NPLB Scoring Report: Game 13

Welcome back to the weekly NPLB postgame drive analysis.  It would seem that with 41 points scored there would not be much to say about the performance.  Some would advocate pats on the back all around, and lets get ready for next week.  Here at the NPLB we firmly believe that it is precisely situations like these which allow us to discover even more about our team, and thus the analysis will continue on.  We even have a few criticisms.  But we will get to those eventually.

First a recap of the drives.  The Broncos had 13 drives, 7 scoring, 6 non-scoring.  At first glance, this may seem like marked improvement.  But look again.  We had 13 drives against the Faders as well.  Only 4 were scoring drives, and they produced 20 total points.  Almost double the drives in the next game, and doubled points as well.  We here at NPLB aren't necessarily seeking more scoring drives, not in essence at any rate.  More scoring drives is nice, but we believe that those will come as a matter course.  We are primarily concerned with the effectiveness of the scoring drives that we do have, and we believe that addressing this is at the heart of improving our offensive play.  Look at the drive stats again.  4 drives netting 20 points.  7 drives netting 41 points.  They are essentially the same, scoring 5-5 1/2 points per drive.  We weren't more effective, we just had more opportunities.  Obviously evaluation is required still, if we are to become DEADLY on offense.

The non-scoring drives were as follows:

3rd     Punt  
4th     Punt
10th    Punt
11th    Punt
12th    Punt
13th    End of Game

The NPLB takes absolutely no issue with the final four drives, as the game was well in hand for those drives, and the primary goal had gone from scoring to draining the clock.  The two 3-and-outs in the first quarter netted a total of 12 yards between the two of them.  One is credited to KC defense for a sack with a loss of 6, and the other is credited to the Denver playcalling for running Selvin Young in a short yardage 3rd down for no gain.  They are not however to be penalized for this call, as no fault is found for attempting at that point to see how critical Henry was to the short yardage game.  None of the above non-scoring drives are found to reflect poorly on the Denver offense.

Turning now to the 7 scoring drives:

1st     TD
2nd     TD
5th     TD
6th     FG
7th     FG
8th     TD
9th     TD

A lot of TDs is good to see, and as you can already tell, our criticisms will not seem major.  First a look at the TD drives.  After kick starting the day with a 50 yd Selvin Young run, the first three TD drives were beauties, mixing pass and playaction with Young between the twenties and Henry in the redzone.  The playcalling was immaculate.  After setting KC up wide with huge gains to Marshall and a TD to Stokely, they finished up by driving down passing to the TEs in the seam.  Admittedly the early success made the playbook seem huge, but they should recieve Kudos for yanking the KC defense around by the jockstrap for a full half, dictating when and where, and making KC look foolish.  The Stokely TD on the first drive, where he basically was gimping by the KC defender is a fantastic summary of the half as a whole.  

In a moment we will review the final drive of the first half, but first we will quickly note that the final two scoring drives, both resulting in TDs in the 3rd quarter are evaluated uniquely by the NPLB.  Obviously we have no problem with the two TDs.  But we should point out that since both drives started in KC territory,  only TDs would have been acceptable at that point of the game.  FGs would have been failures, considering that the Denver offense had the KC defense broken and right where they wanted them, and anything less than utter domination to put the game away would have not been acceptable.  I have it from top NPLB brass that this would have been their official position had not the Broncos taken care of business on those drives.

Finally we direct our attention to the two FG drives.  

6th Drive:  It is noted that the first of the two, the 1:11 drive that culminated in a FG with 1 sec was really a spectacular drive that capitalized on everything Denver had been doing right up to that point.  Young started things off with a 30yd gain, effectively putting Denver into a scoring mode.  Both Marshall and Scheffler caught passes, and fought for extra yards.  The NPLB, however, does have a small issue with this drive, and we believe that had the issue been corrected, we would have been one step closer to consistent domination.  The problem is that while the drive consisted of great elements that had been working all day, it should have consisted of something a little different.  To wit, with 50 seconds left to play, players caught balls and failed to get out of bounds, instead fighting for YAC.  The argument about only giving up the middle of the field does not apply here, as both times the players caught the ball at the sidelines.  Both were young players, Scheffler and Marshall, and both successfully picked up a few additional yards, but the NPLB firmly holds that a player who was properly focused would have stepped out of bounds, on one or both plays, gaining 1-3 more total plays on offense, as both plays together cost Denver almost 40 seconds of clock.  Those three plays from about the KC 19 would have been a tremendous opportunity for a TD.  Credit where credit is due, and it was a great drive, but...
4 POINTS LEFT BEHIND

7th Drive:  This drive did not have nearly the beauty of the first three.  After a KC 3-and-out to start the half, Denver began this drive at their own 34, poised to put the game out of reach.  Offensive holding, this time on Daniel Graham, negated what was essentially the game plan for that particualr drive, calling back a great 1st down run by Selvin Young.  After that call, Young did not get another look until it was too late.  Denver only managed to drive 45 yards (after the penalty was added), and were aided once by a penalty on KC which gave them an additional first down to work with.  In the end the choice to run Young twice in the redzone followed by an incompletion on a drive that stuttered continuously and failed to gain momentum, resulted in a chip shot for Elam from inside the redzone.  This is never acceptable by the NPLBs standards, though in this instance fault is hard to place.  In this case we have decided to place it with Daniel Graham for commiting the first and only offensive penalty in the game for the Broncos, this coming after halftime, after adjustments, and at a critical juncture.  Just as the drive gained momentum on a long run, it lost it just as soon on a stupid penalty.
4 POINTS LEFT BEHIND

A case could be made, and rightly so, that "You can't win them all," and that perfection isn't attainable.  Maybe so.  The NPLB doesn't care about that though.  We expect perfection, and we look forward to domination, thus the fact that we can find fault with a 41 to 7 drubbing of the rival Chiefs.  8 points left behind would have put us close to 50 points, a powerhouse offense by any standard in any era.  And against a team like the chiefs, that is exactly where we should be.

Official Ruling
Credit for this game goes to Selvin Young and the Broncos playcallers, with a hearty nod to Cutler's mistake free, 4TD performance.  It is noted that on every drive where the Broncos scored a TD, they relied on Selvin Young for a spark.  When they failed to get him involved, or lost the benefit of his efforts due to a penalty, they fell short of domination.  He is recognized as the key to this weeks game, while the Broncos playcallers, even after they spent the week pulling double duty for the Texans on Thursday, called a brilliant first half that effectively oiled up and put into high gear all the componenets of the Broncos offense.  Kudos to both!!  O-line play (including Graham) will continue to get a look-see, but improvement from last week was notable, as Cutler was breathed on once, by Tamba Hali, and left alone for the rest of the day.  As always, this young team and its veterans need to continue to gain experience together, and hopefully that will address the issue of focus in the future.  They could have, perhaps should have put up 50 on the Chiefs.  That they didn't says they are still a step away from utter domination.  This game proves we have the tools to be an elite offense.  But do we have the Will?