Tag Archives: Eric Decker

February 3, 2014

A stunning self-destruction

A Broncos nightmare in New Jersey ended in a Seahawks celebration

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — The Super humbling of the highest-scoring team in NFL history began on the first play from scrimmage and continued pretty much unabated for the remainder of a deceptively warm and beautiful February evening just off Exit 16W of the Jersey Turnpike.

It was shocking in its suddenness and humiliating in its comprehensiveness. The Broncos played like a pickup squad that met for the first time an hour before kickoff.

The first outdoor Super Bowl in a northern climate turned out to be a travesty all right, but the environmental conditions were the one factor the Broncos couldn’t blame. The temperature at kickoff was 49, fully 10 degrees warmer than the coldest Super Bowl on record, back when they used to play outdoors in New Orleans.

If Mother Nature treated the Broncos well, she was alone. The Seattle Seahawks manhandled and dismantled them in every way imaginable on their way to a 43-8 blowout. Give them credit, as the Broncos kept saying afterward, but blame the Broncos, too. Their early wounds, the ones that set the doleful tone, were self-inflicted.

It began on the first play from scrimmage, when the Broncos’ first snap from their own 14-yard line sailed past Peyton Manning into the north end zone of MetLife Stadium. Somehow, the Broncos were lulled by the neutral site into believing they would be able to convey their signals verbally. Had the game been in Seattle, they would undoubtedly have used a silent snap count. Buried deep in their own end, enveloped by the boisterousness that always accompanies the beginning of a Super Bowl, Manning lined up in the shotgun and called for the ball.

Center Manny Ramirez failed to snap it. So Manning walked toward the line to reset the play. Ramirez, suddenly realizing he was late, chose that moment to snap the ball.

“That was on cadence, so it was about what he was saying,” a miserable Ramirez explained afterward. “It was really loud and I (thought) I heard him. Unfortunately, I was three seconds late.”

“A little bit of a cadence issue,” said head coach John Fox.

“I felt terrible for them,” said Seahawks coach Pete Carroll. “We didn’t deserve that. They just gave it to us.”

Running back Knowshon Moreno hustled back to the ball, turning the faux pas into a safety rather than a touchdown. It was a screw-up, but the damage was minimal. Twelve seconds into the game, the score was 2-0. It was the fastest score in Super Bowl history.

“That’s the way the start of any Super Bowl is,” said receiver Wes Welker, a veteran of three. “It’s going to be loud. The fans are going to be yelling. They don’t really know why they’re yelling, it’s just the start of the Super Bowl. We didn’t prepare very well for that, and it showed.”

Imagine that. A team that prided itself on preparation all season was unprepared for something that seemed obvious to a player who had been there before.

Following the required free kick, the Seahawks’ lightly-regarded offense marched 51 yards on its first possession, converting two third downs along the way. The Broncos again managed to minimize the damage, stopping the Seahawks about six inches short of a first down inside the 10-yard line and forcing a field goal. When Manning & Co. got the ball back, it was still only 5-0.

Following a three-yard gain on a running play, Manning completed the first two passes he threw — for two yards to Demaryius Thomas and three yards to Julius Thomas. Two completions, five yards. They had to punt.

The Seahawks began another march, using up most of the remainder of the first quarter. The Broncos’ defense once again limited the damage near the goal line, forcing another field goal when linebacker Nate Irving knocked an apparent touchdown pass out of the hands of wide receiver Jermaine Kearse.

The first quarter wasn’t over yet and the Broncos had already prevented two touchdowns on hustle plays by Moreno and Irving. Despite a disastrous start, the score was a manageable 8-0.

For the third time, Manning took the controls. For the third time, the crowd waited for the precision passing game that produced a record 606 regular-season points. A five-yard completion to Welker. A three-yard run from Moreno.

But wait. When Moreno was stopped, he was still on his feet. Seahawks defensive end Chris Clemons ripped the ball from his grasp. Guard Zane Beadles made the Broncos’ third fortuitous play of the quarter, falling on the loose ball and preventing a turnover. Instead of third-and-2, now it was third-and-7.

Manning tried to convert it by hitting Julius Thomas, his tight end, up the middle, but Seahawks pass rusher Cliff Avril came around right tackle Orlando Franklin on a speed rush and Manning was forced to step up in the pocket to avoid him. He let loose a throw that wasn’t even close to its mark — a duck, as Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman would call it, both too high and behind the intended receiver. It landed gently in the arms of Seahawks safety Kam Chancellor, a room service interception.

“A poor play on my part,” Manning admitted afterward.

When the first quarter ended, the Seahawks had the ball at the Broncos’ 17-yard line on their way to a 15-0 lead. The Broncos had possessed the ball only momentarily, it seemed, mostly because they were in such a hurry to give it away whenever they did.

Yet another self-inflicted wound contributed to that first Seahawks touchdown. The Broncos defense, again playing damage control near its goal line, forced a third-and-4 from their 5-yard line. It was looking to limit Seattle to another field goal when nickel back Tony Carter face-guarded Seahawks receiver Golden Tate in the end zone while gripping his jersey, possibly the most obvious pass interference call of the season. This resulted in a first down at the 1. It still took the Seahawks two running plays to punch it in.

Three minutes into the second quarter, the most prolific offense in NFL history didn’t have a first down. Credit the Seahawks’ hard hitting or pass rush if you like, but if this was tennis, both the bad snap and errant throw would be ruled unforced errors.

Moments later, the Seahawks lived up to their reputation for creating turnovers. Avril again beat Franklin, this time pushing past him and hitting Manning’s arm as he threw. The ball fluttered like . . . well . . . yes . . . a wounded duck, directly into the arms of Seahawks linebacker Malcolm Smith, whose 69-yard return for a touchdown would be the key to his Super Bowl MVP award a couple of hours later.

Now it was 22-0. Slightly more than three minutes remained in the first half. The Broncos desperately needed a score. Slowly, uncertainly, they began to matriculate down the field, in Hank Stram’s famous phrase from another era. They achieved a first down. Then another. Facing a manageable third-and-4 for yet another, Louis Vasquez, their best offensive lineman, was called for a false start. Yet another error. Maybe Seattle’s fearsome foursome made him do it, but still.

Moments later it was fourth-and-2. Fox decided to go for it.

“I’m thinking that three points wasn’t going to make a big difference in the game, and it proved to be true,” he explained.

At the snap, it looked like an uncovered Julius Thomas signaled to Manning for a simple pitch-and-catch that would move the chains. Instead, Manning looked the other way and threw the ball into the ground at the feet of Demaryius Thomas.

In the press box, in the stands, on social media and in living rooms all over Colorado, people who had watched this offense operate like a jet engine all season watched in astonishment as it sputtered like a lawn mower. Who were these guys?

It wasn’t just that the Broncos had switched hotels the night before the game, they appeared to have switched players, too. The replacements looked a lot like the guys they’d replaced. They even wore the same numbers. But they didn’t play anything like them.

The cherry on top came on the first play of the second half. Matt Prater, the Broncos’ Pro Bowl kicker who led the league with 81 touchbacks, inexplicably pooched the kickoff in an apparent attempt to keep it out of the hands of returner Percy Harvin. Kicking it out of the end zone, which Prater had done more often than any other kicker, would accomplish the same result.

Harvin had rushed twice in the first half for 45 yards. Rather than match strength with strength and let Prater try to boom the kickoff across the Hackensack River, the Broncos got cute. Harvin charged out of the end zone and the pooch bounced directly into his hands. Members of the Broncos’ coverage unit converged and knocked each other down as if playing electric football. Harvin took it all the way for a touchdown, 87 yards in all.

The Seahawks had again scored just 12 seconds into the half. This would converge with the narrative surrounding their 12th man — their fans, who arguably influenced the mistake that led to the first 12-second score — into a sort of mythic sense of numerological destiny.

More to the point, it was now 29-0 and the Broncos had shown themselves to be vulnerable in every phase of the game. No team had overcome a deficit greater than 10 points to win any of the previous 47 Super Bowls. At 2-0, 5-0, 8-0, 15-0, a Broncos comeback still seemed plausible, given their own precedents. Even at 22-0, a miraculous comeback from a team that averaged 37.9 points a game in the regular season seemed possible.

But the Harvin kickoff return dashed whatever hope remained. Not only was a 29-point deficit an insurmountable obstacle against the league’s best defense, the Broncos had shown little sign of even elementary competence. The more pertinent question seemed whether the Seahawks could impose the first shutout in Super Bowl history.

“We just weren’t real sharp executing our offense,” Manning said in perhaps the understatement of the season. “We got ourselves in a hole and we weren’t able to overcome it.”

Once the game was out of hand, the Broncos managed to roll up enough meaningless yards to make the final statistical comparisons look benign. In fact, of the six Super Bowl records set Sunday, four were by the Broncos. Of course, one of them was for most Super Bowl losses (five), which is not a record you want to hold. But Manning’s 34 pass completions were a record, as were Demaryius Thomas’ 13 catches. They were as hollow as any Super Bowl records ever set.

The Seahawks set records for fastest score to start a Super Bowl and most time playing with a lead (59 minutes, 48 seconds).

