jags went 5-11 last season and got poor quarterback play from rookie Blaine Gabbert, the tenth overall pick of the 2011 draft. They went out and signed a veteran free agent, Chad Henne, as insurance, but he wasn’t much better in four seasons with Miami. The Jags could also use somebody to help them sell tickets so they don’t have to put a tarpaulin over thousands of seats in the upper deck of their stadium.

Evidently, the Jaguars’ new owner, Shad Kahn, was interested but his football people were not, including general manager Gene Smith, who drafted Gabbert. Smith wasn’t ready to give up on Gabbert after one year and had the same reservations about Tebow that other executives do (see above). When the trade to the Jets was finally completed, Kahn issued this statement:

“Earlier this week, I asked Gene Smith and his staff to explore the potential of acquiring Tim Tebow. I think we have a duty to consider all avenues of improving the Jaguars on and off the field, especially given the unique circumstances involving the player.

“I appreciate the high level of due diligence Gene and his staff dedicated to this matter, even as late as (Wednesday) evening, and I am very satisfied with the outcome. Our commitment to developing Blaine Gabbert was, and still is, central to our goal of returning the Jaguars to elite status in the NFL. We’re looking ahead with zero regrets.”

In the end, the Jags and the Jets made very similar offers. The Jags offered a fourth-round pick and $3 million of the $5 million the Broncos had advanced Tebow on his salaries for 2012, 2013 and 2014. The Jets offered the fourth and sixth, getting a seventh in exchange for the sixth, and $2.53 million. Because the Jags draft earlier in each round than the Jets, the draft pick offers were almost identical according to the draft value chart.

Although it was widely assumed Tebow wanted to return to Florida, site of his glorious high school and college careers, New York offers more endorsement opportunities and a much larger platform for his evangelism. In any case, Tebow did not sound unhappy about his landing spot.

“I wanted to play for Coach Ryan ever since I saw ‘Hard Knocks,’ ” Tebow said with his customary laugh. “He just seemed like a coach who loves football and is passionate about the game of football. He’s definitely a players’ coach. I just love that about him.”

Not everyone was so sanguine about Tebow’s move. Jets cornerback Antonio Cromartie lobbied against the deal Tuesday on Twitter.

“We don’t need Tebow,” Cromartie wrote. “We sell out every home game. Let him go to Jacksonville, Tampa or Miami.”

Legendary former Jets quarterback Joe Namath also weighed in against it, saying, “It stinks.” And Drew Stanton, signed to back up Sanchez just a week earlier, reacted to the deal by asking for his release.

For Elway and the Broncos, such headaches are now in the rearview mirror. The Broncos return to a conventional quarterback setup with Peyton Manning the undisputed starter and a traditional backup to be signed. Former Colorado State quarterback Caleb Hanie is one candidate. Stanton might even be a candidate if he gets his wish to be released by the Jets.

And the Broncos moved immediately to shore up the receiving corps for Manning, a career 65 percent passer, signing Andre Caldwell to join Demaryius Thomas and Eric Decker. Caldwell said the Manning signingplayed a major role in his decision to join the Broncos.

Leading a regime that took over the front office nine months after Josh McDaniels drafted Tebow, Elway found himself caught in a crossfire from the beginning, targeted by Tebowmaniacs who accused him of betrayal, envy and some of the other deadly sins. Passionate as quarterback controversies often are, Tebowmania took it to a whole new level.

At first, pursuing an agenda of transparency following the opaque, Bill Belichick-inspired McDaniels era, Elway acknowledged his reservations about Tebow as a passer. As he came under attack for failing to support the young quarterback sufficiently, he dialed back the openness, praising Tebow’s character and competitive fire, while still noting almost parenthetically that he needed to improve as a pocket passer.

Tebow’s fan base should not have been surprised. When he was hired to run the front office, Elway made it clear his sole goal was to win a Super Bowl and he believed Super Bowls today are won by great pocket passers. As proof, he cited the last nine Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks: Tom Brady (2), Eli Manning (2), Ben Roethlisberger (2), Peyton Manning, Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers.

John Fox’s coaching staff overhauled the Broncos offense into a run-heavy, read-option collegiate scheme to suit Tebow’s skill set, and it got the Broncos to the playoffs in a mediocre division. But that relative success, combined with Tebow’s following, left Elway presiding over a team running an offense he didn’t believe in.

So Manning’s sudden free agency was manna from heaven. A four-time most valuable player and certain Hall of Famer, Manning was not only the elite passer Elway sought, he provided unassailable cover to get out from under Tebowmania.

Well, not entirely unassailable. A significant minority opinion remains among Broncos fans that Tebow was a better choice than Manning to be the team’s starting quarterback. This baffles people in the game — Elway said any logical analysis would conclude pursuing Manning was the right move — and it reinforces their perception that Tebowmania is beyond the reach of logic.

Tebow’s legion of followers, of course, have their own logic. Tebow is 24, Manning is 36. Tebow is healthy, Manning is coming off multiple neck surgeries and a one-year layoff. They compare Tebow’s stats as a first-year starter to Elway’s rookie stats in 1983 and Manning’s rookie stats in 1998 and conclude Tebow could turn out to be the better player.

