Our team was chaotic last season. It had to RELEARN an entire defensive system after Week 6! This year I think we find out just how good of a football team we have. 12-4 is not unrealistic baby!

but you can’t blame the analysts for not delving deep enough into each team…they do have 32 teams to follow and do the same work for. That’s what the local media experts are for…or should be for. Heck, that’s what MHR is for :)

Another good post with good optimistic views about reloading.

But I like it. Hey Shanahan is retooling but like my man Ted was saying, they almost made the playoffs last year. Take the Bates hire away and then where would they have been? Minus Fat Sam Adams. Maybe G Warren retained. No wild schemes that worked with other teams years before but had no place in the mile high city. I thought it was a good hire at first but he was a monkey wrench in the gears.

I’m a realist but real signs show me that the Bronco’s brain trust saw enough flaws in an AFC championship runnerup team that they needed to rebuild. I think most of the pieces are now in place. I like all their moves this offseason but we’ll see next season.

what happened, happened. they played like a team that didn’t even deserve to be 7-9. the only positive out of all this is the season is over, the draft done and we go back to dreaming of how thing will play out. the only thing good about 2007 is that it’s over.

First of all I want to say that in my opinion this is a very well thought out and well written post. It is not only food for thought, it is an entire banquet. Here are some of my thoughts:
• The Denver Broncos are indeed irrelevant to the national media. There is nothing new about this. At least they no longer call us the Denver Donkeys. I am glad we are flying under the national radar this year as I think we will surprise some teams early this year.
• I loved the comparison to Target selling books. You are exactly right on. They are going for the largest demographic. I urge all readers of MHR to look around at other teams sites. No one has the depth and breadth of articles that you will find on the MHR. I will pick on the Blue Shoe and Horsetracks as that is probably the next best site. I’m sorry but the posts and quality of responses is not as good as the MHR. THIS is the market that the national media is pursuing. We are a lot deeper.
• How far were we from making the playoffs? I understand your assertion that we were four or five plays away from making the post season. It can also be argued that we were four swings of the now departed Jason Elam’s leg from being 3-13 and picking between Oakland and KC. I think we were who our record says we were. (Do I sound like a beer commercial?)
• What were our major problems last year and how did we address them?
o Run defense. I am not so positive it was the scheme. I very much like the idea of being able to stop the run with seven players. This leaves two safeties and two corners to make give any QB chills. I will agree that there were severe personnel miscalculations. I think the Browncos took plays off! We took major steps to correct this. The largest was at linebacker. The addition of K2 and Boss and moving DJ back to the weak side turns a major team deficit into a plus. Next, we drafted one hell of a run stopper in Powell. Lastly, the addition of Dewayne Robertson makes up for a lot of those "taken off" plays by the Browncos. This was a major acquisition.
o Impotence in the red zone. I am not so sure this is ALL the fault of the O line and RB. I lay at least part of the blame on unimaginative play calling and reliance on the aforementioned Jason Elam’s leg. The return of Hamilton and Nalen plus the addition of Clady strengthens a weakness. I am extremely high on Kuper and I like this kid Erickson, the UFA out of South Dakota. Once again, we have taken a minus and turned it into a plus.
o Field position. I think that this issue was in the back of the mind of the war room when draft selections were made. From return men to blockers to tacklers we improved our lot substantially in the draft and UFAs. The kickers remain a concern.
o The last area you identified was pass protection. I did not see this as big of an area of concern as you so I will simply refer to comments on the red zone above.
But the single biggest change in this year is this issue of character. You stated “The character of our team is changing..”. I couldn’t agree more and I must state I love the direction of the change.
In summary, thank you Ted for an excellent post and I apologize for spewing all over the site.

1) Niko Koutouvides, Boss Bailey, and Dewayne Robertson were brought in to shore up the run defense. Add in some depth in the draft (Powell, Larsen) and the return of Ebenezer Ekuban, and the pledge that Bob Slowik is returning to an aggressive 8-man front, and I feel pretty good about the Broncos being league-average against the run this year, as opposed to next-to-last.

I think this is super important. The Broncos do not need a top 5 defense in order to be successful. Be middle of the road on defense in 08-09 and this team goes to the playoffs. That’s how much I think it’ll help the offense: a few more 3-and-outs per game, 1 or 2 more TO’s per game, a 4th down stand here or there. The additions you noted should get them there.

