October 13, 2013

For the Broncos, an underwhelming 16-point victory

By Dave Krieger

Peyton Manning’s testiest exchange after Sunday’s victory was with me, so let’s start with that.

Somebody asked if he was concerned about his exchanges with center Manny Ramirez after two of them led to fumbles, both of which the Broncos lost. On the first, Manning was under center. On the second, he was in the shotgun. Manning blamed himself for the first, saying he pulled out early. “Manny had a low one on the shotgun play,” he said of the second.

The Broncos turned the ball over three times Sunday — the third was a Manning interception for which he took full responsibility — which helped the 0-6 Jacksonville Jaguars keep the game close for a while.

Now about two years removed from multiple neck surgeries, Manning did not dive after either loose ball, as quarterbacks customarily do, which prompted my question, which prompted this exchange:

Me: Do you not go after those balls because of a fear of injury?

Manning: Um, not necessarily, no. So . . . 

Me: I’m sorry, you don’t know?

Manning: What was the question?

Me: Is there a reason you don’t go after those balls on botched snaps?

Manning: I didn’t know that I . . . I can’t say that’s a  . . . I mean, you’re basing it off, what, two?

Me: Those two plays.

Manning: Yeah, I mean, I can’t say that I don’t go after ’em. I mean, maybe I didn’t think I could get ’em, I guess. Be careful generalizing how I approach fumbled snaps off two plays.

Me: OK, let me ask why you didn’t go after those two.

Manning: I didn’t think I could get ’em.

Earlier, coach John Fox was asked whether Manning not diving after the loose balls was a result of coaching or his own decision.

“I think at the end of the day he’s a pretty valuable member for our football team,” Fox said. “We don’t necessarily want him making tackles on interceptions and diving on fumbles. He’s been coached that.”

I was in the locker room at the time and didn’t hear Fox’s answer until later, which is why I asked the question of Manning. (Manning and Fox hold their interview sessions in an interview room some distance from the locker room.)

Fox’s answer makes perfect sense and made me wonder why Manning didn’t answer the same way, something like: “I’ve been coached not to do that. It’s hard, because your instinct is to go after the loose ball, but the coaches are trying to keep me healthy and I respect that.”

Maybe it was because I phrased my initial question poorly, suggesting he was afraid of getting hurt, and he bristled. That’s entirely possible. When Manning doesn’t like a question, he often makes it clear in not only the content but also the demeanor of his answer. In this case, he did both.

Manning’s testiness was also evident when a couple of people tried to get him to discuss his return to Indianapolis next week, which will be a big national story all week.

“I’ll probably cover that on Wednesday,” he said. “Do I have to talk Wednesday still? OK, I’ll do all that Wednesday.”

This, too, is his prerogative, but it demonstrated he was not in a mood to do the inquiring minds any favors.

None of it matters much, unless it comes up on a fumbled snap in a much tighter and more important game later on, but I think it reflected a couple of other things. Manning and the Broncos generally might have been annoyed with the media for building up the Broncos and tearing down the Jaguars leading up to the game to the point that a 35-19 victory seemed underwhelming.

Actually, that was more the Vegas oddsmakers’ doing. They established the Broncos as a 28-point favorite, equaling the largest point spread anybody could remember for an NFL game. In the absence of other compelling story lines for a game between a 5-0 team and an 0-5 team, the parlor game was whether the Broncos would cover this enormous spread, which, of course, they did not.

More to the point, the Broncos didn’t look that sharp against the Jaguars, who are generally acknowledged to be the worst team in the league, a point Manning acknowledged.

“You know there is resistance out there — it’s called the other team,” a slightly peeved Fox said. “At the end of the day, we’re very, very pleased with the victory.”

In the only statistic that matters, the Broncos are 6-0, which is as good as it gets through six games. But if you’re not trying out for cheerleader — and I no longer have much of a leg kick — the main issue through six games has nothing to do with Manning or the offense, which remain atop the league in many categories, including points, touchdowns, touchdown passes and so on.

The main issue for the Broncos is a defense that has not yet played anywhere near its level of a year ago, when it finished fourth in the NFL in points allowed, giving up 18.1 a game, and second in total defense, giving up 290.8 yards per game. It went into Sunday’s game ranked 25th (27.8) and 29th (416.6) in those categories, respectively. The Jacksonville numbers should improve those rankings a little, but coming against the worst offense in the league (10.2 points a game coming in), that won’t be much comfort.

“That’s where we want to pick it up,” defensive tackle Kevin Vickerson said. “We got the capability to be top-five in a lot of statistics in this league. But right now we’ve got some stuff, some injuries, some people missing, but at the same time it comes to guys doing their job at the end of the day. Just getting the job done.

“We’ve got some stuff to clean up in the run game and our passing defense should definitely be good. I think that’s the weakness that we’re showing, so teams could try to exploit it. If that gets tightened up, man, I don’t think nobody gonna see us. Nobody. Just being real.”

Veteran cornerback Champ Bailey’s return from a foot injury is good news, although it’s likely to take him a little while to get back into the flow. The Jaguars’ No. 1 receiver, Justin Blackmon, caught 14 passes for 190 yards against a variety of Broncos defensive backs.

“We know we gotta play better,” Bailey said. “We’ve got a good offense and they’ve been doing a lot for us, but as a defense there are going to be some games where we’ve got to step up, and this was one of them. We stepped up when we had to and got turnovers in the fourth quarter, but as far as going forward, we’ve got to play better throughout the first three quarters.”

Most fans and observers seem content to blame injuries and other absences (principally Von Miller’s six-game suspension, which ended Sunday) for the defense’s performance to date. Miller and Bailey were the two main absentees, although linebacker Wesley Woodyard and defensive end Robert Ayers suffered injuries during the Dallas game last week and sat out Sunday.

Contemplating Miller’s return, Vickerson flashed a big smile.

“We’re fitting to unleash the beast, man,” he said. “He’s probably about 20 pounds heavier, more muscle, more solid, more ready to go. So hey . . . ”

It is not surprising that these absences, along with the loss of pass rusher Elvis Dumervil in the famous free agent fax fiasco, would make some difference. But you wouldn’t necessarily expect them to cause the Jack Del Rio-coached defense to drop from the top five to the bottom five in total defense and top five to bottom 10 in scoring defense.

“Well, we had guys step up so I’m not going to blame anything on that,” Bailey said. “This is how this league works. Guys go down, guys step up. And if you don’t, then you’re going to get a loss somewhere along the way. But people stepped up today and I’m real proud of them.”

At the end of the day, as Fox is so fond of saying, the Broncos have beaten every opponent on their schedule, which is all they can do. Next week, in Manning’s return to Indianapolis, they should face their toughest test yet against a strong Colts team.

For now, they’re undefeated and feeling a little ornery, which is not a bad thing at all. If you feel like giving me a little of the blame for the latter, feel free. As you know, I’m here to help.

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October 7, 2013

History loves the Broncos

By Dave Krieger

Two melodramas played out in the aftermath of one of the great shootouts in NFL history Sunday. They were pretty different.

The Broncos, on the road, stomped in muddy boots across the open record book again, setting or tying or threatening a slew of franchise and league records as they rolled to 51 points, which would have been the highest score in their history if they hadn’t scored 52 last week.

The Cowboys, at home, saw the quarterback they want to believe in deliver the best performance of his career, keeping them in the game the whole way — and then give it away with a characteristic mistake at the end. Linebacker Danny Trevathan’s interception deep in Dallas territory with the score tied at 48 and two minutes remaining turned a dramatic tossup into a filibuster by the best offense in football.

Despite throwing for 506 yards and five touchdowns, Tony Romo carried the hangdog look that has become his post-game trademark when he met the inquiring minds afterward. He explained that the Cowboys had looked at tape of the Broncos in the two-minute drill and decided they were prone to leave the seams open. He had completed a similar seam route earlier.

“They did a good job,” he said. “The kid made a good play. I didn’t get as much on it, just with the people around me, as I wanted to. I wanted to put it another foot or two out in front and the ball, I didn’t put it exactly where I needed to to complete the pass. It’s frustrating and disappointing.”