The cumulative record for losses in the big game might seem fastidious, conflating a 21st century result with games played in the 1970s and ’80s, but this one was eerily reminiscent of those losses in the ’80s, when the Broncos won the AFC in three out of four seasons and were blown out by successively larger margins in the ensuing Super Bowls — 39-20 by the Giants following the ’86 season, 42-10 by the Redskins following the ’87 season and 55-10, the worst blowout in Super Bowl history, by the 49ers following the ’89 season.

In each case, the result was disturbing and dispiriting. The Broncos had gone through a long season and postseason with the look of a champion, only to look utterly overmatched in the most important game of all. It’s hard to know how to react to such a dramatic reversal of fortune.

“I think we were playing a great football team,” Manning said. “I think we needed to play really well in order to win and we just didn’t come anywhere close to that . . . . Give Seattle credit. They’re an excellent football team and they caused a lot of our mistakes. But at the same time, we just didn’t play well tonight.”

Twenty-four hours after winning his record fifth Most Valuable Player award, Manning bristled when asked if the loss was embarrassing.

“It’s not embarrassing at all,” he said. “I would never use that word . . . The word embarrassing is an insulting word, to tell you the truth.”

Welker was not so reticent.

“To get this far and lose like this, it’s embarrassing,” he said.

“They dominated us across the board,” said fellow receiver Eric Decker.

The Seahawks were exuberant, of course, having won so much more powerfully and easily than even they expected. The Broncos needed to credit them to save face, and certainly they kept Manning unsettled in the pocket and hit hard in the secondary, as is their reputation.

Still, the number of self-inflicted wounds made the Broncos look amateurish and unqualified for the game. They finished with four turnovers — two lost fumbles and two interceptions — to Seattle’s none. The third turnover, by Demaryius Thomas following a 23-yard, third-quarter completion deep in Seahawks territory when a comeback was still theoretically possible, verged on slapstick.

Which was a terrible shame, considering how well the Broncos played all season. You could empathize with Manning’s sense of dignity without agreeing with him that this was not an embarrassment.

On any given Sunday, and all that. They just picked the most important game of all to pull out a true stinker.

“We had some chances to get back into it,” said John Elway, the quarterback in those losses of the ’80s and now the team’s executive vice president of football operations. “We just couldn’t get it done.”

“This team used last year’s playoff loss to fuel us; I think it made us a better team,” Manning said. “Hopefully we can use this loss to fuel us and make us better.”

Maybe they will. Elway’s Broncos were unable to bounce back from the Super Bowl blowouts of the ’80s until nearly a decade later, but Manning’s team was so uncharacteristically bad, maybe it can turn this one around much faster.

Asked if the loss reminded him of those blowouts a generation ago, Elway replied: “No. Those are separate.”

Still, for all the praise Manning gets when he’s dominating opponents, it is only fair to point out his mediocre play when opponents dominate him. The Broncos’ oft-maligned defense wasn’t great in this game, but it was required to perform a great deal of damage control for its far more famous offense.

Manning completed 34 of 49 passes for 280 yards, many of them in garbage time, with one touchdown, two interceptions and a passer rating of 73.5. His counterpart, second-year Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, the former Rockies farmhand, was 18 of 25 for 206 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions and a passer rating of 123.1. Wilson was clearly the better quarterback in this championship game.

“Offensively, we were clicking on all cylinders,” Wilson said. “That’s what we wanted to be, especially the last game of the season, to finish that way in that fashion. That’s our mindset. We want to be champions every day and bring it every time.”

Credit the Seahawks for playing a very sharp game. They deserve congratulations on winning their first NFL championship in very convincing fashion.

“We ran into a buzz saw,” Fox said.

That’s a little too easy. The Seahawks played very well, but the Broncos took themselves out of the game early by playing very badly. From a vantage point high above the action on a beautiful night for football in the New Jersey Meadowlands, it looked like the highest-scoring offense in NFL history mostly self-destructed.

7 Comments | tags: Chris Clemons, Cliff Avril, Demaryius Thomas, Eric Decker, Golden Tate, Hank Stram, Jermaine Kearse, John Elway, John Fox, Julius Thomas, Kam Chancellor, Knowshon Moreno, Louis Vasquez, Malcolm Smith, Manny Ramirez, Matt Prater, Nate Irving, Orlando Franklin, Percy Harvin, Pete Carroll, Peyton Manning, Richard Sherman, Russell Wilson, Tony Carter, Wes Welker, Zane Beadles | posted in Broncos/NFL

January 13, 2014

Learning from the past

By Dave Krieger

It may not be obvious whether Peyton Manning or Tom Brady is the best quarterback of their generation, although we’re sure to hear plenty of bloviating on the subject over the next seven days as they get ready to compete for a berth in the Super Bowl.

On the other hand, there’s not much doubt about the superior Saturday Night Live host.

Following the Broncos’ 24-17 playoff victory over San Diego on Sunday, a reporter wanted to pursue an ESPN “exclusive” that Manning’s future in football will be decided by a neck exam in March. Never mind that this was also true last year and the year before that. An exclusive is an exclusive, after all.

So the reporter asked him, immediately following his first playoff victory as a Bronco, if this is weighing on his mind.

“What’s weighing on my mind is how soon I can get a Bud Light in my mouth,” Manning said. “That’s priority number one.”

Somebody at the ad agency representing Budweiser just went to work.

For two weeks, Manning and the Broncos heard about nothing but history. A digital loop replayed the nightmare from last year’s playoff loss, Rahim Moore amazingly still misjudging the ball after all this time. They were reminded that this nightmare was possible only because Manning’s offense played it conservatively at the end of regulation, trying to eat clock rather than get first downs. As a result, it gave the ball back to the Ravens with just enough time for the infamous pratfall.

They also heard about more recent history, this season’s games against the Chargers, their playoff opponent. San Diego dominated the time of possession in both games by running the ball and stopping the run.

Once this train of reminding got going, nobody could find the brake. The web site Pro Football Talk tweeted more grim numbers just before kickoff Sunday:

“Philip Rivers is 6-2 all-time in Denver. Peyton Manning was 1-5 with the Colts in his last six games against Chargers.”

The fact that Manning went into the game 3-1 against the Chargers as the Broncos’ quarterback, which would seem more recent and more relevant, considering it was the Broncos and not the Colts playing in this game, did not merit mention.

What the Broncos did with all this history was basically what the computer does in WarGames. They learned.

This time, when they got the ball with a chance to run out the clock at the end of regulation, they played more aggressively, passing on third down to maintain possession rather than running to keep the clock ticking.

They also designed an offensive game plan that allowed them to run the ball better, often running out of passing formations that spread the defense. They designed a defensive plan that allowed them to stop the run better, playing more linebackers and fewer defensive backs on more snaps. Between the two, they reversed the Chargers’ time of possession advantage in the first two games.

After rushing for a pathetic 18 net yards in their loss to the Chargers in December, the Broncos racked up 133 this time — 82 from Knowshon Moreno and 52 from rookie Montee Ball. After giving up 177 rushing yards in that loss, they surrendered only 65 this time. It didn’t hurt that the Chargers’ best running back, Ryan Mathews, was hobbled by an ankle sprain. After rushing for 127 yards in the Chargers victory, he managed only five carries for 26 yards in this one.

All of this added up to domination of the game for the first three quarters. Clad in orange on a crisp, windy day, Mile High rumbled with enthusiasm when the Chargers had the ball and turned into a library when Manning was engineering the no-huddle. The Broncos didn’t score as much as they usually do, in part because of their long, patient drives and in part because one of them ended when Manning threw a pass off Eric Decker’s chest that turned into an interception in the end zone.

Still, they led 17-0 after three quarters and their defense looked dominant.

Then cornerback Chris Harris went out of the game and, just like that, the defensive dominance disappeared. We’ll come back to that in a minute. But that’s why, just like last year, the Broncos found themselves protecting a seven-point lead in the waning minutes.

Last year, up 35-28 on the Ravens with two minutes to play, the Broncos faced a third-and-7. Rather than attempt to throw for the first down to maintain possession, they called a running play to burn precious seconds off the clock. They were forced to punt and everybody knows what happened after that.

This year, leading the Chargers 24-17 with three minutes to play, they faced a third-and-17 from their own 20-yard line. Offensive coordinator Adam Gase ordered what Manning would call “a wheel-type route” for tight end Julius Thomas. With the pocket collapsing around him, Manning waited patiently for the route to develop down the field. Then he hit a wide-open Thomas down the right sideline for 21 yards and a first down.

“Third-and-17, you know you’re going to have to hold the ball a little bit longer just to give guys a chance to get down the field,” Manning said. “It was the perfect call against the perfect coverage, which you may get one or two of those a game. It certainly came at a good time. Adam dialed it up. It was something we worked on, and it was nice we were able to execute.”

Moments later, the Broncos were presented with a virtual replay of last year’s call. With 2:12 showing, they faced a third-and-6 from their 45. Again, Gase called for a pass. Again, Manning found his big tight end, this time for nine yards and another first down.