Wow I think that this is the first positive thing that I have read all off season. It really gets me pissed off to see all the negative comments that this team has been getting all year long. I definitely agree with you about the way last season went. But after that said, a #12 pick in the draft will go a long way to helping this team get back into playoff shape. Overall the draft over the last 3 years have been nothing short of spectacular. Especially this years draft.
I think that one of the major problems that the team faced last year was in the locker room. It seemed that there were a lot of players on last years roster that not only did not fit the team, but did not have a team approach to the game. Losing Smith and Wilson were not only missed on the field, but there was not a player on the roster that stepped up and said losing games in the 4th quarter was bullshit and to play with more tenacity and heart. But after Jay’s comments about Marshall (which were not a bad thing at all) and DJ and Champ saying they need to be more vocal this team will play to win and nothing else.
Also I think that one of the biggest losses last year was Ekuban. WIth so many young guys on the d-line, his leadership was missed. It also seemed that he was the rock that jarred loose a land slide of injuries that killed the team. You can’t blame it all on injuries, but about 90% of the problems showed after the core players were hurt.
Overall my opinion is that this team is way better off than what most people think and after FA and the draft all the holes were mended. The last 2 pieces to the puzzle lie in the kicking game and I think that they can get filled. There will never be another Elam in the league, but when Mason Crosby becomes available in a couple years we need to get him. Really like the punter the team signed from college FA and that leaves a kicker to last a couple to years until Crosby makes a triumphant return to Colorado. Sorry for ranting, but I really like the pieces in place and it will show this season.
GO BRONCOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is my first day posting at milehighreport and i really like what im seeing! everyone seems to know what they are talking about and i have read many good opinions! This was a great post!

Hard to comment after everyone covered most everything, but I’ll try nevertheless…

1) I think the national media unfortunately tagged our team as “dysfunctional” after the Travis Henry debacle. Add the BMarsh fiasco and Shanny’s firing of Sundy and it’s easier for them to accentuate and report on the negative.

2) i have to exception to Phatom’s (nothing personal) statement that these talking heads can’t account for all 32 team in-depth. i have work a 40-50 hour week, take evening classes, have a wife and three young kids and still manage to stay abreast on the real truth on most teams. They don’t know because they don’t ask the right people. It’s called laziness. I’ll give mcshay a pass, however, since his area of expertise is college scouting and not the nfl.

again, very enjoyable piece to read tonight!

First, I agree with this from FirstFan,

I understand your assertion that we were four or five plays away from making the post season. It can also be argued that we were four swings of the now departed Jason Elam’s leg from being 3-13 and picking between Oakland and KC. I think we were who our record says we were.

We were awful last year. Not only in terms of a losing season, but the point differentials (we were blown out far too much). I like the way Guru put it. Regarding our record, “It is what it is”.

I think the system we started with last year (run contain) was a good system, and Bates remains an excellent coach. But he was brought in to run a system we didn’t have the players for, and the ones we brought in were terrible let downs. As pointed out by others, our team then had to switch systems. On the other hand, we only switched into a very simple “base-man out ” which requires little thinking and little in the way of team work (it is a desperately simple system for desperate situations – like you might run with an expansion team until the team gels).

As for optimism moving forward, I think I’m a realist. The draft was good for what we need and will help us overall. It was NOT, however, a splashy draft that will pay off with a Super Bowl right away. It wasn’t intended to. We made a broad, long term, boring but sound draft. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t average or worse either. It was good. And good is what we needed.

The Chargers (like it or not) are the best in the division right now. They have maxed out, and with age being an issue across the board they are headed downhill this year or next. They won’t have the draft picks they need to help them. As surely as they are headed down for an indeterminant period, we are going to improve “slowly” but will be able to maintain our upward trend longer than many teams and keep our young team on top when we get there.

oakland did some dumb things. They have a young team (and one hell of a secondary). But they blew FAR too much money in a greedy bid for “excellence” in the short term. They may have a short boost this year, but the salary cap monster has already claimed a star running back from them, and this should accelerate over the next few years. oakland has one, at most two competive years (and very possibly zero) with their current moves.

KC deserves credit for a great draft (regardless of the fact that they had so many high picks. High picks can still be foolish). They are on the way up, but are starting far behind Denver. Denver already has a core in place (which KC does not).

I predict Denver has an outside shot at the playoffs this year, and an excellent shot at the playoffs the following year. After that, Denver should be a deep playoff challenger for several years if the front office continues to play their cards right.

In regard to the redzone problem, the “getting open at LOS”-Eddie Royal might also be an improvement.