Replays showed his front foot landed on another shoe in the pass protection traffic around him as he stepped into the throw.

This is Romo’s rep, of course — the best quarterback around until it’s time to win.

“When I was in New England or even in San Diego, the scouting report was the same — that he was a talented guy, he made a lot of plays and he had what we call a ‘wow’ factor,” former safety Rodney Harrison said on Sunday Night Football. “When you watch him on film, he makes some incredible plays.

“But we also knew in the fourth quarter that he was going to make one or two mistakes in those critical moments. He was going to either turn the ball over, fumble, interception, he was going to make that key mistake.”

It’s all very Shakespearean, this fatally flawed hero.

The Broncos got wheels up out of Dallas and left the Cowboys’ drama behind. They have a happier one of their own. They are challenging offensive records by the boatload, entertaining a growing slice of America in the process. They may have to hire someone just to rewrite their record book.

History loves them. They continue to make people look up things that happened 40 or 50 years ago. Various quarterbacks of the past get unexpected moments in the sun as Peyton Manning challenges or surpasses some long-ago achievement.

On the other hand, the Broncos surrendered 48 points to the Cowboys, their worst defensive performance since Jack Del Rio took over the defense before last season. They lost starting linebacker Wesley Woodyard (neck) and starting cornerback Chris Harris (concussion) during the course of the game. Combined with linebacker Von Miller (suspended) and cornerback Champ Bailey (out with a foot injury since the beginning of the season), that’s four of 11 starters on defense who were not on the field for much of Romo’s assault.

Nevertheless, the Broncos were a top-five defense last season and they’re nowhere near that this year. They have surrendered 139 points in five games, an average of nearly 28 per, or about 10 more than the 18.1 they gave up last season, when they ranked fourth in scoring defense.

Of course, they’ve scored 230 of their own, an NFL record through five games, so the defense is still doing enough to win, although just barely this week.

“Was it perfect?” Broncos coach John Fox asked. “No. Are any of them perfect? No. But, we made some adjustments there at the end. We weren’t matching up very well. We (gave up) some explosive plays at some inopportune times. At the end, we were able to hang on.”

The pattern of the game doesn’t seem to matter. In this one, the Broncos fell behind 14-0 early thanks to an Eric Decker fumble and Romo’s fast start. They roared back with 21 second-quarter points to take a 28-20 lead into the locker room at halftime. Manning was 11 of 14 for 163 yards, three touchdowns and a passer rating of 154.8 at that point.

“He’s fantastic,” said Cowboys linebacker Sean Lee. “There is no doubt. He’s playing unbelievable. He’s playing like a Hall of Famer and one of the best players of all time. I give him all the credit in the world.”

Among the records trembling or falling:

— The 99 total points in Dallas tied for the fourth-most in NFL history and second-most since the 1970 NFL/AFL merger.

— The Broncos’ 51 points was second-highest in franchise history.

— The Broncos broke the record for most points in the first five games of a season, surpassing the 2000 St. Louis Rams, who scored 217.

— Manning set a league record for touchdown passes in the first five games (20), breaking Daunte Culpepper’s mark of 18 in 2004.

— Manning set a league record for touchdown passes without an interception to start a season (20), breaking Milt Plum’s mark of 16 in 1960.

— Manning moved into second place on the career passing yardage list (61,371), passing Dan Marino (61, 361). The leader is Brett Favre (71,838).

— The Broncos extended their franchise record for consecutive regular-season wins to 16, breaking the mark of 15 they set last week. They extended their franchise record road winning streak to eight.

— Wes Welker became the first player in 31 years to have at least one touchdown catch in each of his first five games with a team.

And so on. The Broncos offense continues to wow the world, now averaging 46 points a game.

“He’s a brilliant, brilliant football player,” Cowboys coach Jason Garrett said of Manning. “He has been for a long, long time, and I think much of his brilliance comes from his ability to find the weakness of the defense. Any defense you play, since the beginning of time, has a weakness to it. He’s unbelievable before the snap and after the snap finding what that weakness is and getting to it. He did it consistently throughout the ballgame.”

At a time in NFL history when young, athletic quarterbacks such as Russell Wilson and Colin Kaepernick are making plays with their legs as well as their arms, the 37-year-old Manning picked Sunday’s game to show off his own wheels, scoring his first rushing touchdown since 2008 on a naked bootleg at the goal line.

“I’ve run it actually a couple of times, believe it or not, but the key is you want to do it about every five years or so,” Manning said. “Naked bootlegs only work – the ones that I’ve done – when you don’t tell anybody. You call the run play and it’s a run play and you just kind of make a decision there as you get to the line of scrimmage based on the right look. You think they’re going to maybe slant one way.  As soon as we brought Julius (Thomas) in motion, the guy covered him, went with him. I kind of said, well, that’s a good look for it.  I’ll be retired by the time I’m able to do it again.”

Counting Todd Helton’s play against the St. Louis Cardinals in the Rockies’ final homestand of the baseball season, it was the second hidden ball trick by a former Tennessee quarterback playing for a Denver pro team in less than a month.

Manning finally threw his first interception of the season, but for most of the day, he did what he’s done throughout the early going — diagnose the defensive weakness at each snap and take advantage of it. Against man-to-man defenses, he found favorable matchups with linebackers or safeties trying to cover Julius Thomas, the tight end, who led the Broncos with nine catches for 122 yards and two touchdowns. When the Cowboys tried to play zone, Manning found his big three wide receivers — Demaryius Thomas, Decker and Welker.

After all the offensive fireworks, Trevathan’s interception in Dallas territory with two minutes remaining changed everything. The Broncos found themselves in the uncharacteristic position of trying to milk the clock rather than score.

“I’ve never been in a situation quite like that at the end, where we needed to get the first down but we didn’t need to score, and that difference was about half a yard,” Manning said. “Knowshon (Moreno) and I were arguing at the end.  He basically was asking, ‘How am I supposed to do that?  How can I get half a yard but not get a yard and a half?’ And I just said, ‘You can’t score.  You can’t do it. We’ve got to get the first down and kick a field goal and get out of this place.'”

“I was confused on how to do it,” said Moreno, who carried 19 times for 93 yards and a touchdown. “Peyton said ‘Just do it.’ Whatever he says, do . . . You always talk about a ‘first down, fall down’ mentality. I’ve never been a part of that before.”

With the Broncos facing a third-and-one on the Dallas 2-yard line and 1:40 showing, Garrett had to decide whether to try for the goal line stand or let the Broncos score in order to get the ball back.

“The consideration there is on the third-and-short,” Garrett said. “You’re balancing the idea of getting a stop there. If you get a stop there, they kick the field goal and you give yourself a much better chance to tie the football game coming back. If you give them the opportunity to go score a touchdown right there, and kind of give up, you do give yourself a chance to go back and score a touchdown. But you have no timeouts and all that, so you weigh those out. We decided to try to make the stop on third down and they made it by about an inch.”

So the Broncos gave up 48 points and still won. Three teams remain unbeaten after five games and the Broncos are one of them. The other two — the Saints and Chiefs — have been less prolific on offense and stingier on defense. The Broncos continue to combine intelligence, discipline and playmaking in a way few offenses ever have. The early line on next week’s game against Jacksonville, which is 0-5, is the biggest in league history at about 28 points.

Two of the Broncos’ first five games were instant classics — Manning’s record-tying seven touchdown passes in the opener and Sunday’s shootout, which saw more than 1,000 yards of offense.

They’re the best show in the NFL, and that’s saying something.

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October 6, 2013

Tangled up in Ducks

By Dave Krieger

BOULDER — When Mark Helfrich left Dan Hawkins’ football staff at the University of Colorado following the 2008 season to join Chip Kelly’s staff at the University of Oregon, there was speculation he was frustrated by a bad offense he was powerless to change.

Nobody said anything on the record, of course, because this dance is well-rehearsed by now and it’s all agreed: Every former employer was awesome and every future employer is providing a cherished opportunity.

