Simulations like these take human bias out of the argument, but what is going on here can be explained in a very human way.

If the sim does ignore human bias, I don’t see how you can then say that the results of the sim are based upon said human bias. Perhaps the author was attempting to say that the Broncos’ results (or lack of them, in this case) is due to a strictly ordinary lineup…then tried to get too cute with the above-quoted statement.

Regardless, I have to agree with you broncobear: this is a team that is oozing potential. There are few writers out there that are beginning to understand the potential of Marshall…but not enough. I would argue that, if you looked at any position on the Denver roster right now, you would find either a star, or a young player with the potential to explode in the next couple of years.

Champ
Lynch (but based more on name recognition)
Cutler
Doom
DJ Williams
Nalen (name recognition)

He is my favorite star. He is my favorite receiver in the whole league. Maybe he isn’t as dangerous as Randy Moss or Chad Johnson (not saying he isn’t), but every time he touches the ball, he does everything in his power to do something with it. Even when he loses yards it’s exciting. He is a complete beast too, so much fun watching him shed tackle after tackle and keep going. He even makes the highlight reel blocking, lol. Bailey and Cutler are my other two favorite Broncos.

They may not have stars right now, but come Jan, they stars will be JC, Marshall, Young, plus Clady will be crushing DE’s. The defense will have Champ, DJ, K2,Boss, plus hopefull Marcus Thomas and Elvis will be opening eyes.

Unless you magically “move” the city of Denver to the East Coast or L.A., they WILL NOT garner the attention they deserve. If I put my unbiased cap on, I’d say BMarsh is our hottest commodity. He is an electrifying player who still hasn’t peaked. Cutler will be great, but will never carry favor with the press because of his personality. I, as a fan, simply don’t care about that. His personality suits our overall goal of WINNING. Champ is popular, but I think he’s fallen prey to just being a recognizable name at a position average football fans simply don’t know enough about.

I think that one thing we’re seeing is that ‘Star’ has a very different meaning when you are talking about a town like Denver. Our fans all around the country are ‘fanatical’. They care deeply about the team, and they want more than wins – they want to feel that the team has the knind of character that cares as much about winning as they do.

We’re not on the East Coast, and Cutler’s personality (good note, bcfunk!) may not be ‘star power’ but he’s an amazing young man whose sheer guts in overcoming a potentially fatal illness (still can’t belive that they didn’t run a danged blood test!) may be a key that propels him to national awareness as his win record matches his personal story. Regardless, we obviously have a lot of stars – whether others choose to perceive them as such or not.

I don’t know if we have the level of talent that our fans believe we do, but Doom – so well named! – DJ, Cutler, Young, Marshall, Schefler, Champ, Thomas, and our rookies like Clady, Royal, Torain and Hillis will be stars in Denver very, very soon, IMO. The season glitters on the horizon like the stars over the mountains!

I especially liked the projected individual statistics, where just about everybody declines from last year’s performance. You’d think the Broncos just decided to get worse in the offseason or something.

Most people on here know that I like Statistics. The point about statistical modeling taking out human bias has a flip side to it. Intelligent analysis requires an analyst to look at the subject with his eyes, to at least accompany what the numbers are saying. These guys at whatifsports did not watch film to arrive at their conclusions. They started with a general impression of the team, looked at the stats, and then projected minor decreases in productivity, based upon the bias of the impression they started with.

Like it or not, forecasting requires assumptions to be made. When you don’t really know what you’re talking about, it’s easy to project a performance that approximates that of the previous observed period. If my company achieved a 20% pre-tax profit margin last year, in the absence of other information, that may reasonably suggest that my company will repeat that performance this year. That’s great until our major customer decides to beat us up over pricing, and cuts significantly into our margin. When we hit 14%, which is good for most businesses, it’s a disappointment for us based upon initial expectations.

Systems are complicated; that’s why you call them systems. A business environment is a system with a tremendous amount of variables at play. So is a football season. Personnel and coaching changes, differences in the difficulty of schedules year-over-year, the quality of your opponents, injuries, the improvement/decline of existing players, weather conditions on a particular day in a particular place, team chemistry, game-to-game randomness, all of these things affect outcomes of individual games, which are a subset of the larger system.

That’s why it’s pretty asinine to try to forecast football results down to the exact yard that Selvin Young will rush for. Maybe my human bias is showing, I don’t know.

...if we could always predict the outcome why bother playing?

I learned a long time ago that humans are infinitely complex and wonderfully varied. The professional athlete is also a sensitive human with thoughts, feelings, fears and courage. A single wrong or right incident in the morning can color the whole day of a game and produce a difference performance.

Likewise, you have professionals (sometimes and overused term) like Champ. Day in and out, he is ready, confident and produces at an incredibly high level.

We’re going to find out a lot about the humans that make up the Broncos in the upcoming seaons. Each will make and miss on plays, practice or game in their human system. How each deals with this, protects the men around them and shows their inner make-up will dictate how our seaon goes. There aren’t any algorithms for character or courage.

Good Lord, do these guys know anything? Champ has 8 friggin’ Pro Bowls! 8! I mean, come on, as everybody knows, 2/3 of Earth is covered by water, and the other 1/3 is covered by Champ Bailey. And I guess Marshall’s 1300 yards and 100 catches aren’t good enough for star status either. Maybe it has something to do with his losing a fight to a McDonald’s wrapper, but last time I checked, there are no McDonald’s wrappers on the football field. So he should be good to go. I also like how they have every single one of Jay’s major passing stats decreasing, even though his blood sugars are back to normal, he has a much more talented corps of receivers to throw to, is looking amazing in Mini-camp, and some other fourth thing I have not thought of yet. And since when were we on the same page as the Jets!? I could go on and on! But I won’t.

I did not make the Champ thing up, read it on a YouTube comment and had to use it. So no offense if it was anyone here. (smiles sheepishly)

Last year, based just on what I saw in just the two Chargers games, it looked like the Broncos really get thrown off their game when they fall behind. When the running game was largely gone, the Chargers were throwing nickels and dimes at Cutler and our defense really got to pin their ears back and go after the QB. It will be interesting to see if Clady makes a difference in your pass blocking under stress.