It seemed vaguely Shakespearean that Mike McCoy, the offensive coordinator who ordered the running plays that led to defeat a year ago, was on the opposite sideline Sunday, coaching the Chargers and watching his successor correct his mistake.

“Certainly two huge third-down conversions, which were the difference in the ball game,” Manning said.

The successive first downs exhausted the Chargers’ timeouts. From there, the Broncos were able to run out the clock. The Chargers never got the ball back and never had an opportunity to pull off the miracle finish the Ravens managed a year ago.

“I think there’s been a lot of changes since last year,” Manning said. “We are much more experienced. We’ve been through a lot and have been in different situations. Those were two huge plays. I really loved Adam’s aggressive calls. Julius and I have spent a lot of time working on those particular routes — after practice, in practice. To me, that is one of the most rewarding parts of football. When you put that work in off to the side or after practice and it pays off in a game, it really makes it feel like it was worth it. Those two plays specifically were certainly worth the hard work.”

So if the Broncos continue to be such good students of the past, perhaps they can come up with a way to beat Brady and the Patriots next week and advance to the Super Bowl in New Jersey. But first, they’ll have to look carefully at what happened in the fourth quarter Sunday.

“We got it going pretty good, and they knew it,” said Rivers, the Chargers’ quarterback. “If we got it one more time, I believe deep down that we would’ve tied that thing up. But we didn’t. Those are all a bunch of what-ifs.”

Through three quarters, the Chargers had five first downs and 25 net passing yards. In the fourth, they had eight and 169.

Did the Broncos lay back in a somewhat softer defense with a three-score lead to start the quarter? Sure, there were a couple of zones in there. But the most obvious difference in their defense was the substitution of veteran Quentin Jammer for Harris late in the third quarter, when Harris went out with what the club reported as a knee or ankle issue. Coach John Fox said he had no update afterward, making Harris’ health the biggest question of the coming week.

For three quarters, the Broncos’ defensive success was based on their ability to leave their cornerbacks in man-to-man coverage on San Diego’s wide receivers while everybody else played the run first. With Harris and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie on the outside and Champ Bailey playing nickel back covering the slot, it worked well. Once Harris went out, it didn’t.

Suddenly, the Chargers were reeling off big plays in the passing game. Jammer, the longtime Charger, always seemed to be at the scene of the crime. On San Diego’s first scoring drive, he lined up opposite former Bronco Eddie Royal, who ran a crossing route. Somewhere about the middle of the field, Jammer suddenly turned and looked back to the side he had vacated, as if unsure of the scheme. Royal ran away from him to the other side of the field. Rivers hit him and Royal turned upfield, gaining 30 yards. Moments later, Rivers went after Jammer again, throwing a 16-yard touchdown pass over him to Keenan Allen.

Manning responded by marching the Broncos down the field for another touchdown to make it 24-7 with 8:12 left. Again, a three-score lead looked comfortable. In fact, when Rivers made the mistake of going after Rodgers-Cromartie twice in a row on San Diego’s next possession, the Chargers faced a fourth-and-5 at their own 25-yard line. If the Broncos had stopped them there, they might have coasted home.

Instead, Rivers, who had ignored the Allen-Jammer matchup on third down, went deep for Allen on fourth. Jammer stumbled turning to follow Allen’s out move and the Chargers’ rookie star was wide open when Rivers hit him for a 49-yard gain. A minute later, it was 24-14, and two minutes after that, following a successful onside kick, 24-17.

This is what set up the Broncos’ final possession and the aggressive play-calling and execution that allowed them to protect a one-touchdown lead and close out the win.

Perhaps blaming this sudden change in the dynamic on Jammer is too simplistic. No doubt there were others who made mistakes as well. But if Harris is not ready to resume his role for next week’s AFC championship game at Mile High, the Broncos will have a decision to make.

Sunday, they had basically three options. They could have subbed in rookie Kayvon Webster, but it was Webster that Rivers victimized in the Chargers’ December victory. Just as Manning targeted Chiefs rookie cornerback Marcus Cooper a few weeks before, Rivers pretty much threw at whoever Webster was covering until Webster was removed from the game.

They could have moved Champ Bailey to the outside. Bailey missed much of the season with a foot injury. Broncos coaches have been easing him back in as a nickel back, limiting his snaps. Still, I was a little surprised they didn’t move him outside for the final 15 minutes of Sunday’s game when Harris went down. After all, he’s been to 12 Pro Bowls, most recently last year.

Jammer was the third option, and the one they chose, perhaps because he played for the Chargers all those years and perhaps because he’s the guy who replaced Webster after Rivers toasted the rookie in December.

A fourth option would be Tony Carter, but he was inactive for Sunday’s game. That will probably change next week if Harris is unavailable.

Against the Patriots next week, the Broncos will need a game plan similar to the one they executed Sunday. The Patriots rushed for 234 yards Saturday in beating the Colts, 43-22. They scored all six of their touchdowns on the ground. But if the Broncos are going to leave their corners on islands against Brady, those corners will have to play as well as Rodgers-Cromartie and Harris did Sunday.

The Broncos will also have to learn what they can from their loss at New England just before Thanksgiving. In a game shaped by cold, windy conditions, the Patriots fumbled six times, losing three, before intermission. Von Miller returned one of them 60 yards for a touchdown and the Broncos led 24-0 at halftime.

The second half was pretty much a mirror image. It was the Broncos who turned it over three times and the Patriots who came back to take a 31-24 lead. The Broncos regrouped, driving for a tying touchdown near the end of the fourth quarter, but a freak play in overtime — a punt bouncing off Carter, who was on the coverage unit — handed New England a three-point win.

Offensively, the Broncos should be at full strength against the Patriots. Wes Welker, the former Patriot, returned to action following a concussion wearing a helmet nearly as big as he is.

“I’ve been practicing with it the last few weeks, so I got used to it, but it is kind of looking like The Jetsons out there,” Welker said.

“It was the first time since November that we’ve had Decker and (Demaryius) Thomas and Julius and Welker on the field together,” Manning said. “We’ve battled through some injuries.”

This was Manning’s theme going into the game. He told his teammates to be proud of what many outsiders seemed to take for granted.

“I talked to the team last night,” he reported. “I said, ‘You need to be commended for getting back to this point.’ We’ve been through more this year — it’s hard to explain all the stuff we’ve been through, offseason and in-season. To get to this point was really hard work, and to win this game was really hard work. We are proud and happy to be at this point, and we certainly want to keep it going.”

The Broncos exorcised one demon Sunday. Another awaits. In between, at least one of them had a Bud Light.

1 Comment | tags: Champ Bailey, Chris Harris, Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, Eddie Royal, Eric Decker, John Fox, Julius Thomas, Kayvon Webster, Keenan Allen, Knowshon Moreno, Mike McCoy, Montee Ball, Peyton Manning, Philip Rivers, Quentin Jammer, Ryan Mathews, Tom Brady, Tony Carter, Wes Welker | posted in Broncos/NFL

December 29, 2013

The engineer as artist: Peyton Manning sets a new standard

By Dave Krieger

For those who weren’t in or around Denver at the time, it may be hard to believe that there was a vigorous debate, at least on sports talk radio, about the relative merits of Tim Tebow and Peyton Manning as the Broncos’ quarterback for 2012 and beyond.

One of the arguments advanced by the Tebow backers was there wouldn’t be much “beyond” with Manning. He was not, as they say, a quarterback of the future. At 36, he was a veteran of 13 NFL seasons coming off multiple neck surgeries and a full season of inactivity.

To jettison Tebow, who had just led the Broncos to an improbable postseason berth and first-round playoff victory in 2011, and replace him with what might turn out to be a relic, must be an act of desperation. The final acts of John Unitas, in San Diego, and Joe Namath, in Los Angeles, were referenced. John Elway, now pulling the strings in the Broncos’ front office, must be jealous of Tebow’s celebrity, some said. With many Tebow backers animated by imperatives beyond the world of football, it got pretty silly.

I remember one contending on the radio show that a Manning signing could only be justified by another championship parade in downtown Denver.

It did look that way. Manning was Elway’s attempt to go for greatness right away, just one year into his tenure as owner Pat Bowlen’s chief football executive. If the Broncos didn’t win a championship during whatever time Manning had left on the field, they would have to start over with his understudy, Brock Osweiler, which would make them just another team banking on potential.

Sometime between then and now, Manning changed all that. He recovered his brilliance so quickly, and made such an impact on the Broncos’ culture, and covered so ably for those physical abilities slowest to return, that he presented an opportunity we never imagined. He reached a skill level never before seen in football, a combination of intellectual and athletic rigor that took the game to another level. The quarterback was no longer a gunslinger. He was an engineer.

The Broncos have finished with a won-loss record of 13-3 in each of Manning’s two seasons in Denver. Before his arrival, they won that many games four times in 34 years of 16-game schedules. This year, at 37, Manning put up the best statistical season by a passer in NFL history.