Like many of the issues surrounding the CU program at the time, this one had to do with Hawkins and his desire to have his son, Cody, play quarterback. Helfrich knew where major college football offenses were going, and Cody Hawkins, a wonderful kid and mediocre football player, was not it.

Three years earlier, Hawkins made Helfrich the youngest offensive coordinator in Division I football. (I don’t use the initials that replaced the divisions because I don’t know what they mean and you don’t either.) Helfrich was 32 when Hawkins persuaded him to leave Arizona State, where he was quarterbacks coach, to become CU’s offensive coordinator.

Helfrich was a protege of Dirk Koetter, who had been offensive coordinator at Oregon when Helfrich was a graduate assistant. When Koetter got the head job at Boise State, he brought Helfrich with him to coach quarterbacks. When Koetter moved on to Arizona State, again Helfrich moved with him. But the opportunity to be a coordinator in a major conference at 32 was quite rare, and Hawkins had followed Koetter at Boise State, so it was all in the family.

Unfortunately, it was a little too all in the family during the Hawkins era at CU. It was probably true that the younger Hawkins was the best quarterback on the roster, but that was a sad rationale. A coach looking for a bigger, stronger, faster or more athletic quarterback would have been more aggressive than the elder Hawkins in recruiting competition.

Helfrich had already worked with some pretty good quarterbacks — Bart Hendricks at Boise State and Andrew Walter at Arizona State — and it is not hard to believe that he could see, like most people, how limited the upside was on Cody Hawkins and any offense built around him.

In fact, it’s possible Helfrich saw something of himself in the younger Hawkins, and that this insight helped him see Cody was in over his head. An Oregon native, Helfrich was a small but accomplished high school quarterback who chose Southern Oregon and a prodigious NAIA career over an offer to walk on at Oregon, where he knew he probably would have spent his career on the bench.

So Helfrich’s choice in 2009 was to continue coordinating a bad Colorado offense that was hard to improve given the limitations at the most important position, or move back to Oregon and work under Kelly, an offensive coordinator of such repute that Oregon reportedly kicked head coach Mike Bellotti upstairs to create the head coaching vacancy Kelly craved.

As a newly-minted head coach, Kelly wanted Helfrich as his offensive coordinator. And he wanted to do lots of interesting, innovative things. For Helfrich, it probably wasn’t that tough a call. He thanked Hawkins, packed his bags and went home.

Kelly moved on to the NFL this season. He’s the new coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, who were just pulverized by the Broncos to drop to 1-3, but that’s another story. Kelly reportedly lobbied for Helfrich to succeed him. He may not have needed to. The OC moving up is an Oregon tradition, dating back to Bellotti under Rich Brooks.

So, in the year he turns 40 (later this month), Helfrich ascended to one of the best jobs in college football — head coach at Oregon. He is in charge of a program that will have no financial restraints so long as Phil Knight is alive. He is part of a tradition of innovative offensive football. Each of the Ducks’ last three coaches — Bellotti, Kelly and Helfrich — was the offensive coordinator under his predecessor.

A year ago, Helfrich was in his fourth and final season as Kelly’s coordinator when the Ducks beat CU 70-14 in Eugene, a game not as close as the score might indicate. It was 56-0 at halftime.

Saturday, the Ducks came to Boulder and beat the Buffs 57-16. From a purely arithmetic point of view, that’s about 15 points of progress for the Buffs. They even led for a minute. Actually, a minute and 49 seconds on the game clock the first time, a minute and 34 seconds the second and final time. Oregon does everything fast.

The Ducks demonstrated yet again how important the whole quarterback thing is. Helfrich called his guy, sophomore Marcus Mariota, “a stud,” which is exactly right. If you were going to build an elite college quarterback from scratch, you would build a 6-foot-4-inch, 210-pound athlete with a rocket arm, runner’s legs and a brain that figures out really fast when it’s time for which. Oh, and you might give him some Samoan blood, given the disproportionate number of great football players that tiny island and its descendants have produced.

“He’s such a great person, first and foremost, and then he’s, oh, by the way, an incredible football player,” Helfrich said. “The stuff he does in practice, we look at each other and kind of shake our head. And that shows up in games. That’s the neat part about him, about (running back) De’Anthony (Thomas), about some of our best defensive players, is they’re great practice players. Not good practice players, but great practice players. And that’s infectious.

“Physically, he’s very gifted. Obviously, his size, his speed, his release, his timing, his knowledge, he’s a smart guy, he’s a tough guy. Is that enough? He’s a superlative machine.”

The Buffs, on the other hand, are trying to preserve yet another redshirt year. Last year, you might remember, it was not worth burning Shane Dillon’s redshirt year on a lost season. Dillon is no longer with the program. In fact, his experience at CU so turned him off to football he now wants to play basketball. In retrospect, it might have been worth burning his redshirt year to see if he could improve on the most dreadful season CU football has seen.

This year, it is not worth burning Sefo Liufau’s redshirt year. Liufau is the prized first-year recruit of CU coach Mike MacIntyre, a 6-4, 215-pound high school star of, yes, Samoan descent.

For a minute there, before CU began its conference schedule, it looked as if junior Connor Wood, a transfer from Texas during the short-lived Jon Embree era, could bridge the gap adequately.

But Wood was not good Saturday, and he suffered in comparison to Mariota, who was sensational. The respective stat lines are a close enough approximation. Mariota completed 16 of 27 passes for 355 yards, five touchdowns and no interceptions. He also carried seven times for 49 yards and two touchdowns. His afternoon was finished before the fourth quarter began. Wood completed 11 of 33 for 205 yards, no touchdowns and two interceptions. His net rushing yardage was minus 8.

Granted, there are talent gaps between these rosters at many positions, but in Paul Richardson the Buffs have one of the most talented receivers in the country, so it’s not as if Wood has no weapons. At some point, the excuses have to stop.

The performance at quarterback was the key difference in the game, and allowed Oregon to turn it into a blowout as quickly as it did. The Buffs’ defense gave them a chance even after MacIntyre elected to begin the game with an onside kick. Granted, you need some wrinkles if you’re going to beat the Ducks, but giving Mariota the ball at midfield to start the game might be out-thinking yourself.

Nevertheless, CU forced a three-and-out and Wood drove the offense into field goal range — the big play a 55-yard pass to Richardson — and a short-lived 3-0 lead. One minute, 49 seconds later by the game clock, Mariota scored the first of his seven touchdowns — two rushing, five passing. The Buffs responded with a beautifully conceived option pass off a reverse, in which Richardson, split wide left, came in motion to the right, took a pitch from running back Michael Adkins and lofted a pass to a wide-open D.D. Goodson in the right flat, who rambled 75 yards to give CU a 10-8 lead.

This was the first time this season an opponent led Oregon twice. So that’s something. But not much. By the end of the first quarter, the Ducks led 29-10. At halftime, it was 43-16. In the Oregon locker room, they were not happy.

“We kind of challenged them at halftime,” Helfrich said. “Other than the scoreboard, we didn’t play our way in the first half, and who knows (why) that is. I don’t know if it’s altitude or thinking about something else or whatever it may have been, we responded well, and that’s encouraging.”

Oregon shut down the CU offense in the second half, and for the first time this season, MacIntyre’s team looked nearly as helpless as Embree’s team of a year ago. MacIntyre said he saw improvement in Wood from the week before at Oregon State and you can only hope he said that because he has to. If Wood doesn’t improve a lot more, and soon, CU will have to decide whether it is willing to be the Pac-12’s punch line for yet another season in the interest of some prospective four-year career that may or may not work out as planned.

Meanwhile, Oregon is rolling, averaging almost 60 points a game, giving up fewer than 12. I asked Helfrich if his team is where he wants it to be.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “We’re 5-0, and that’s our best statistic. We haven’t played remotely to what we can in any phase in any game. So that’s encouraging. The guys that we have on this team know that. They’re excited to get better and excited to come to work and get ready on Monday.”

