Tag Archives: Wesley Woodyard

January 31, 2014

Broncos on a mission

By Dave Krieger

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NEW YORK — Jennifer Garner joined us on Radio Row today. This was the highlight of my Super Bowl week. She’ll be at the game Sunday, rooting for the Broncos. She’s been a Peyton Manning fan since his days as a Tennessee Volunteer.

That’s the extent of her connection to this post. I just wanted her photo on the blog.

Now then. Remember the dastardly way last season ended? Sure you do. For about six months afterward, the Broncos pretended they didn’t. They dared not speak of the fall-from-ahead loss to Baltimore in their first playoff game after a 13-3 regular season.

They’d put it behind them. They were focused on the future. There was, as always, no use crying over spilt milk.

A funny thing happened on the way to this season’s Super Bowl. Last year’s ending became an inspiration. Now they talk about it all the time. It is a source of motivation, even inspiration. According to Jack Del Rio, the team’s defensive coordinator and interim head coach when John Fox was hospitalized, it fuels their current quest.

“We’ve really been on a mission since we got that stinging loss at home last year in the playoff game,” Del Rio said this week. “We’ve been on a mission. Very resolute, our guys. There have been a lot of well-documented things that have occurred in the last 12 months and we’ve just kind of kept grinding. Never stopped believing that we have the ability to be here if we worked hard, worked together and committed. That’s what these guys have done.”

Amid the millions of words written and spoken this week, here’s an aspect to this tale you might not have heard: Of the Broncos’ 11 starters on defense in Sunday’s Super Bowl, only two — cornerback Champ Bailey and safety Mike Adams — started that playoff game against Baltimore a year ago.

“We’re a different group of guys collectively,” Bailey said. “But I think when you go through something like that, it kind of wakes you up, and now you’re more focused. You definitely don’t want things like that to happen again, especially in big games like that, but we’re a different team. We’re refocused. A lot of guys that were on that team, we don’t talk about it much. We just keep looking forward and try to get better every week.”

Linebacker Wesley Woodyard was a starter in the loss to Baltimore a year ago. He’s a reserve this year.

“It was something that built us up to get to this point,” he said. “That loss last year helped us get through training camp. Once we got through training camp, it was to get to Baltimore (in the Sept. 5 season opener). Once we got past Baltimore, it was, ‘Let’s get to the playoffs and win the No. 1 seed.’ Now we’re at the Super Bowl, so it kind of gave us a little extra motivation to keep continuing to get better and better.”

According to Fox, it’s not just the motivation, it’s also the experience losing in last year’s frigid conditions. With all the talk about the weather forecast for Sunday’s first outdoor Super Bowl in a northern climate, the Broncos’ coach said his team is now all but weatherproof.

“We lost a game a year ago in the playoffs in the single digits,” he said. “We hadn’t had much practice in that. Our weather had been actually pretty darn good in Denver. I think it’s actually a pretty well-kept secret, Denver’s weather. But this year we’ve gotten a little more calloused. We have had wind. We’ve played in single digits. We’ve practiced in single digits. Like anything, the more you do it, the better you get. I think we’ve been exposed to it, so it won’t be foreign.”

A week ago, the long-term forecast called for cold, wind and a good chance of some combination of rain, sleet and snow. Now, just two days out, here’s the National Weather Service forecast for East Rutherford on Sunday:

“A chance of rain, mainly before 1 p.m. Cloudy, with a high near 48. Southwest wind 5 to 9 mph becoming west in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 30%.”

Since kickoff isn’t until 6:30 p.m. eastern, any precipitation seems likely to be long gone. Temperature and wind should be relatively mild. Not a bad forecast for the most prolific passing attack in NFL history.

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January 26, 2014

For Champ Bailey, it’s about time

By Dave Krieger

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JERSEY CITY, N.J. — Until the Super Bowl’s official Crazy as a Loon Day — that’s Tuesday, otherwise known as Media Day — the most interesting angle not named Peyton Manning or Richard Sherman is almost certainly Champ Bailey’s first trip to the NFL’s showcase after 15 seasons of excellence.

He will no doubt be overshadowed Tuesday, when an international television station will deploy the latest comely provocation — or perhaps just bring back Ines Sainz or Marisol Gonzalez — to propose to or merely hypnotize players desperately trying to follow their coaches’ instructions and stick to the subject, which is still football, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.