Football fans had the sublime pleasure today of watching him finish the regular season with near perfection. He established league records for passing yards in a season (5,477, exactly one more than Drew Brees in 2011) and passing touchdowns (55, five more than Tom Brady in 2007). His largesse extended broadly, allowing the Broncos to set an NFL record for most players scoring ten touchdowns or more (five: Demaryius Thomas, Julius Thomas, Knowshon Moreno, Eric Decker and Wes Welker).

When Manning took back the passing touchdown record from Brady in the Broncos’ fifteenth game last week, he reached 51, one more than the previous mark. He predicted this record, like its predecessors in the category, would prove temporary. Manning began this stair-step escalation by exceeding Dan Marino’s 20-year-old mark of 48 by one in 2004. Brady slipped past, again by one, in 2007. Busting Brady’s six-year-old record by five may mean Manning’s mark stands a bit longer.

He made today’s regular-season finale at Oakland look like a Broncos practice and the Raiders’ defense like the Broncos’ scout team. Actually, that’s probably unfair to the Broncos’ scout team. In former Broncos defensive coordinator Dennis Allen’s second season as a head coach, the Raiders finished as though they deserved their 4-12 record.

As long as Manning was on the field, the matchup seemed unfair. The Broncos had five possessions. Four ended in touchdown passes, the fifth in a Matt Prater field goal. Manning failed to complete only three of 28 passes, spread the 25 completions among nine receivers and passed for those four touchdowns, one of them a gorgeous 63-yard bomb to Demaryius Thomas that made even Manning smile. It did not help the Raiders that their offense, directed by Terrelle Pryor, kept giving the ball back, once at its own 21-yard line on a bad snap. By halftime, it was 31-0.

“Obviously, not our best effort in the first half of the football game,” Allen said. “We got beat by a better team today. Offensively, we weren’t able to really get anything going. Defensively, obviously, that quarterback is really good. I thought there was a couple times where we had some opportunities to potentially get off the field. I thought they put the throw in there when they needed to and they were able to convert and that’s the difference between getting off the field and saving points and giving up points.”

Following the intermission, Broncos coach John Fox chose discretion, replacing Manning with Osweiler. This was, as the ever-competitive Manning pointed out afterward, “a coach’s decision.”

“Our goal was to play as good as we have to date this season,” Fox said. “And the way it worked out, I thought the first half was about as good in all three phases as we’ve been all year. It allowed us to get some guys out of the game and rest them, not to risk injury, and still take care of business on the field.”

By taking care of business, Fox meant winning the game and earning the top postseason seed in the AFC, meaning any and all Broncos playoff games prior to the Super Bowl will be in Denver. Of course, that was the situation last year, too, but we’ll get to that in a minute. As is his custom, Manning explained a memorable regular season by talking about the team’s accomplishments and not his own.

“I think it’s been really good focus on the players’ part,” he said. “We’ve had a number of distractions — injuries, off-field situations, on-field situations — but I think the one constant has been the players’ focus. They have remained focused on the task at hand, on trying to improve everybody’s individual play, which hopefully would result in better team play. But it’s a season unlike any other for me as far as having your head coach ill and missing for a while. We’ve had some injuries. We had the offseason. Those things are well documented. But the players have kind of kept their focus on trying to do players’ jobs. I think that’s been constant, and I think that’s served us well.”

This is the Manning mantra: Do the little things, do your job, take care of every detail. If every individual does that, it can add up to something quite remarkable. Particularly if the signal-caller, the quarterback, is the most maniacal of all about this preparation.

The 34-14 final score against Oakland gave the Broncos a season total of 606 points, another league record. For the benefit of trivia buffs and those already preparing for Mardi Gras, the 2011 New Orleans Saints retained the record for most yards gained in a season with 7,474. This year’s Broncos managed 7,317 for second place.

Manning’s surgical accuracy prompted analyst Solomon Wilcots to extol him on the CBS telecast as the greatest quarterback in the 94-year history of the NFL. Watching him against the Raiders, it was hard to argue. If he doesn’t win his fifth most valuable player trophy — extending another record — there should be an investigation. His relentless drive, combined with the Broncos’ seemingly endless supply of capable receivers, made Denver’s merciless offensive efficiency seem inevitable. Compared to the hope-and-prayer offenses of so many teams, it represented the NFL’s version of fine art.

On the flip side, there was this, from CBS play-by-play man Kevin Harlan: “The Raiders’ performance in the first half was about as bad as we’ve seen.”

Manning has made a lot of teams look that way this year. Three that didn’t, the Indianapolis Colts, New England Patriots and San Diego Chargers, made the postseason tournament as well, so now we get a week or two of reminiscing about last year, when the Broncos had the same record and the same playoff seed and still lost their first playoff game, to the Baltimore Ravens.

So we’ll see. Tony Dungy, Manning’s coach for seven years in Indianapolis, likes his chances to get through the AFC side of the bracket this year because none of the other playoff teams have great defenses to stop him. Where the 2012 edition was riding an 11-game winning streak and feeling pretty good about itself, this year’s version lost just three weeks ago and remembers it quite clearly.

Another advantage is the still-raw memory of that bitterly cold day last January when the Broncos surrendered a seven-point lead in the final minute of regulation by blowing the coverage on a hope and a prayer by Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco. Elway likens it to 1996, when the Broncos team he quarterbacked to a 13-3 record was upset in its first home playoff game by the Jacksonville Jaguars. That memory helped propel those Broncos to Super Bowl championships after each of the next two seasons.

Are these Broncos ready to do the same? They certainly looked like it in the regular season finale, although allowances must be made for the quality of the opposition. The regular-season losses to Indianapolis, New England and San Diego made it clear they are not invincible. Environmental conditions can turn any outdoor mid-winter game into a crap shoot, including the Super Bowl this year in New Jersey. So can ball control that keeps the football away from Manning, as the Chargers demonstrated.

Whatever happens in the new year, it no longer seems even remotely true that the Broncos need to win a Super Bowl to justify the Manning signing. It has already brought the Broncos two of the best seasons in their history. Manning’s remarkable comeback and relentless work ethic have set a standard we’ve never seen before.

He was asked, of course, whether the Broncos need to confirm the regular season this year in the playoffs.

“Well, sure,” he said. “We’ve had our goals all along. And this is why you work hard in the offseason. This is why you lift weights and have the offseason program, is to give yourself an opportunity to play in the postseason. But I’ll tell you, it’s a fun group of guys to play with. Offensively, it’s been a fun unit to meet with, practice with, watch tape with, work after practice with. And I’ve really enjoyed the coaches and the players on offense. It’s been a fun group.”

This is Manning acknowledging the obvious, but also sharing what he can about how he and his teammates got to this point. He loves the process, from offseason workouts to training camp and every week of practice through the long season. Only someone who loves it that much could so utterly master it. But he won’t entertain any of the big-picture questions — the records, the legacy — at least until the postseason is over.

“It’s not easy to go back-to-back 13-and-3s,” Fox said. “It’s not easy to go back-to-back 1-seeds. Obviously, everybody in our building, in our city, probably in our region, maybe in the country, was disappointed in how we finished a year ago. So hopefully that’s been a fire in the bellies of everyone in our building since that last January.”

The Broncos and many fans will be bitterly disappointed at any outcome other than a Super Bowl this year. Manning will most certainly be among them. That doesn’t change the fact that his 2013 regular season is already immortal, a story we’ll be telling a generation from now, no matter what happens next.

2 Comments | tags: Demaryius Thomas, Dennis Allen, Eric Decker, Joe Namath, John Fox, John Unitas, Julius Thomas, Knowshon Moreno, Peyton Manning, Tim Tebow, Wes Welker | posted in Broncos/NFL

December 9, 2013

Peyton Manning: ‘Shove that one where the sun don’t shine’

By Dave Krieger

Half an hour afterward, Peyton Manning was diplomatic about the third 50-point explosion of the season by the Broncos offense he runs.

“I wasn’t trying to answer it because I didn’t give it validation in the first place,” he said of the cold-weather narrative that became the main storyline going into Sunday’s frigid matchup with the Tennessee Titans. “We had a good plan and I thought we threw the ball well and guys caught the ball well.”

He was a little more direct in his post-game conversation with 850 KOA play-by-play man Dave Logan, which occurred shortly after he came off the field.

“Whoever wrote that narrative can shove that one where the sun don’t shine,” Manning said.

Actually, he should probably be thanking the many writers, commentators and fan blogs that broke down his career results by temperature last week. Since his arrival in Denver, Manning has never so clearly inhabited the Michael Jordan in him. He used the cold-weather critiques as motivation — and it worked, producing his seventh game of the season with at least four touchdown passes, an NFL record.

The narrative quickly turned to how ridiculous the previous narrative had been.

All sports are now in a period where stat geeks are cool — rebranded as analytics gurus. Numbers will tell the story if you just let them. So we saw studies over the past week pulling out Manning’s win-loss record in games that begin at temperatures below . . . 40 . . . 32 . . . and, on the CBS telecast, 30 (1-5 going in). The official starting temperature Sunday was 18.

Starting temperature became the proxy for foul weather generally because it is recorded in each game book and therefore readily available. Pretty much any other discussion of weather would be harder to quantify for purposes of numerical analysis.