If anybody in the CU administration really wants to know what has happened to the program since Hawkins was hired in 2006, he or she should place a call to Helfrich and find out how the program lost one of the most impressive young coaches in the game today.

Maybe he would have gone home anyway. That would certainly be the movie-of-the-week narrative. But Helfrich had already demonstrated a coach’s nomadic instinct for the best way forward, moving from Eugene to Boise to Tempe to Boulder. Maybe Hawkins’ nepotism is part of the answer. Maybe there were other factors.

Helfrich’s decision to go back to Oregon and Saturday’s game have one thing in common: The Ducks had a much better quarterback than the Buffs both times. So long as CU is willing to live with this, its football program will not appear on any map.

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October 2, 2013

Patrick Roy: ‘We want to surprise the world of hockey’

By Dave Krieger

Patrick Roy’s return to the NHL as Colorado’s head coach has generated plenty of hype, especially in Canada. After he answered questions posed in English following his team’s morning skate today, he answered a couple posed in French.

Still, he’s taking over the second-worst team in the league last season, so I asked him, in English, what is fair to expect from the Avalanche this season in his first year as head coach.

“We want to surprise the world of hockey,” he said. “I look at all the predictions and nobody puts us in the playoffs. But we have the right to prove people wrong, and it starts tonight.”

Brave talk is common this time of year, of course. The Avs have been full of hope before each of the past three seasons, but that didn’t stop last season from being their worst since the franchise moved to Colorado from Quebec. Only Florida registered fewer points in the standings. The Avs’ point percentage was their lowest since the 1991-92 season, when they were the Quebec Nordiques.

Nevertheless, this year’s team is stocked with a group of talented young players reminiscent of those young Nordiques. With franchise legends Roy and Joe Sakic having taken the controls — Roy on the ice and Sakic in the front office — the Avs are convinced that things are looking up.

“In this dressing room, we’re expecting nothing less than a playoff spot,” 20-year-old power forward and team captain Gabe Landeskog said when I asked about fair expectations.

“It’s going to be a tough road there because we’re in a tough division this year with the defending Stanley Cup champions and a bunch of other teams as well. So it’s going to be tough, but we feel like we have the confidence going into this season that we can make a difference and we can surprise some people.”

However it turns out competitively, the league’s realignment should provide a relief to fans, and perhaps a little juice at the gate, too. Gone is the little-lamented Northwest Division that seemed to pit Colorado against Calgary every other night. The Avs are in a new Central Division that includes the defending Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks along with the Dallas Stars, Minnesota Wild, Nashville Predators, St. Louis Blues and Winnipeg Jets.

With four players selected among the top three picks of their respective drafts — defenseman Erik Johnson (No. 1, by St. Louis, 2006), center Matt Duchene (No. 3, 2009), Landeskog (No. 2, 2011) and Nathan MacKinnon (No. 1, 2013) — the Avs have lots of skill. Whether they have the other characteristics that make up a winner is a different question.

“There’s no more excuses for being young in terms of myself and a few other guys in this room,” Duchene told me. “Once you get past your first couple of years, I think you’re well on your way to being a seasoned veteran in this league. This is my fifth year and hopefully there’s a lot more to come, but I’ve learned a lot so far and looking forward to applying that here this season.”

“We can’t just rely on our skill,” Landeskog added. “We know that we have a lot of skill, but it didn’t work last year and it didn’t work the year before, so we need to change something, obviously, and we need to pay more attention to details, pay more attention to the systems, all these kind of things Patrick’s been talking about and harping on all preseason here. What better experience can you have than with Adam Foote, Joe Sakic and Patrick Roy? So we’ve got the best circumstances here to make sure we’re a playoff team and a playoff contender. We know if we can develop the skill and experience and more leadership we’ll be fine.”

Beaten down by constant criticism as the team foundered under former coach Joe Sacco, several players mentioned the upbeat approach Roy has brought to his first NHL head coaching assignment.

“He’s very positive,” Duchene said. “When we need a kick in the butt, he gives it to us, but when we’re doing things the right way and doing things well, we get praise as well. And as a team, you need that. As much as you’re being criticized, you’ve got to be built up as well. He’s done an outstanding job of that and everybody has loved that part of it so far.”

Near the end of last season, veteran goaltender J.S. Giguere ripped into unnamed teammates for being too ready for summer vacation. So I asked him where the sense of urgency missing a year ago needs to come from.

“Obviously, the coaching staff’s going to help, making sure we have urgency and putting us back in the straight direction if we wander, but most of it has to come from within,” Giguere said. “We have to have some leadership. We have to have some guys standing up to the other guys when they’re not going in the right place. I totally believe in the leadership we have in this group.”

On paper, the Avs look like they could pull off a turnaround season. Their top lines — Landeskog, Paul Stastny, Alex Tanguay; Ryan O’Reilly, Duchene, Steve Downie; Jamie McGinn, MacKinnon, P.A. Parenteau — have plenty of speed, skill and scoring ability. Stopping their opponents from scoring — the Avs gave up 152 goals in 48 games last season — is another matter.

“Defense is extremely important,” Landeskog said. “I think for us, we want to play in the offensive zone, but if we’re not good in our zone then we’re never going to be in the offensive zone. So as simple as that. We want to make sure we’re good in the defensive zone. We know we struggled a little bit with that last year, so we made some changes there and some tweaks here and there, so we’ll be better this year.”

Everybody knows the history of Hall-of-Fame players trying their hand at coaching. It’s not good. But Roy paid his dues at the junior level and his players clearly believe in him. Still, surprising the world of hockey has been easier said than done for the Avs lately.

As a player, Roy often wrote big checks with his mouth, then cashed them between the pipes. The Avs desperately hope he can do the same from behind the bench.

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October 1, 2013

From the ’66 Cowboys to the ’13 Broncos: ‘It’s fun to see greatness’

By Dave Krieger

The leading scorer (non-kicker category) for the explosive Broncos offense through four games is wide receiver Wes Welker, who has caught six touchdown passes from Peyton Manning.

The leading scorer (non-kicker category) for the only team to score more points than the Broncos through four games, the 1966 Dallas Cowboys, was a 22-year-old halfback named Dan Reeves, who would be named head coach of the Broncos 15 years later. Reeves scored eight touchdowns on the ground and another eight through the air that year.

In fact, Reeves scored so often that when he failed to register a touchdown in the Cowboys’ sixth game, against Cleveland, his father called to see what was wrong.

Reeves was part of a cast that featured bigger names like Don Meredith at quarterback, Bullet Bob Hayes at wideout and Don Perkins at fullback.

The Cowboys scored 183 points in the first four games of the ’66 season, including a 52-7 victory over the New York Giants and a 56-7 demolition of the Philadelphia Eagles. The Broncos scored 179 in their first four games this year, good for second all time, including lopsided victories over the Giants and Eagles.

While the Broncos’ explosive offense is built on Manning’s precision passing to an array of potent weapons, the Cowboys’ early-season dominance was based more on the element of surprise.

In an effort to jump start an offense that had ranged from bad (12th of 14 teams in 1964) to mediocre (seventh in ’65), Cowboys coach Tom Landry moved Pro Bowl safety Mel Renfro to running back in the 1966 training camp. Renfro, who had been a two-way player in college, tore it up during the exhibition season, but was injured in the first regular-season game, against the Giants.

Reeves’ work on special teams had earned him a roster spot the previous year, as an undrafted rookie free agent. When Renfro went down, Landry sent in Reeves to replace him. The former running quarterback at the University of South Carolina caught six passes for 120 yards and three touchdowns in that first game. The Cowboys blew out the Giants and Renfro went back to defense. Reeves finished sixth in the NFL in rushing that year.

“Probably nobody was more surprised than I was, because I’d been a quarterback through high school, through college,” Reeves told us on the radio show yesterday, by telephone from his home in Atlanta. “Came to the Cowboys, they switched me over to running back. Made the team basically on special teams my first year. Then I got an opportunity because Mel Renfro got injured. And the offense was really set to take advantage of that position and what they would do with Bob Hayes.