The dispute is interminable. It can only be resolved by giving Tebow an extended opportunity to be a starting quarterback in the league and seeing what he does with it. Jacksonville would have provided a better opportunity for that than New York, although, if Sanchez plays this season the way he played last season, Jets fans could be calling for Tebow a month in.

Elway will absorb the departing shots from the Tebow faithful. He has his passer and Tebowmania is now somebody else’s problem. Around the NFL, Elway is seen as having had a masterful week.

“Elway inherited Tebow and in essence dealt TT and a 7th-round pick for Manning (on a great contract), plus a 4th and a 6th and $2.53M,” tweeted Jason LaCanfora of the NFL Network. “Wow.”

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March 19, 2012

A spectacular win for Elway the exec

By Dave Krieger

John Elway’s pursuit of Peyton Manning was always a high risk/high reward proposition. If Manning had decided to go elsewhere, the Broncos would have had few veteran quarterback options left and Elway would have taken even more heat than he already has for potentially alienating Tim Tebow.

Instead, Elway has earned a spectacular victory, acquiring for Denver the most accomplished free agent in NFL history and putting the Broncos back into the championship conversation for the first time since he retired as a player.

The Broncos had no official comment pending negotiation of a contract, but a club source confirmed that Manning notified the team this morning that he wants to be a Bronco. Assuming no snags working out the details of a five-year, $95 million deal, the parameters of which have already been discussed, the Broncos hope to introduce the four-time most valuable player at a press conference Tuesday.

As Broncos fans debated the merits of Elway’s long-distance courtship, the Broncos’ executive vice president of football operations never wavered. At various times, speculation favored San Francisco, deemed the closest to Super Bowl contention following its appearance in last season’s NFC championship game, and Tennessee, where Manning and his wife, Ashley, went to college.

In fact, one day before ESPN broke the news of Manning’s decision, CBS analyst and former Broncos tight end Shannon Sharpe posted this on Twitter: “I believe Titans have won.” Sharpe indicated he had gotten the tip from a league source.

“I was hoping we would win out,” Titans owner Bud Adams told The Tennessean. “I thought we’d be ahead of Denver. I thought he’d want to stay in Tennessee.”

Throughout the Manning pursuit, Broncos fans wondered what would happen if Manning went elsewhere. The club’s other options among veteran quarterbacks were quickly disappearing from the free agent market. Matt Flynn, Jason Campbell, Kyle Orton, Brady Quinn, Josh McCown, Chad Henne, Rex Grossman and a host of even lesser lights had already found seats in the NFL’s off-season game of musical chairs.

Fans also worried about the effect on Tebow, the incumbent starter with whom the Broncos had no contact during the Manning courtship, waiting to see how it turned out. Now, according to ESPN, the club will look to trade Tebow. This process could be almost as interesting as the Manning pursuit itself.

Tebow is even more popular in Florida, where he’s from, than he is in Denver, so the early speculation will focus on Jacksonville and Miami, the two Florida teams without stable quarterback situations (Tampa Bay seems settled with Josh Freeman).

The Jaguars recently signed Henne to join Blaine Gabbert, their first-round draft pick (tenth overall) just 11 months ago. The Dolphins pursued both Manning and Flynn in free agency, to no avail. They hosted 49ers starter Alex Smith over the weekend, hoping to grab him if San Francisco won the Manning sweepstakes. Now the Niners can be expected to get serious about re-signing Smith.

So Miami might indeed be an option for Tebow. The Broncos and Dolphins tried to make a deal for another quarterback — Orton — last summer, but that fell apart when Orton and the Dolphins couldn’t agree on a new contract. Tebow signed a five-year deal after the Broncos drafted him in 2010, so that should be less of an issue in trade talks, although his representatives might well seek an upgrade on the $1.9 million salary he is due in 2012, well below market for an NFL starter.

Just how good Manning will make the Broncos in his first year in Denver is unknown, of course. They face a brutal first-place schedule this season after winning the AFC West on a tie-breaker following an 8-8 season.

Whether the Broncos will add any of his former teammates in Indianapolis is also unknown. Center Jeff Saturday and tight end Dallas Clark would appear to be the most likely possibilities if they do, but the Broncos have promising young players at both spots — J.D. Walton at center and Julius Thomas at tight end.

Strangely, Manning’s favorite target, wideout Reggie Wayne, re-signed with the rebuilding Colts rather than wait to see where the other half of their partnership ended up. He would be a natural to add to the Broncos’ young wide receiver corps — Demaryius Thomas and Eric Decker — if he hadn’t. As it is, the Broncos might seek another veteran to replace Eddie Royal, who agreed to terms with the Chargers.

Getting Manning removes only one of the risks in courting him. He still must prove he’s back to being as durable as he was before the neck injury that kept him out all last season and required multiple surgeries to repair. And he must prove he can be as effective at 36, post-surgery, post-layoff, as he was before.

But what Elway has accomplished already should not be understated. With neither the familiarity of Tennessee nor the 13-3 record of San Francisco, Elway sold Manning on Denver in a way that only he could — one Hall of Fame quarterback to another. In the process, he won for the Broncos what Tom Jackson, the ESPN analyst and former Broncos linebacker, called “possibly the biggest free agent pickup in the history of football.”

The only outcome that will truly gratify either Elway or Manning is a Super Bowl championship in the relatively short window they will have together. As soon as the contract is signed, they’ll be getting to work on that.

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