Much of the Manning-as-a-bad-foul-weather-quarterback narrative predates his arrival in Denver. Losing a bad-weather game for the Colts, who play their home games indoors, was often explained as Manning and his teammates not being accustomed to playing in the elements. But “bad weather” takes in a host of conditions, at least two of them deleterious to anybody’s passing game — wind and precipitation. On the other hand, you can have days like Sunday, which are extremely cold but otherwise sunny and still.

Win-loss records in a small sample can be misleading anyway, as we’ve seen since Manning’s arrival in Denver. Before Sunday, he had started two games at temperatures below 30 — the playoff game against the Ravens last season (13 degrees) and the Sunday night game at New England two weeks ago (22). The Broncos lost both as a result of freak plays that had nothing to do with their quarterback — the Joe Flacco prayer and the punt that bounced off Tony Carter. Either could have been a win and it wouldn’t have changed how Manning played.

Sunday, he didn’t leave it to chance, throwing six touchdown passes if you count the two overturned on review.

“I got tired of them overturning them,” Manning said of consecutive touchdown passes reversed in the first quarter. “I’ve never gone back and forth that many times to the sideline and bench.”

The genesis of the Denver cold-weather narrative was the playoff game last January against the Ravens, when analytics confirmed Manning threw the ball 20 yards or more down the field only once. Baltimore linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo, now retired, said the Ravens knew he couldn’t throw the ball deep. Throughout his first year following spinal fusion surgery, Manning had vaguely acknowledged issues of nerve regeneration in his arm and hand, experimenting with gloves that would help him get a better grip on the ball.

Manning also said he was making progress in that area all the time, so the question became whether another year of recovery would make a difference. Sunday, it certainly looked like it had. Manning threw the ball crisply and accurately, an amazing 59 times in all. He completed 39, a franchise record, for 397 yards, four touchdowns and a passer rating of 107.8, far better than the 70.4 he put up in New England two weeks ago.

It didn’t hurt that he had a chance to practice all week in even colder temperatures during the arctic blast that hit Denver.

“I thought he did a superb job, I think our team did a superb job of getting ready for those elements,” said head coach John Fox, back on the sideline after missing a month following open heart surgery.

“We went inside one day because there was a lot of snow and we didn’t want to risk injury, but Thursday, Friday and Saturday were pretty frigid and I thought it was great for us. I think this year one of the advantages has been that we’ve been in cold-weather games. We got to practice in it for three straight days. So I think it’s just going to be something that’s going to help us as we get into December and even into January.”

From the Tennessee defense, which had surrendered only eight touchdown passes in 12 games before surrendering four Sunday, the lament was familiar.

“Their combination of Manning at quarterback with the weapons that they have on the outside is definitely the toughest offense we have played thus far,” said Titans cornerback Jason McCourty.

Keeping everyone involved and happy, Manning finished with one touchdown pass to each of his four main weapons in the passing game — Wes Welker in the first quarter, Julius Thomas in the second (“I was thankful the referee finally said, ‘The ruling on the field stands,'” Manning said of yet another review), Demaryius Thomas in the third and Eric Decker in the fourth.

As if Manning and his mates aren’t threatening enough records, Fox decided to give kicker Matt Prater a shot at a record-breaking 64-yard field goal on the final play of the first half, with the Titans leading 21-17. It seemed an unlikely day to try it, given the temperature. Prater drilled it just beyond the cross bar.

“I’ve never seen a cement brick kicked 64 yards before,” Ed McCaffrey said on the radio broadcast.

“In those conditions, it was really pretty miraculous,” Fox said. “It was a great kick. I’m sure everybody in the stadium was thinking about the play that happened in college football not that long ago. That was a concern. But he nailed it.”

In fact, Tennessee deployed a return man to try to recreate Auburn’s game-winning touchdown on a missed Alabama field goal in the Iron Bowl a week earlier, but he watched helplessly as Prater’s kick cleared the bar. Prater broke a record shared by Tom Dempsey (1970), Jason Elam (1998), Sebastian Janikowski (2011) and David Akers (2012). Fox rewarded him with a game ball.

If the soap opera surrounding the offense has abated for now, the melodrama surrounding the defense has not. The inability of Jack Del Rio’s unit even to approach last year’s rankings has been a source of frustration.

The Broncos trailed 21-10 midway through the second quarter after giving up a five-play, 73-yard touchdown drive, a 95-yard kickoff return and an eight-play, 89-yard touchdown drive.

“We’ve lost a few starters here over the last three weeks,” Fox said. “Derek Wolfe missed this game. I think there’s no question that there is room for improvement. There is room for improvement in our whole team. To get whole again is going to be important coming down the stretch. We need to play a little better.

“We took a look at some other guys a little bit tonight to develop that throughout the rest of the season. We’re not satisfied at this point. There’s room for improvement and I’m not ashamed to say it.”

Paris Lenon played middle linebacker in the base defense in place of Wesley Woodyard. Omar Bolden got considerable time at safety in place of Duke Ihenacho. The Broncos got cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie back from a shoulder injury, but Champ Bailey was back on the inactive list after an ineffective outing last week. With Wolfe out following “seizure-like symptoms” prior to last week’s game in Kansas City, Malik Jackson started at defensive end and rookie Sylvester Williams started at tackle in place of Kevin Vickerson, out for the season with a hip injury.

The offense is so explosive it can turn a 21-10 deficit into a 34-21 advantage in less than 10 minutes of game time, as it did Sunday. The 51-28 final score made the Broncos the first team since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970 to score at least 50 three times in the same season. Their 515 points are a franchise record and they have three games still to play. Manning’s 45 touchdown passes are a franchise record and five shy of the league record, set by Tom Brady in 2007.

And he isn’t satisfied.

“You score 51 points, so you’re doing something right,” Manning said. “We’ll study the film, even in this short week, and we’ll look at a couple of the red zones where, ‘Hey, what could we have done better to get into the end zone?’ You’re down there that close inside the 2- or 3-yard line, I want to say maybe twice, and had to settle for field goals. Those are points left on the board.

“There are still a lot of things we’re doing well. But you study each game individually, and it’s about doing it each week. And we’ve got a short turnaround. Ninety-five (offensive) plays is probably not the best scenario for a Thursday night game. And we took some injuries and we’re not sure how that’s going to affect us. I’m not a fan of Thursday games for this reason alone. But we’ve got to deal with it and we’re playing a division opponent who we had a close game against the last time.”

That would be San Diego, up Thursday night in the final home game of the regular season. Manning becomes maniacally worried about the next game as soon as the last one is over. Last week, the cold-weather critique gave him fuel for his fire, but he doesn’t really need it. At 37, he remains on a pace to produce the greatest season by a passer in NFL history.

1 Comment | tags: Demaryius Thomas, Derek Wolfe, Duke Ihenacho, Eric Decker, Joe Flacco, John Fox, Julius Thomas, Kevin Vickerson, Malik Jackson, Omar Bolden, Paris Lenon, Peyton Manning, Sylvester Williams, Tony Carter, Wes Welker, Wesley Woodyard | posted in Broncos/NFL

December 2, 2013

A quadruple Decker

By Dave Krieger

The chess metaphor has become a cliche in sports, but football, at its highest level, requires a similar skill: Your chances of success derive largely from your quarterback’s ability to read the board. When the Broncos play the Chiefs, it’s a pretty crowded board.

For the second time in three weeks, the Chiefs’ starting lineup Sunday against the Broncos was what is known as a dime defense, in which six of the 11 defensive players are cornerbacks and safeties.

Traditionally, a “base” defense consists of four defensive linemen, three linebackers, two cornerbacks and two safeties. Over the years, as rules changes have encouraged the crowd-pleasing passing game, offenses have deployed more receivers and defenses have responded with more defensive backs. The fifth defensive back was called the nickel back. The sixth made it a dime in something of a linguistic non sequitur.

These used to be situational packages. Against Peyton Manning, they are what you start with. At least, if you’re Chiefs defensive coordinator Bob Sutton, they are. In both matchups, the Chiefs started three cornerbacks (Sean Smith, Brandon Flowers and Marcus Cooper) and three safeties (Eric Berry, Quintin Demps and Kendrick Lewis).

Facing this maze of defensive backs two weeks ago, Manning chose the Cooper Gambit, for reasons not that difficult to divine. On one side of the formation, the defensive right side, the Chiefs deployed Smith, one of the bigger, better defensive backs in the game. In the middle, against Broncos slot receiver Wes Welker, they positioned Flowers, a somewhat overrated but also well-known cover corner. On the other side, the defensive left, they deployed Cooper, a rookie drafted by the San Francisco 49ers three picks before the draft ended, then cut at the end of training camp.

So Manning connected with Demaryius Thomas five times for 121 yards at Mile High in that first matchup, including a 70-yard bomb, on the way to a 27-17 Broncos victory. Thomas started the game split wide left, opposite Smith. When Manning flipped the formation, sending Eric Decker left and Thomas right, Smith stayed where he was and picked up Decker. So Manning feasted on the DT-Cooper matchup.

Afterward, I wondered why the Chiefs wouldn’t tell their best cover corner — Smith — to stick with the Broncos’ best wide receiver no matter where he lined up. Sunday, I learned the answer:

It doesn’t matter.