“I’ll be honest with you, I wasn’t a great player, but I was a beneficiary of being around some great people who had a great offense. Down on the goal line, we had some great plays that took advantage of a guy that would keep his pads down, and I could do that, and run through a little bitty hole. So I scored some touchdowns that way and then was able to catch some passes to get in the end zone, too.

“We had a really good offense, but that was really unusual, sort of like everybody doing the spread attack now, and the shotgun and doing like no-huddle and so forth. It was just unique and people weren’t ready to defense that and we just had some unbelievable scores early in the season.”

By the fifth week, word had gotten out about Landry’s new multiple-set offense. When the Cowboys arrived in St. Louis, the Cardinals were ready.

“They were really a good defensive team,” Reeves said. “You’re talking about (safety) Larry Wilson, (defensive end) Joe Robb. They had some outstanding players and that was our biggest rivalry at that time; the St. Louis Cardinals were really playing good football. And plus, they were able to see us on film, and I think that makes a lot of difference.”

The Cardinals battled the Cowboys to a 10-10 tie that day. After scoring at least 47 points in three of their first four games, the Cowboys would exceed 31 only once in the last 10, although they still finished first in scoring that year.

Reeves keeps in regular contact with about a dozen members of those Cowboys teams of the ’60s. In fact, he’ll see a bunch of them, along with some former Green Bay Packers, in Dallas on Dec. 12 at a reunion of surviving participants in the Ice Bowl, the immortal NFC championship game contested in frigid conditions in Green Bay the following season.

“I have 10 or 12 guys that we’ve stayed in touch — Leroy Jordan, Walt Garrison, Bob Lilly, Chuck Howley,” Reeves said. “Back then was a little different. Guys are changing (teams) now because of free agency. (Back then) you really stayed. I mean, we lost to the Packers in the NFC championship game in ’66 and ’67. In ’68 and ’69 we lost the (conference semifinals) to Cleveland both times. Got in the Super Bowl in ’70 and lost on a last-second field goal (to the Baltimore Colts), and then finally won it in ’71 against Miami. So that whole team stayed together and suffered through all those things and basically it was the same team from 1966 until 1971.”

Although Reeves’ playing career continued through 1972, he never equaled the numbers he put up in 1966.

When the Broncos travel to Dallas this weekend, the Cowboys of 47 years ago will be fading in the rearview mirror in the race for gaudiest scoring totals. The biggest points producer through five games is the 2000 St. Louis Rams, the Greatest Show on Turf, which had just been handed from Dick Vermeil to Mike Martz. The Rams scored 217 points in their first five games that year, including a 41-36 victory over the Broncos in the opener.

The Broncos would need 38 points in Dallas to equal the Rams’ mark. Reeves doesn’t plan to miss it.

“The Broncos are just a great team to watch,” he said. “It’s like watching somebody carve, or paint a picture or something. I mean, he’s just picking people apart.

“When you’re coaching, you’d like to give your team the best chance with the best play call you possibly can. But what I think (Manning) does so well is he takes them out of a bad play and puts them into a good play. Whether it be run or pass, and he doesn’t seem to discriminate, doesn’t make any difference where he throws it or runs it. They’re just an awesome offensive team to watch right now. And they’re fun to watch. I mean, it’s fun to see greatness.”

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September 29, 2013

Broncos on historic roll

By Dave Krieger

Chip Kelly wanted to revolutionize the National Football League by picking up the pace, wearing opponents down and blowing them out, the way he did in the Pac-12. In his fourth game as an NFL head coach, he got to see a team do it.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t his team.

Somebody told Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning that 52 points was a franchise record and Manning expressed concern for the team’s Arabian gelding mascot.

“I did not know that,” he said. “May have to give ol’ Thunder an IV after this one.”

George Will once complained that football combined America’s worst characteristics: violence and committee meetings. The Broncos and Eagles mostly eliminated the committee meetings Sunday at Mile High, leaving defenders on both sides gasping for thin air.

“I’ll tell you, I don’t know if I’ve ever been that tired, as I was in the first and second quarter,” Broncos defensive lineman Derek Wolfe said.

The Broncos don’t huddle up much either, but they take their time snapping the ball as Manning surveys the defense and checks off to another play, or pretends to check off to another play, or pretends to pretend to check off to another play. The result is almost always the right call to counter the defense presented and a frighteningly high level of execution. Manning completed more than 80 percent of his passes Sunday. This has a longer-term effect, which Kelly’s team displayed in the second half, when it became Manning’s chew toy.

“He’s just another offensive coordinator on the field,” Eagles defensive lineman Fletcher Cox said. “If he doesn’t like it, he just checks to what he wants.”

Through the first quarter of the NFL season, the Broncos’ offense has operated like a sports car. It’s a little temperamental, occasionally sputtering or stalling, but when it starts to roar, it blows everybody away.

On the other hand, it’s early, the weather’s been great and they haven’t played a top-10 defense yet, at least by the rankings going into Week 4.

After a competitive first half, the Broncos led the Eagles — one of the worst defenses in the league so far — by a 21-13 score. Both offenses looked potent, but the Eagles made a lot of mistakes — penalties and dropped passes, what Kelly calls SIWs (self-inflicted wounds) — and the Broncos didn’t.

When Manning & Co. came out of the locker room after intermission, they drove 80, 80 and 65 yards for touchdowns, never requiring so much as a third-down snap. By the time the period was over, the score was 42-13 and the Broncos had their fourth blowout in four games. Manning put up another double-take stat line — 28 of 34 (82 percent) for 327 yards, four touchdowns, no interceptions and a passer rating of 146.0.

“We felt really motivated to score points against these guys,” he explained. “You saw their offense. They are capable of scoring points. Our defense did a heck of a job answering their challenge. We were motivated to be on top of our game offensively, to score points — touchdowns, not field goals.”

Records tremble and fall:

— Manning broke the NFL mark for most touchdown passes in a season’s first four games with his third TD pass of the day — his second to Demaryius Thomas — and extended the fresh record to 16 with his fourth, the second of the day to Wes Welker.

— Manning’s streak of touchdown passes without an interception to open a season reached 16, a feat last accomplished by Milt Plum in 1960. The difference is it took Plum 10 games. I asked Manning if the name rang a bell. He acknowledged a quick briefing from Patrick Smyth, the Broncos’ media relations director.

“Patrick gave me a little bio,” Manning said. “I did know he played for the Browns. He gave me his college — Penn State. I’m throwing 16 out as a number — is that right?”

It is.

“OK,” Manning said. “My brother Cooper and I used to play a lot of trivia when we used to take road trips with my dad, so Cooper would be proud that I knew Milt Plum.”

— The Broncos won their 15th straight regular-season game, breaking the franchise record of 14, established in the championship seasons of 1997 and ’98.

— Their 52 points was a franchise best, eclipsing the 50 they piled on the Chargers 50 years ago.

— Their 179 points through four games is second only to the 1966 Dallas Cowboys, who scored 183. Watch out: Those Cowboys scored only 10 in Week 5.

— Welker became the only receiver in the league with at least one touchdown catch in each of his first four games. Tight end Jimmy Graham of New Orleans has a chance to join him Monday night. Welker now has six touchdown catches, the same number he had all last season with the Patriots.

People are running out of superlatives. This is the best stretch of offensive football — the most explosive, the most methodical, the least error-prone — many of us have ever seen.

“You get worn down a little bit,” Kelly admitted, experiencing the feeling he gave other teams so often while he was at the University of Oregon.

Somebody asked him if his defense playing pancake to the Broncos’ steamroller was disconcerting.

“I think it is disconcerting, but you’re also playing against an offense that four teams have tried to stop them and they haven’t yet,” he said. “I don’t have an answer. Is it disconcerting? Yeah, it is disconcerting to not be able to get teams to third down.”

Somebody else asked if he noticed how good Manning was.