As most football fans know, Bailey is one of the best cornerbacks in league history, having earned 12 Pro Bowl invitations in 15 seasons. And yet, when we took a thoroughly unscientific poll on KOA earlier this season asking for the five greatest Broncos of all time, Bailey finished tied for 23rd with two votes.

His is the curse of the thoroughly accomplished cornerback who isn’t constantly flapping his gums. In another era, the Broncos’ Louis Wright faced a similar fate. By definition, a great cornerback is virtually invisible. He’s so good that opposing quarterbacks throw at receivers being covered by other people. The great cover corner not only takes his opponent’s best receiver out of the game, he takes himself out, too.

It doesn’t help that Bailey has toiled for Denver during a relative drought. Since he arrived in a rare NFL blockbuster trade, exchanged by Washington for running back Clinton Portis in 2004, the Broncos have made the postseason just four times in 10 seasons. They never made the Super Bowl during his tenure before this year, and they advanced to the AFC Championship Game only once.

“It’s been a long road, but I’m just taking it in stride,” Bailey said Sunday evening, shortly after the Broncos arrived in New Jersey to begin preparations for Super Bowl 48. “I’m not trying to hype it up more than it should be. It’s still football. You’ve got to go out there and perform, and you’ve got to prepare just like we always do. Just trying to let everything stay its course and not trying to get over-hyped about it.”

Now 35, Bailey willingly admitted he has never before attended a Super Bowl, even as a fan.

“I didn’t see any reason to go,” he said. “I’m not going to cheer for anybody, and if I have no special interests in the game, other than being a fan watching it at home, why go? That’s the way I’ve always been.”

Bailey missed most of his 15th season with a foot injury, but returned near the end to play in the nickel defense. When cornerback Chris Harris went down with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in the divisional round of the playoffs, Bailey was drafted to return to his traditional left corner spot for the AFC Championship Game. Because of his effectiveness in the slot as a nickel back, he continued to move inside when the Broncos went to five defensive backs, with reserve Tony Carter coming in to take his place on the outside.

Bailey is likely to play the same role in the Super Bowl. While the Seattle secondary gets much more attention, the combination of Bailey and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie gives Denver an accomplished pair of cover corners. And Bailey thinks the Broncos defense is playing better lately than its mediocre season-long rankings.

“It is what it is,” he said. “They (the Seahawks) played great all year, so they’re number one in the league. Our offense did the same. I think the last few weeks we’ve become a better defense. That’s all we can focus on — what we have to do — not statistics or you going to the playoffs. We’ve just got to go forward and try to get better than what we were last week.”

Several reporters made attempts to get Bailey to comment on his more talkative counterpart — Sherman, the Seahawks cornerback who made a game-saving play at the end of the NFC Championship Game and then boasted about it, denigrating San Francisco receiver Michael Crabtree in the process. Bailey smiled but declined the bait.

“He’s a great corner, don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I think most of you guys notice that now because you hear about how much he talks. That’s the way he is. I enjoy guys with some personality. That’s him. I have no bad words to say about him. He’s a good player.”

Does Sherman’s penchant for bravado make it more noticeable when a receiver beats him on a route?

“I guarantee you he’ll say he’ll never get beat again, but we all are going to get beat at some point, as long as we strap them up,” Bailey said. “I think the nature of the position exposes you anyway, so it doesn’t matter if you’re talking or not.”

For whatever it’s worth, the respect is mutual.

“I think Champ Bailey is a fantastic person and player, and I think he’s going to be a Hall of Famer once his career’s done,” Sherman said Sunday. “He’s kind of laid out the base work to be a lock-down corner in this league. He did it for a long time and he’s still doing it. For him to get to a Super Bowl is a great accomplishment for him, especially at 15 years in the game. That’s not easy to do. I think you’ve got to tip your hat to him.”

Calm, pleasant logic has been Bailey’s hallmark ever since he came into the league as the seventh pick of the 1999 draft. He is honest, though seldom inflammatory or provocative. If he never had to do another interview, you get the feeling that would be fine by him.

“This is probably the worst part — sitting here answering these questions I’m going to have to answer all week,” he said. “But I’m going to enjoy it as much as possible and just get ready to play this big game.”

As cool as he is, Bailey’s teammates seem more concerned about winning him a championship ring than he is.

“We’ve been thinking about that the whole season,” said linebacker Wesley Woodyard. “It’s kind of like, this is one guy that everybody wants to win for. You know Champ, he’s a great person and a great teammate to be around and we definitely want to get this victory for him. This is a great moment for him.”

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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.

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