Decker is equally capable of exploiting a rookie defensive back. When Thomas hurt his shoulder on the Broncos’ first play from scrimmage Sunday, Manning turned to Decker. By the time he was finished, the Broncos had a 35-28 victory, a season sweep of the Chiefs and a clear path to the AFC West title.

On the way, Decker did something no Broncos receiver had ever done before, catching four touchdown passes in a game. He finished with eight catches for 174 yards and became just the 12th player in NFL history to post four receiving touchdowns and at least 170 receiving yards in the same game. Jerry Rice is the only one to do it twice. Other names on the list include Lance Alworth, Bob Hayes and Terrell Owens.

Cooper was covering Decker on two of the touchdowns, Flowers on the other two. Decker routinely fought Cooper off at the line of scrimmage and roamed free. The preview of coming attractions came midway through the second quarter, when he shook off Cooper at the line and beat him on an out-and-up that went for 42 yards to the Chiefs’ 3-yard line as the Broncos fought back from a 21-7 deficit.

“DT got hurt on the first play of the game,” Manning explained afterward.

Actually, he didn’t learn this until the end of the Broncos’ first offensive series, when he tried to pick up where he’d left off two weeks before, exploiting the Thomas-Cooper matchup with one of those jump balls that Thomas routinely snatches out of the air. This time, Thomas reached for it with only hand. The ball rolled down his arm and into the hands of Demps for an interception. Turned out that safety Lewis had slammed Thomas’s left shoulder on his first catch, after he’d beaten Cooper on a short slant.

“That third down to him, in that type of play, usually he can go up and make it,” Manning said. “He couldn’t even reach with his other hand. He goes up with one hand and obviously tips it, and it ends up getting intercepted. I probably told him he could have told me that earlier, that he only has one hand, and I might not have thrown to him.”

After that, it was pretty much Decker on the right side the rest of the way. Occasionally, Welker would come out of the game and Flowers would slide over, but mostly, it was the Cooper Gambit all over again. Even the one-armed Thomas eventually took advantage, catching a 77-yard fly route off him.

The rookie from Rutgers had his moments, including an interception of a Manning floater early in the second quarter, but by the time Decker’s record-setting day was over, it was obvious the master had read the board, found the weakness and battered it once more.

“I’m a corner,” Cooper explained. “That’s just the life I live. Sometimes things are going to work for me, sometimes things aren’t. I just have to keep going at it at practice and continue to learn.”

Asked about getting over such a tough day, Cooper said: “Peyton is a great quarterback. He’s going to make those plays. We just have to limit those. This is a learning experience.”

It was reminiscent of Darrent Williams, the late Broncos cornerback, after Manning, then with the Colts, took him to school back in 2006.

“It’s the great Peyton Manning,” Williams said then, with a smile. “That’s what I call him now.”

Sunday at Arrowhead, Manning completed 22 of 35 passes for 403 yards and five touchdowns. That gives him 41 touchdown passes for the season, breaking the Broncos’ franchise record with four games to play. The record — 37 — was set by Manning last year, his first with the Broncos. He is now nine shy of the NFL record, which is 50, set by Tom Brady in 2007.

Manning declined to acknowledge he targeted the Chiefs’ rookie cornerback for the second time in three weeks. Asked about the matchups, this is as much as he would say:

“They double (Wes) Welker often. In the two games we’ve played, we knew the double Wes was a scenario, so sometimes Eric is going to draw single coverage, and he played well. He ran good routes. I thought Adam (Gase) called some good plays. We were able to get down the field. Protection held up and allowed us to get down the field. Eric was awesome. Hats off to him and the way he played today.”

Decker’s wife and reality television co-star, Jessie James Decker, was somewhat more effusive on Twitter.

“Omg, omg, omg, I am crying,” she tweeted.

Manning was asked a second time about the Cooper Gambit.

“(Decker’s) touchdowns were on two different guys — Flowers, who is a top cover corner, and 31 (Cooper),” he said. “Those guys are good players. Hey, you’re not in the NFL unless you’re a good player. If you run good routes and you have time to make an accurate pass, sometimes it’s tough to defend. I really just give Decker more of the credit as opposed to saying we were going after one particular guy.”

Even with tight end Julius Thomas out with a knee injury and Demaryius Thomas hampered by the shoulder, the Broncos had more than enough offensive weapons. And even with all those defensive backs in the game, the Chiefs had not enough answers.

Once 9-0 and considered the best defense in football, the Chiefs are now 9-3 after being slapped around in consecutive weeks by the Broncos, Chargers and Broncos again. At 10-2, with the tie-breaker by virtue of beating the Chiefs twice, the Broncos have a clear path to the AFC West title and a first-round playoff bye.

As they learned last year, this guarantees them nothing, but it’s better than the alternatives.

“We came into a tough environment and got it done,” Jack Del Rio said after his fourth and final game as interim head coach. John Fox, who underwent open heart surgery four weeks ago to replace a valve, resumes his duties Monday. “I’m really proud of every man in the room and every guy that traveled, in terms of helping us get this win.”

The Broncos still have issues, of course. They surrendered 452 yards of offense to the Chiefs, not to mention a 108-yard kickoff return. They have the usual bumps and bruises of a team three-quarters of the way through a 16-game season.

But they’re back to their old ways, setting records on offense and playing just enough defense to win. When the elements cooperate — it was clear and mild in Kansas City — it’s going to take a pretty good chess player to beat them.

1 Comment | tags: Brandon Flowers, Demaryius Thomas, Eric Berry, Eric Decker, Jack Del Rio, John Fox, Kendrick Lewis, Marcus Cooper, Peyton Manning, Quintin Demps, Sean Smith, Wes Welker | posted in Broncos/NFL

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.

Leave a comment | tags: Danny Trevathan, Demaryius Thomas, Eric Decker, Jason Garrett, John Fox, Julius Thomas, Knowshon Moreno, Peyton Manning, Tony Romo, Wes Welker | posted in Broncos/NFL

September 6, 2013

Arms race: Broncos unveil another weapon

By Dave Krieger

Imagine you’re the defensive coordinator for a team that has to play the Denver Broncos. In fact, you’re the defensive coordinator for the Baltimore Ravens, the team that has to play the Broncos first. Just so you know, your name is Dean Pees.

Your opponent has three 1,000-yard wide receivers, which is a problem. Nobody has three 1,000-yard receivers. You can’t double-team Demaryius Thomas (1,434 receiving yards last season), Wes Welker (1,354 for New England) and Eric Decker (1,064). You’ll have to mix and match, disguise, throw in some zone looks and hope you can limit the damage.

Now imagine somebody tells you that two minutes and 30 seconds into the second half, Peyton Manning will have three touchdown passes against your defense and none of them will be to any of those guys.

More frightening even than Manning’s NFL record-tying seven touchdown passes in Thursday’s season opener was the fact that the first three went to Julius Thomas, Julius Thomas and Andre Caldwell.

Thomas, a 6-foot-5-inch former basketball player, had never caught a touchdown pass in the NFL. Caldwell had six career touchdowns, but none for the Broncos as he entered his second season with the club.

In Julius Thomas’ coming-out party after two years stunted by injury, the big, athletic tight end caught five passes for 110 yards and two touchdowns, adding yet another difficult matchup to what was already an impressive array of weaponry. Meanwhile, the veteran Caldwell, the fourth of four wide receivers, was the picture of efficiency, getting one pass all night and catching it for a touchdown.

So now imagine you’re Perry Fewell, defensive coordinator of the New York Giants, who play host to the Broncos in Week 2. Do you have to take Julius Thomas, the tight end, as seriously as you take the Broncos’ big three?

About a half hour after Manning put up the shiniest stat line in a career full of shiny stat lines — 27 of 42 for 462 yards, seven touchdowns, no interceptions and a passer rating of 141.1 — I asked him if the emergence of the second Thomas in his arsenal will make defensive coordinators rethink how they game plan the Broncos.

“It would be an interesting question,” he said. “I’m not sure how they will answer it, or if they will, but it will be interesting to see how teams play Julius all season. He is a big guy, he definitely will make teams have a conversation, and that’s what you want. You want guys that make teams have a discussion — ‘how are we going to handle this guy?’ — and he’s a big guy.

“First play of the game, he ran a seam route. He didn’t do exactly how he was coached to do it, but that guy (Ravens safety James Ihedigbo) put a pretty good hit on him and he got right back up and hung in there, did not have to come out, and made a couple big plays.”

It didn’t seem like a good sign at the time. For an instant, it looked like a substantial completion on the first play, before Ihedigbo separated Thomas from the ball.

“That ‘out’ route on the left side where he made the guy miss, that was a huge play because they had some momentum and I think we just had the penalty and we were up on our heels a little bit,” Manning said. “But we did a great job answering the score there. A lot of credit goes to Julius Thomas there.”

The Broncos trailed 14-7 at the time. After a scoreless, forgettable first quarter, cornerback Chris Harris gave them a shot of adrenaline with a diving interception in front of Brandon Stokley early in the second. Manning hit Julius Thomas up the seam for 24 yards and a touchdown on the next play to make it 7-7. Manning complimented the aggressive call and made a point of crediting first-year offensive coordinator Adam Gase.