“I think you have an appreciation, but I wasn’t sitting there saying, ‘Hey, that was a really cool play by Peyton.’ He frustrates you. Maybe at the end of the season we’ll go back and break down the Broncos tape and kind of look at what he does. But when you talk about the great quarterbacks in the history of the game — there’s been a lot of them — but I think he’s right up there with the best that have ever played, and he’s proving that right now. I know he’s setting records for the start of a season. He’s a great football player.”

Sunday’s steamroller was especially impressive because Manning & Co. barely saw the ball in the early going. They drove to a touchdown the first time they had it, then sat and watched for the rest of the first quarter. That wasn’t all bad. After the Eagles countered that first touchdown with a field goal, Trindon Holliday took the ensuing kickoff 105 yards, tying a franchise record he set last year, for another Broncos special teams touchdown.

The Eagles responded with another long drive, again settling for a field goal. By the time the Broncos offense snapped the ball again, it was the second quarter. It went three-and-out in what Manning called their worst series.

“Holliday’s return was great, but it does keep us off the field, and for whatever reason, we weren’t as sharp on that series after that lull, when we needed to be,” he said.

So, on their next possession, following an Eagles touchdown that closed the gap to 14-13, Manning drove the Broncos 80 yards in 11 plays, foreshadowing the third quarter by never requiring a third down. The variety of the offense was on display. Knowshon Moreno and Ronnie Hillman ran the ball. Manning completed passes to Hillman, Demaryius Thomas, Eric Decker and Virgil Green. Moreno scored the touchdown on the ground.

Up 21-13 with a little more than 2 minutes remaining in the first half, Manning found himself in a second-and-12 on his own 8-yard line. After multiple neck surgeries, at age 37, he isn’t given much credit for throwing the deep ball anymore. So he launched a 52-yard strike over the top to Decker.

“The one at the end of the first half, luckily it didn’t come back to hurt us, but we’re in a three-deep coverage,” Kelly said. “You hope you don’t get a post route thrown on you in three-deep coverage.”

Manning placed the ball perfectly after overthrowing Decker on another deep route earlier by maybe six inches (Manning estimated the overthrow at “an inch long”).

For one of the few times all day, the Eagles prevented the Broncos from scoring on that final drive of the first half. But that just made Manning more determined, setting the stage for a Vulcan-like third quarter in which he deconstructed the Eagles defense like a pathologist.

Somebody asked Kelly if teams can lose their spirit at the NFL level.

“I think it can happen at any level,” he said.

That’s what the Broncos are doing so far — not just beating opponents but demoralizing them. Special teams specialist Steven Johnson’s blocked punt and return was the Broncos’ third special teams touchdown of the season, and that’s not counting David Bruton’s blocked punt against the Ravens to set up another.

“They were well-prepared, they were well-coached, they went out and executed and made more plays than we were able to make, and that’s the bottom line,” said Eagles defensive back Cary Williams.

Williams, who played for the Ravens when they upset the Broncos in the playoffs last year, was asked how best to thwart Manning.

“You have to have great communication in the secondary and you need to be able to make plays,” he said. “We just didn’t make plays today.”

Manning played down the growing chorus of hosannahs and stuck to his one-game-at-a-time mantra. While it’s a joy to watch and celebrate his early-season virtuosity, it is worth remembering that the first quarter of the season provides the most pristine environmental conditions and is therefore most accommodating to a precision passing game.

As the weather changes, assuming it does, the offense is likely to get less pretty. Still, one wonders how the oddsmakers will come up with a line for the Jaguars-Broncos game here in two weeks. The Jags are not only 0-4, they’ve been outscored 129-31. The NFL might need a mercy rule.

But first, the Broncos have a trip to Dallas. Manning was already worrying about what Monte Kiffin, the Cowboys’ new defensive coordinator, might have in store. By the time the snow flies, the Broncos will have plenty of time to demonstrate whether they have an offense for the ages, or just for the late summer.

The 4-0 start is auspicious for more than its gaudy offensive numbers. The franchise has won the first four games in five previous seasons and went to the Super Bowl after four of them. The only time they didn’t was when they started 6-0 under Josh McDaniels four years ago and finished 8-8, missing the playoffs.

For now, it’s quite a show, this NFL offense with a multitude of talented weapons and a quarterback who always knows the right thing to do and almost always does it. Nobody’s perfect, of course. But tell you what. So far, he’s close.

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September 24, 2013

At 3-0, Peyton Manning rewards himself with 20 minutes in the cold tub

By Dave Krieger

Starting with the important stuff: The Broncos did not determine who would score their final touchdown Monday night against the Raiders by playing rock-paper-scissors.

The three running backs — Ronnie Hillman, Knowshon Moreno and Montee Ball — did play the children’s game near the sideline at Mile High when Peyton Manning called timeout with the ball on the Oakland 1-yard line and 11:31 left in the game. When Hillman, who carried for 32  yards on the two previous plays, went back in for the goal line play, it looked like he’d won.

“Actually, I lost,” he said afterward. “We was just messing around.”

Still, it’s a sign of how much fun the Broncos are having these days. They are undefeated, having won all three of their games by double digits. They are averaging slightly more than 42 points a game. Manning now owns the NFL record for most touchdown passes in the first three games of a season (12), breaking a mark set by Patriots quarterback Tom Brady two years ago.

“They’re a devastating team, and that’s obvious from tonight,” said Raiders rookie tight end Nick Kasa, who was playing for the University of Colorado this time last year.

“It’s really about being able to match, and even exceed, the efficiency that they are operating at,” said Raiders middle linebacker Nick Roach. “When you aren’t able to do that, it kind of snowballs like it did tonight. You have to give them credit for that, though.”

“I still think there is plenty we can improve on, I really do,” Manning said.

He was shivering when he came out to meet the inquiring minds. He’d just spent 20 minutes in a cold tub, trying to jump-start his recovery looking ahead to a short week of preparation for the Eagles.

“It’s nice of the NFL to give Philly 12 days and give us six,” he said, breaking briefly into his Saturday Night Live deadpan. It’s actually 10 for the Eagles after their Thursday night game last week, but what this tells you is Manning is already on to the next one, even as we tally up the records from this one:

  • The Broncos won their 14th regular-season game in a row — the last 11 of 2012 and the first three this year — tying the franchise record. It’s a particularly auspicious record because it was set in the championship years of 1997 (the last regular-season game) and 1998 (the first 13). It is the longest active streak in the NFL.
  • The Broncos’ 127 points through three games tied for second all time with the 1966 Cowboys of Don Meredith, Don Perkins, Dan Reeves and Bob Hayes. Also, in a supporting role, Pete Gent, who went on to write North Dallas Forty. The only team to score more was roughly the same Cowboys team two years later, which put up 132.
  • Manning’s 12 touchdown passes are the most by any quarterback in the first three games of a season. His 12 touchdowns without an interception has been accomplished by one other quarterback — Brady — over any three-game stretch.

When I asked Manning about the record for early-season touchdown passes, he broke it down characteristically:

“We’ve worked hard on the passing game, starting with the offseason and training camp. We knew it was going to play a pivotal role for us this year. But I still think you strive for balance. I think we averaged four yards per carry in the run game, 4.5 yards or so (actually 4.7), and when you can do that, that can certainly help your passing game and help put their defense in a little bit of a bind.

“You know: ‘Do we drop back and play zone?’ That’s opening up running lanes. ‘Do we crowd the box?’ Now you’ve got one-on-one. If you put the defense in that position, that’s a good thing.”

No doubt, but many people are familiar with this line of reasoning. Just one, in the history of the NFL, has started a season with 12 touchdown passes and no interceptions in his first three games.

“We think it’s silly also,” said tight end Julius Thomas, one of only three players in the league to have caught a touchdown pass in every game so far (teammate Wes Welker and Saints tight end Jimmy Graham are the others).

“To think about what he’s been able to do, week-in and week-out, we just shake our heads. He’s playing at such a high level right now. He just continues to get better and make everybody around him better. We’re definitely happy we have 18 running things for us.”

Manning’s explanation for the absence of interceptions, like his explanation for the bounty of touchdowns, was grounded in the prosaic weeds of executing plays correctly.

“Just good play-calling,” he said. “Trying to make good, smart, sound decisions. I think guys are doing a good job getting open on time. I think guys have a good clock in their head about when to come out of the break versus different coverages. Protection has been good, so it gives you a chance to see the field and try to throw accurate footballs.”

The pattern changed a little this week. Instead of sparring early and then dominating the second half, the Broncos came out with a rush, took a 27-7 lead into the locker room at halftime, then played a little sloppily in the second half and settled for a 37-21 final.

Manning’s greatest fear seems to be the Broncos peaking too early. So just as he criticized the first halves of the first two games, he criticized the second of this one.

“I still think we can correct some things,” he said. “Our defense did a good job holding their offense. When we have those chances down in the red zone, third-and-1, to get stopped and have to settle for a field goal on that one drive. Had the sack-fumble. You’re not looking to play the perfect game. You’re looking to take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves.

“I thought we left a couple of touchdowns out there tonight. Those are things we can fix, which you’re going to need those in a game at certain points of a season. But just got to keep emphasizing protecting the ball and eliminate some penalties, I thought, early in the game. I think we do a good job overcoming those penalties from time to time, but I still think there is plenty we can improve on, I really do.”

In that last answer, you could see him reliving Monday’s opening drive, remembering the frustration of right tackle Orlando Franklin’s holding penalty on the first play from scrimmage and Moreno’s dropped pass on the second. But Manning overcame the second-and-20 with consecutive completions to Eric Decker, who finished with eight for 133 yards and the touchdown that culminated that possession.

A solid outing by left tackle Chris Clark, replacing the injured Ryan Clady, was marred by the sack-fumble, when Raiders defensive end Lamarr Houston beat him to the outside and hit Manning from behind. Rookie running back Montee Ball, who fumbled into the end zone to wipe out a touchdown drive last week, fumbled again as the Broncos tried to run out the clock on what would have been a 37-14 verdict.

The Raiders entered the game ranked second in the league in rushing. The Broncos were first in rushing defense. If this was supposed to be the unstoppable force vs. the immoveable object, the unstoppable force proved eminently stoppable. Darren McFadden’s nine yards on 12 carries works out to 0.8 yards per attempt.

“I thought they won the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball,” said Raiders coach and former Broncos defensive coordinator Dennis Allen. “I think generally when you look at your inability to run the ball or your inability to stop the run, I think you have to start up front.”

“For the first time in my career, guys are getting together after practice and watching film as a collective group,” Broncos defensive tackle Kevin Vickerson explained. “When that happens, you get carryover.”

The Manning work ethic seems to be contagious. On both sides of the ball, the Broncos have sometimes looked like they’re toying with their opponents. The question remains: Who’s going to stop them?

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September 22, 2013

Rockies review, Part 1: Should they trade one (or more) of the big three?

By Dave Krieger

So I went down to Coors Field for the Rockies’ last Saturday night game of the season because it’s usually a good time, a little wistful, a little nostalgic, mostly for summer, but sometimes for the boys who played through it, depending on how they did and what they showed you.

Of course, those aren’t the guys the Rockies are trotting out there. The sentiment and nostalgia around Todd Helton’s final homestand is covering for the absence of all the Rocks’ current stars. Saturday night, there was no Troy Tulowitzki, no Carlos Gonzalez, no Michael Cuddyer and no Dexter Fowler except for a sad pinch-hitting appearance in which he looked like a player twice his age. They’re all injured or sore or tired, to one extent or another.

Before the game, nobody even bothered to ask manager Walt Weiss why Tulowitzki wasn’t in the lineup. He hit his first home run in a month on Thursday, then another, No. 24, on Friday. He’s finally getting hot. Maybe he could help the Rocks get out of last place. It’s a modest goal, but it’s what’s left.

After Saturday night’s lay-down, in which the Rocks fielded a minor-league team playing behind a pitcher with an earned-run average of 8.59, the club has six games remaining, with two days off among them. Yet Tulo apparently needed a day off.

CarGo has not homered since July 20. He has not batted since Aug. 4. He has a finger problem.

Dex had 10 home runs on June 2. Today he has 12.

If you’ve followed this team, you are already painfully aware of all this. With the exception of Cuddyer, the Rockies’ big stars were all big starters and small finishers this season. Every one of them got hurt again. This is really the worst kind of team to be — a tease that looks good early, when everybody is strong and fresh, and then surrenders to the grind faster than anybody.

In the first half of the season, Fowler hit 10 home runs and batted .284, with an on-base percentage of .381. He stole 13 bases and was thrown out stealing three times.

In the second half, Fowler hit two home runs and batted .223, with an on-base percentage of .349. He stole six bases and was thrown out six times.

CarGo hit 25 home runs and drove in 64 runs before the All-Star break, leading the National League in the former category and putting up an OPS of .980. He stole 16 bases and was caught stealing one time.

In the second half, he hit one home run and drove in six runs. His OPS dropped to .747. He stole five bases and was caught twice.

Tulo hit 16 homers and drove in 52 runs before the All-Star break. He’s hit eight and driven in 28 since.

Tulo’s splits are actually the most remarkable because Fowler’s and CarGo’s are explained mostly by the vast difference in games played. Fowler played in 74 games before the break, 44 after. For CarGo, those numbers are 91 and 19. For Tulo, the games played are closer because his absence due to a broken rib came in the middle of the season. He played 64 before the break and 56 after, yet his power numbers have been cut in half.

So I got to thinking about a simple stat: How many games is a gamer likely to play these days? Who’s the leader in games played for each team in the Rockies’ division this season, and how many did he play? Keep in mind the season isn’t over (except, of course, for the Rockies), so these numbers are still changing daily. As of this moment (9:53 p.m. mountain on Saturday), here are the answers, according to ESPN:

  1. 155 (Hunter Pence, Giants)
  2. 152 (Paul Goldschmidt, Diamondbacks)
  3. 150 (Adrian Gonzalez, Dodgers)
  4. 145 (Will Venable, Padres)
  5. 127 (Nolan Arenado, Rockies)

If you are tempted to blame the elevation, consider this: Arenado wasn’t even on the big league roster when the Rockies came north back in April. He was called up in time to play in their 25th game. So Arenado has appeared in 127 of a possible 132 games. If he’d been with the Rocks all year, his total would likely be up there with the leaders of the other NL West teams.

So here’s the question, and I don’t know a delicate way to phrase it: Are the Rockies’ stars wimpier than their rivals’ stars?

Tulo hasn’t played in 150 games since 2009, the last time the Rocks made the playoffs. He’s played as many as 140 once in the four intervening seasons. And he’s in his prime, weeks from his 29th birthday. One would have to assume he gets more fragile, not less, from here.

CarGo has never played 150 games in a season. He played 145 once and 135 once in a six-year career. In five big-league seasons, Fowler’s high is 143.

You evaluate this team on paper as if it had all these guys on the field and it looks good. Then you join 36,005 other hopeful souls on the final Saturday night of the season at the ballpark and the outfield is Charlie Blackmon, Corey Dickerson and Charlie Culberson. The infield is D.J. LeMahieu, Jonathan Herrera, Josh Rutledge and Helton. The catcher is Jordan Pacheco.

I know, I know. It doesn’t matter anymore. They’re playing out the string. But you know what? They’re still charging for tickets and beer and parking as if they were fielding a major league product.

Can the Rockies build a contender around Tulowitzki, Gonzalez and Fowler? Or do they need one of them to be more like Hunter Pence — someone who crashes into walls, shakes it off and stays in the game . . . and plays the next day . . . and the next . . . and the next. Are the last few years too small a sample size upon which to judge the Rockies’ core, or do they have too many high-strung thoroughbreds and not enough plow horses?

The starting position players around the big three have improved and solidified this year. Wilin Rosario is the best offensive catcher the Rocks have ever had. Arenado looks like the third baseman for the next decade or more. LeMahieu has earned the first shot at the second-base job next year. Add them to Cuddyer and a healthy big three and you have a heck of an offensive team. But only for half a season, which is a really soul-sucking way to do it.