Then Welker muffed a punt near the goal line and gave the turnover score right back. So the Broncos were again down a touchdown when they were hit by the penalty Manning referenced — an offensive pass interference call on Decker — putting them in a first-and-20 hole at their own 33-yard line. Manning hit Julius Thomas with a short out, Thomas juked with an agility that belied his size and rambled 44 yards up the sideline to the Ravens’ 23. Manning went back to him for the touchdown, and the game was tied again.

“It went like we all thought it was going to go,” Julius Thomas said afterward. “The whole offseason we’ve been talking about how many different weapons we have, and I think we were able to display that today. We had a lot of guys make plays — all of our backs, receivers, tight ends. So that’s just what we look to do. We just want to find the right matchups and try to go after those.”

If Julius Thomas can become a consistent weapon alongside all those thousand-yard guys, the Broncos offense could be pretty close to unsolvable. Which is what happened in the third quarter, as if Manning and the orchestra had been merely tuning their instruments since a 33-minute lightning delay to start the game.

“I don’t make excuses, but I do think that the lightning delay did slow us down,” Manning said. “I was telling somebody earlier, you guys have seen teams break it down — you come out of the team prayer and put your hands in and everyone says ‘Broncos’ or ‘Win’ on three, then you go out onto the field.

“We did it three times tonight. We went back and sat down for another 10 minutes and came back and, ‘Now we’re really going,’ and then it was all for naught, go sit down for another 10 minutes. So it took us a little while to get started, but they had to deal with it also.”

If you’re still imagining you’re a defensive coordinator in the league, the third quarter was the equivalent of a horror movie. The Broncos received the second-half kickoff and took just six plays and 2:30 to traverse 80 yards. Manning finished the drive with his only throw of the night to Caldwell. It was the home team’s first lead.

The Ravens went three-and-out and then Broncos special teams ace David Bruton blocked their punt, giving Manning the ball at the Baltimore 10-yard line. He threw two five-yard passes to Welker and it was 28-17.

The Ravens went three-and-out again, got their punt away this time, and set up a nine-play, 63-yard Broncos drive that symbolized the night. Manning tried to throw his fifth touchdown pass on a fade to the left, but Decker, who had an off night, let it slip through his fingers. So Manning turned and threw the next one to Welker on the other side.

In eight minutes, 28 seconds, the Ravens’ 17-14 halftime lead had turned into a 35-17 deficit. Baltimore’s defense looked spent. The Broncos were operating out of the no-huddle at a mile above sea level, they were eating up big chunks of yardage, and as the quarter went on, the Ravens looked more intent on breathing than reading keys.

“We wanted to play an uptempo game,” Manning said. “It helps when you can get into a rhythm when you are having positive plays on those first and second downs. Early in the game, it was first down, second down, third down, every single time. Once we got into a rhythm, we weren’t even getting into third downs. It was first down, second down, first down. That is tough on a defense when you can keep moving into a good clip. It still comes down to the execution. I don’t necessarily think tempo is the reason for it, but the execution got better later in the game.”

When Demaryius Thomas is the cherry on top, you’re got a pretty good sundae. Both of DT’s scores came in the fourth quarter as the Broncos kept their foot on the gas, perhaps in response to all the complaints about how conservative they were the last time the nation watched them play.

If linebacker Danny Trevathan hadn’t hot-dogged an interception return, bringing back memories of Leon Lett as he dropped the ball in celebration before crossing the goal line, turning a touchdown into a touchback, the score would have been even more lopsided than it was.

At 49-27, it was plenty lopsided anyway. Manning became the sixth player in NFL history to throw seven touchdown passes in a single game, and the first to do it in 44 years. The others were Sid Luckman of the Bears in 1943, Adrian Burk of the Eagles in 1954, George Blanda of the Oilers in 1961, Y.A. Tittle of the Giants in 1962 and Joe Kapp of the Vikings in 1969.

The second-most recent name on the list rang a bell for the most recent.

“Yeah, Joe Kapp — great Canadian quarterback out of Cal,” Manning said. “Kicked the crap out of a guy on YouTube a couple of years ago, too.”

Of the six, only Manning and Tittle threw seven touchdowns without an interception. That’s sort of a football equivalent to baseball’s concept of a perfect game, only more so. There have been far more perfect games in baseball than seven-touchdown-no-interception games in the NFL.

“A couple guys were joking, we were saying it’s like Madden — the only time you get to throw seven touchdowns,” Julius Thomas said.

I asked if he had a nickname that would distinguish him on second reference from the other Thomas, and he said he didn’t. Someone suggested “Orange Julius” and he said that would be OK with him. I’m not sure it solves the second reference problem.

In any case, his reference to Madden seemed apt. There were times Thursday night when it looked a little like a video game from the press box, especially the first three possessions of the third quarter.

This was not just a win, one game out of 16, although that’s certainly what the Broncos will say over the next 10 days as they prepare for a trip to New York and a Manning vs. Manning storyline. It’s a long season.

But this was a historic performance that will be cited 50 years from now, just as performances by legendary names like Luckman and Tittle are cited here. This was the very definition of an auspicious beginning.

Leave a comment | tags: Adrian Burk, Demaryius Thomas, Eric Decker, George Blanda, Joe Kapp, Julius Thomas, Peyton Manning, Sid Luckman, Wes Welker, Y.A. Tittle | posted in Broncos/NFL

October 16, 2012

The turning point of a game, and maybe a season

By Dave Krieger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leave a comment | tags: Brandon Stokley, Elvis Dumervil, Eric Decker, John Fox, Peyton Manning, Philip Rivers, Tony Carter | posted in Broncos/NFL

July 27, 2012

Do the Broncos have enough weapons for Peyton Manning?

By Dave Krieger

It’s not that fewer people had opinions in the old days. It’s just that before Twitter and Facebook, we didn’t experience the pleasure of hearing every single one of them.

Today, in order to stand out from the technologically-enhanced peanut gallery, your opinion has to be different, or at least loud, which is why any unexpressed view, no matter how inane, is just a vacuum waiting to be filled.

So we had the original reaction to the Broncos’ signing of Peyton Manning, natural and reasonable, that any team quarterbacked by a four-time Most Valuable Player should likely be included on any list of prospective championship contenders. That’s why there are nearly as many national media types at Dove Valley this week as there are players on the Broncos’ training camp roster.

Then came the first wave of blowback — the harbingers of wait just a minute. They wonder about the defense, they wonder about Manning’s health and even his prodigal perspicacity after a year off and multiple neck surgeries. But mostly, they wonder about Manning’s weapons.

Demaryius Thomas may have been a first-round draft pick, they allow, but through his first two pro campaigns, his high-water mark for catches in a season is 32. Eric Decker strikes a similar national profile — big, fast and athletic, granted, but also a similarly modest career high in receptions of 44.

Certain facts tend to go unmentioned in these revisionist bits of analysis. For example, the fact that each is entering just his third season. Or the fact that Kyle Orton threw nearly all of his passes to Brandon Lloyd during their rookie season. Or the fact that the Broncos reverted to a single wing offense last season, producing the 31st-ranked passing game in a 32-team league.

Mere details. Those who now differentiate themselves from the crowd argue Manning won’t be Manning without the crew of Hall of Fame-bound receivers he enjoyed in Indianapolis.

Of course, Manning had a little something to do with the pending Canton reservations of Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne. Good receivers make a good quarterback better, but a great quarterback makes good receivers better, too.

Anyway, we turn to someone who knows a little something about quarterbacking championship teams for an expert view on this dispute.

John Elway might be a tad biased — he’s the architect of the Broncos’ roster — but he’s also a guy who helped make famous largely unknown young receivers named Shannon Sharpe, Rod Smith and Ed McCaffrey.

“As a former quarterback, I like the targets,” Elway said when he stopped by the KOA broadcast tent at Dove Valley.

“When I look at Demaryius Thomas going into his third year and the way he played the last half of (last) year and the confidence that he’s going to come back into this year with, and the OTAs, I mean, he improved immensely in the OTAs. He had a great day (Thursday). Eric Decker I really like. Those are big, fast wide receivers that I always liked.

“Brandon Stokley’s going to come in and add some experience. Bubba Caldwell from Cincinnati has got some experience in the league and has great speed, has the ability to make the big play. And then we’ve got some young guys that we’re excited about — D’Andre Goodwin, Mark Dell, who got hurt in the preseason last year.

“Plus we feel really good about the tight ends (Joel Dreessen, Jacob Tamme, Virgil Green, Julius Thomas). We’ve got (Ronnie) Hillman in the backfield with Willis (McGahee) and so I believe we’ve got a lot of good things going on on the offensive side also.”

Elway was convinced last season that the Broncos’ biggest weakness was not the receiving corps but the defensive backfield. Aside from the courtship of Manning, that’s where he concentrated his attention during the offseason.

“Other than the quarterback position, that’s probably where we’ve improved the most,” he said. “If you look at the football team last year, when we got exposed is when people spread us out — Detroit, New England, even San Diego, although we did a good job against San Diego.