Pitching is another subject, which we’ll get to, but there’s no disputing that the rotation took a step forward this year, from zero effective starters last year to two, and sometimes three. Jhoulys Chacin and Jorge De La Rosa were two of the best starters in the league. Combined with the promise of the lineup, this team should not be in last place again.

Much as I like the big three as players when they’re healthy, I’m coming around to the idea that the Rocks need to get tougher, and that one of the big three may have to go to make it happen.

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September 20, 2013

Todd Helton and the hidden ball trick

By Dave Krieger

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September 16, 2013

Tony Dungy: Peyton Manning only getting better from here

By Dave Krieger

The Broncos are 2-0. Peyton Manning has nine touchdown passes and no interceptions. His former coach, Tony Dungy, was watching his latest performance in an NBC studio, preparing for Sunday Night Football.

“You said, ‘Uh-oh, Peyton’s only going to get better,'” NBC’s Dan Patrick recounted. “The difference between last year’s Peyton and the start of this year?”

“Last year, I talked to him before the season started and he thought he was going to be fine,” Dungy said. “He thought he was going to be able to throw, he thought his neck would hold up. But he really didn’t know.

“He’s been through a year, he knew he could take a hit, more comfortable with the receivers being there a year, and he got the best slot receiver in football (Wes Welker) that he’s still only getting used to. Look out in another month. These guys are really going to be good on offense.”

It’s not clear what 90 points against the two most recent Super Bowl champions counts for on Dungy’s scale, but this gaudy number was achieved in spite of uninspired first halves in both games. The Broncos were outscored by the Ravens and Giants 26-24 before intermission. They blew them away after halftime by a collective score of 66-24.

“I thought we made good second-half adjustments,” Manning said of Sunday’s 41-23 victory at the Meadowlands. “Two weeks in a row, we’ve come out in the second half and really sort of changed the tempo of the game and came out of the locker room and put up consecutive touchdown drives. Just like to find a way to fix it in the first half a little bit.

“Of course, the first drive was really good, just didn’t finish the way we needed to. And then we had some more self-inflicted errors in that first half, things that we were doing that were kind of stopping ourselves. Those are things we have to correct. Fortunately, our defense kind of kept us in it, but we need to do a better job in the first half and not wait till the second half two weeks in a row.”

In the NFL opener, the Ravens led 17-14 at halftime. The Broncos regrouped and scored three consecutive touchdowns in the third quarter while stuffing the Ravens offense on the alternating possessions, then cruised to a 49-27 triumph.

This week, the pattern changed only a little. The Broncos led 10-9 at halftime, thanks to a defense that held the Giants to field goals on three scoring drives and then intercepted Manning’s younger brother, Eli, on New York’s final possession before intermission.

“The red zone, the scoring zone, whatever you want to call it, is a huge area because it’s a four-point swing,” Broncos coach John Fox said. “If you let a team go down there three times, it can be 21 or it can be nine.

“So it’s a huge deal to get better. We were not very good in that area defensively a year ago. It’s something we worked very hard on this off-season, in OTAs and training camp. I think our guys are figuring that out a little bit better. So far in a short season, we’re two games into it, we’ve responded a little better in those situations.”

Coming out for the second half, the Broncos stuffed the Giants offense with a three-and-out, then drove 53 yards in nine plays, capped by Welker’s third touchdown catch of the season, stretching the lead to 17-9.

Unlike the Ravens the week before, the Giants responded. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that referee Gene Steratore’s crew responded. Of the 81 yards on New York’s ensuing touchdown drive, 36 were awarded on penalties, and that allows only one yard for consecutive flags at the goal line that all but announced the Giants were getting in, one way or another.

All told, Steratore’s crew threw four flags on the Broncos defense during the drive, including a doubtful pass interference call on cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie on New York’s failed third-and-goal play and an even more dubious taunting call on defensive tackle Terrance Knighton on the subsequent first-and-goal.

In any case, the Broncos replied with another touchdown drive that put them back up by eight. They got the ball back almost immediately on one of their four interceptions — this one by cornerback Chris Harris, his second in as many games — and drove for yet another score. When Trindon Holliday returned the Giants’ next punt 81 yards for a touchdown, the score was 38-16 and another close game had been blown open in the second half.

“We make adjustments,” Fox said. “Sometimes this early in the season there’s unscouted looks, there’s a couple things that maybe cause some confusion. You settle guys down, put it on the board, show them what to do, how to react next time. That’s what football is. I mean, it’s adjusting. So our guys respond to it well and our coaches do a good job of getting it across.”

Dungy had another theory for Manning’s relatively slow starts so far.

“He wants to be so perfect, and sometimes he’s out-thinking himself — ‘They may do this, so we better change this.’ And then they get back to running the things that they’ve run, and just in-sync, and the second halves the last two weeks have been beautiful,” he said.

This is the most intriguing aspect of the Broncos’ first two victories: Manning has managed to look out of sorts about half the time while putting up enormous numbers, both on the stat sheet and the scoreboard.

“It’s funny because you look at Peyton and it seems like he’s struggling and before you know it, it’s 21, 28 points, and you’re like, ‘Where the heck did all this come from?'” former All-Pro defensive back Rodney Harrison said on NBC. “That’s the power of Peyton Manning.”

Throughout the week leading up to the “Manning Bowl,” the third meeting between Peyton and Eli, Peyton made it clear he didn’t relish the fraternal matchup. When it was over, his feelings hadn’t changed.

“It’s a strange feeling,” he said. “It’s not like beating another team. It’s not probably quite as enjoyable as it would be if you were beating somebody else.”

Indeed, Eli, who has now lost all three matchups with his older brother, seemed to be pressing to keep up, throwing four interceptions. With the Broncos not scheduled to play the Giants in the regular season again until 2017, 37-year-old Peyton predicted happily that he would not be around for the next one, barring a Broncos-Giants Super Bowl in the meantime.

Manning’s glossy numbers are far from the Broncos’ only good news through two weeks. Without sack specialist Von Miller, suspended for the first six weeks, the defense has been opportunistic and sometimes sensational. Without 12-time Pro Bowl cornerback Champ Bailey, sidelined by a foot injury, the defensive backfield has six interceptions. The special teams have a blocked punt and a punt return for a touchdown.

Running back Knowshon Moreno had touchdown runs of 20 and 25 yards against the Giants and 93 yards on only 13 carries overall. Compared to rookie Montee Ball’s 16 yards on 12 carries, along with a fumble that wasted the Broncos’ first drive, Moreno looks like the featured back for now.

If there is any cause for concern, it would be that the Broncos are struggling to run the ball out of the three wide-receiver set that allows them to put their main receiving weapons — Welker, Demaryius Thomas, Eric Decker and tight end Julius Thomas — on the field at the same time.

“We went a little more two tight ends in the second half,” Manning said. “We were mostly one tight end, three wides in the first half. I thought the two tight ends was a good change for us and we ran the ball better out of that personnel grouping. For whatever reason, that helped our running game. And then we were able to get a couple of big plays in the passing game, a couple of crossing routes to Demaryius and to Decker. That was a good change by the coaches.”

Although heavier personnel are traditionally used for running plays, Manning said he’s not sure the single substitution between the two groups explains the change in the running dynamic.

“It’s not a major, drastic change,” he said. “It’s just one guy for one guy. It’s kind of Virgil Green for Wes Welker. But for whatever reason, our execution got better. We’ll see the film as to what was the real reason for it, but it did give us a little more rhythm, and then when you can go to three wides after that — Wes’s touchdown was in three wides — it can maybe keep them a little bit more off-balance.”

All things considered, it’s a pretty minor issue for a team averaging 45 points a game. But it’s something to work on, as is starting faster. After all, as Manning said, you don’t want to peak too early.

“He’s still learning these guys,” Dungy said, “but another month and they get Von Miller and Champ Bailey back, this is going to be an outstanding team.”

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