“When we got spread out, we struggled. But Tracy Porter coming in with the experience he has, Drayton Florence has great experience, and then Omar Bolden, who we drafted in the fourth round. Chris Harris, the year he had last year. We bring Mike Adams in at safety and then Rahim Moore and Quinton Carter are going to have a year under their belts. So I’m excited about what we’ve got back there.”

Elway isn’t afraid to talk about championship contention — he thinks the potential is there if fortune smiles — but he knows from experience that predictions in July are subject to the vicissitudes of November and December.

“If you look at where we started a year and a half ago (when Elway took over the front office) and where we are right now, we’re really excited about it,” he said.

“Like any season, you have to get lucky. Injuries can always kill you. The unknown is always there and that’s why I always kind of temper my enthusiasm and excitement, because you never know what can happen. But I think with the people that we’ve got on this football field, we have an opportunity to compete for a world championship. There’s a lot of things that have to fall in line. But we’re excited about where we are.”

Leave a comment | tags: Brandon Stokley, Demaryius Thomas, Eric Decker, John Elway, Peyton Manning | posted in Broncos/NFL

April 17, 2012

Broncos’ Peyton Manning era begins

By Dave Krieger

With considerable fanfare, the television networks will no doubt declare that the Peyton Manning era in Denver begins with the first game of the new season. Don’t believe it.

Owing to Manning’s famous devotion to preparation, the era of his influence over the Broncos began Monday with the start of the team’s offseason program.

In fact, it may have begun even earlier than that, when Manning essentially took up residence at Dove Valley following his signing as a free agent nearly a month ago. He’s been working out with center J.D. Walton, receiver Eric Decker and a few other teammates at area high schools since then. But because the entire team had not gathered until Monday, make the official start April 16. When the four-time NFL most valuable player began throwing Monday, every receiver on the roster was there.

“It was a good workout,” Manning reported afterward. “Great turnout, attendance-wise. Good to see a lot of the new guys that I haven’t had a chance to meet yet. A lot of guys have been here already, this whole time, working out early, which has been good. But some other guys got here for the first day and I thought it was a productive first day. It’s April 16th and we’re just sort of trying to build a foundation for what we hope our team will be like this year.”

Taking leadership of the offseason preparation is even more important for Manning than usual this year. For one thing, obviously, he’s with a new team, meaning there’s more work to be done getting familiar with one another than, say, going into his thirteenth season with the Colts.

For another, new restrictions on offseason work supervised by coaches were built into the new collective bargaining agreement at the insistence of the players’ association. Although Manning is not likely to pick a fight with the NFLPA, it seems safe to say he was not one of those arguing for less supervised offseason work.

“I do believe in the offseason program,” he said. “I always have. I’ve seen it work and I’ve seen guys get better. I do think with these new rules, the ability to develop a player, a young player, there is more of a challenge. I mean, the coaches (have) limited time to work with a young receiver or a young running back that might need that work. I do think that’s one area that the new rules are going to challenge that. So anytime you have a chance to be out there, you take advantage of the opportunity to work on a timing route with Joel Dreessen, with DT (Demaryius Thomas), to work on a handoff with Willis McGahee, because you’re just not allowed that much time as you’re used to.

“OTAs will be starting soon, training camp will be here and then you’ll be playing the first game. So there’s a lot to do in a short period of time and you’ve got to be organized. Some of it has to be player-organized, some of it the coaches can do and I think we’re going to do a good job of that.”

Manning emphasized repeatedly that results in the fall will depend upon the work done now.

“You are working on different timing with different guys, which I’ve always enjoyed that time, working on timing in the month of April and hoping this timing, we can put it to good use and it comes into play in October on a critical third-and-five, if you will. I’ve been throwing to Eric and some of the other guys that have been here already, but today was the first time throwing to a couple other guys and it was good to have that first day and hopefully we can just keep it going.”

One indication of the youth of the receiving corps Manning takes over was his reference to Decker as the veteran leader of the group. At 25, Decker is entering his third season.

“He’s a natural-born leader,” Decker said. “In the weight room, he’s the guy taking command of running from station to station. On the field, he’s doing drill work, getting us lined up and having us do things for a particular reason. There are no wasted movements, no wasted time, and that’s a great thing to have in a leader like him.”

It’s also an opportunity for Decker to put in rigorous offseason work with a quarterback for the first time in his career.

“This is something as a receiver you dream about, playing with a guy of this caliber who has been an All-Pro every year of his career and has won a Super Bowl and, at the same time, for me to finally have an offseason,” he said. “I was hurt coming into my rookie season. Last year was the lockout, and during college, I played baseball. So I never really got that time to get this technique to get this extra work in. I’m excited for the next six weeks.”

Still, youthful receivers like Decker and Thomas won’t be Manning’s only offseason targets. In addition to earlier acquisition Andre Caldwell and new tight ends Joel Dreessen and Jacob Tamme, the Broncos added one of Manning’s old friends and former teammates to the roster Monday, signing Brandon Stokley to a one-year deal.

Stokley, of course, helped sell Manning on Denver, hosting him at his Castle Rock home the weekend that Manning visited during his free agent tour.

“I just tried to make my sell the best I could and tell him the strong points about the organization and the fans and living here,” Stokley said. “Ultimately, it was going to be his decision so I don’t know how much I helped. I tried, but I knew in the end it was going to be his choice, so I’m just glad he did pick Denver.”

Like Manning, Stokley will be 36 by the time training camp opens in July. There aren’t many 36-year-old receivers in the NFL, but the veteran is eager for the competition.

“I take it as a challenge,” he said. “That’s what I’m really looking forward to, is the challenge of getting in shape and going out there and playing with these kids that are 22, 23, and being 36. Just working as hard as I can, using this for motivation and showing people that you know what, I might be 36, but I can still make plays. I know there’s probably a lot of doubters out there, but I look at it as a big challenge for me and I’m looking forward to it.”

Throughout the Broncos’ complex, Manning has brought an optimism, an energy and a determination to make the offseason program count.

“He’s an amazing leader, and his leadership alone is, bar none, the best in the league,” said veteran cornerback Champ Bailey. “You need a guy like that on your team, and where I want to go, what I want to do towards the end of my career is win a championship, and I feel like he gives us the best chance.

“It makes you feel good about coming to work every day because you know there’s a guy on the other side of the ball that’s going to give it 150 percent regardless. To have him there leading that offense, it’s an amazing feeling. I read about how much he’s been with the receivers, working routes and whatever they’ve been doing. You don’t see that from a lot of quarterbacks, and we need that here.”

About the only thing Manning declined to discuss Monday was his ongoing rehabilitation from multiple neck surgeries that forced him to miss all of last season.

“I’m not going to get into these weekly reports,” he said. “I’ve kind of been there and done that all fall last year. I’m continuing to work hard on my rehab. Certainly, part of my phase is my time with Greek (trainer Steve Antonopulos) in the training room. It’s been good to get into that consistent routine with (strength and conditioning coach) Luke (Richesson) and with Greek. That’s one thing that I hadn’t been doing up until the time I signed here. I was kind of traveling, going different places, not really having a home base to set up out of. So I’m working hard with Greek and with Luke and just trying to make progress. But I’m enjoying being under one roof, being supervised by those two guys.”

Working out with Manning over the past month, Decker has seen no medical issues.

“I’m not his doctor, so I don’t know how to speak on his health, but catching balls from him, it looks like there’s nothing wrong to me,” he said. “He’s throwing great balls; he’s getting the work in just like we’re getting the work in and knocking some rust off. I see no issues at this point.”

For Manning, preparing for the season is a process, and never more so than this year.

“I think there’s kind of steps along the way,” he said. “Today was an exciting day. Seeing a lot of the players, meeting some of these players for the first time and getting to know them, I think you can use this time to get to know these guys off the field a little bit as well. There’s some bonding that goes on in the offseason with offensive linemen and what-not. I’ve enjoyed being around J.D. Walton. I think quarterback-center’s got to have a great relationship, so he and I have spent time together and gotten snaps together as well at the high schools.”

The curtain will rise on the new, Manning-led Broncos at their season-opener in September, but Denver’s new quarterback made it clear that whatever they are able to do there will depend on the work they do now and in training camp.

“I think you have to have a great work ethic.” Manning said. “I do not think you can just show up in September and expect to complete passes or execute in the running game. I do believe the weight room work, the on-the-field work, call it old-school, old-fashioned, that’s what I’ve always believed in. And I have seen guys get better, like the way I’ve tried to get better every offseason. I’ve tried to be a better player each year than I was the year before. That’s from the film study of the previous year, but also from the offseason work, that timing with the receivers.

“What we’re trying to do right now is you try to take maybe one or two routes a day and really try to master those routes because this is going to come up in November on a critical third-and-six. This is what it might be — zone coverage, man coverage. It’s a lot to do in a short period of time, but I do believe it’s what you have to do.”

Leave a comment | tags: Brandon Stokley, Champ Bailey, Eric Decker, Peyton Manning | posted in Broncos/NFL

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