Andre Hall ran with authority and purpose. He was hitting the hole hard and knocking tacklers back. That is the kind of RB you want in a system like Denver’s. Ryan Torain will be fun to watch once his elbow is healed. Is there a medicine man out there to speed the heal?

Young has one more chance on Friday and there could be a change in starters if he stinks it up.

He will use the pass to set up the run. Kinda like how Indy does it. The more the preseason goes on the more I think the Broncos are missing my early pick for darkhorse. Torain. I hope he can come back before week 5 or 6 this year

omg, somebody finally agrees with me on this! we WILL be passing more this season, it is our strength. new tackles, guys coming back from injury, henry and torain basically done, the list goes on. the running game will have to catch up to the passing game this year(midseason), and when it does, we will be unstoppable. if young or hall go down(i’ll say it again), bring on air cutler! this is a very possible scenario. in fact, i think we still need a big back other than pittman. torain, fresh in the second half of the season, may just be the ticket.
 i think we resemble the colts more than the eagles, though, on both sides of the ball. a ton of speed, propeller-armed qb, not a great run d, a little light,… i know we do what we do, and that is we are a running team. but i think we need to back off the d with our passing game. i just don’t see our rush attack pounding away at anyone, at least in the early going. play-action just isn’t effective when you are not putting up yards on the ground. when we have the running game in order(at a level we are used to) , shanny is going to be able to do what he wants. this may signal the return of the mastermind. not a long way to go, but i expect to see defenses stacking the box this season, until we improve. then, it’s not going to matter what they decide to do

I’m not going to sit here and defend Selvin from criticism, but it seems to me that we’re overreacting. For me, RB play needs to be evaluated over an entire game. He had a couple of good runs in the game this weekend (9 carries /36 yds/ 9 yd long run) and hasn’t—to my knowledge—been criticized by Shanny. Our O-line didn’t create holes for him in the first game, improved in the 2nd and hopefully will improve this weekend. I think we should reserve calling for Selvin’s job until we see him carry the ball for an entire half. RBs need carries…

All that to say I think Shanny will go with whoever has the hot hand until a back steps up (with their play) and shows himself too important to share carries.

with the ability of many of our RBs to catch the ball and their open field skills (young, alridge) and speed, we should attempt to run a lot more screens this year. If the o-line has not been practicing this yet, they should now. even sapp, pittman, and hillis are all capable receivers. Assume that our offense is much more pass oriented. I think that Shanahan dumbed down the offense before, and did place decisions in cutler’s hands, especially in the red zone. If we become much more pass driven, and defenses begin fearing cutler, they will bring more blitzes and pass rushes than previously when we were known for our rushing attack. In that case, the screen could work to keep defenses’ pass rush in check. This would use our personnel to their strengths and would have the potential to create many big plays

Zappa, I agree with you. We are now a team trying to set up our RUNNING game by being an explosive PASSING team. Obviously we have a n awesome WR corps and probably one of the Top 5 TE sets as well. But I think the reason we are doing this is NOT because we are weak at RB, it is because we have so many options out of the backfield.
Check who we have there: Selvin Young, Anthony Alridge, Michael Pittman, Cecil Sapp, Peyton Hillis, Andre Hall. All these guys have SO many more stringsd to their bow than a guy like Travis Henry (and God forgive me for saying this) but than TD and Portis too (I am not saying they are better, but the game has changed in the last few years and RB’s cant be pure runners only).
Selvin Young played pretty well against Dallas…average of 4 yards and constantly found yards. Andre Hall reminded me of TD with how powerful he was between the tackles…like a run away bowling ball. I like the options we have, and like the two some of Young and Hall. I am also excited to see Ryan Torain come back….he is very good out of the backfield too.
Lay off Selvin Young too guys. I think he is doing great, and their is too much expectation out there at the moment. The running game is the hardest thing to get on track for a new O Line, and there were definite improvements between Dallas and Houston. Remember also, that NONE of these RB’s have run behind Hamilton, Clady and Harris and not much behind Nalen as well. it will take time.
Werd crew!

…based on a preseason game or two that we are doing this. On the other hand, I think Jay is proving that he can be let loose more, and we are likely to see less game management. This will give the appearance of a more pass oriented game (and more fun to watch), but I think the run is still the clock killer that Shanahan wants.

However, we may look more “Elwayesque” with Cutler being allowed to do more, and that’s exciting enough!

that our offense may look more like that of Brady’s Patriots’ than anyone else’s. They’re another team that has traditionally used the pass to set up the run and used screens effectively to blunt the pass rush. I don’t want to totally dive overboard into La La Land, but if Cutler can find the command to be Bradyesque in this third year, we could have the tools to be a pretty scary good offense.
And i do like the idea of a fresh and hungry Torain joining the ranks mid-season. I hope they can find a way to keep that option open when it comes time to finalize the roster!!

The thing I remember about the Super Bowl teams was that we were good enough on either phase that if a team stacked up for the run then we would pass and if they played the pass then we would run, basically we told the defense to pick their poison. I think that is what Shannan wants, and I think we are real close to having that, provided we can be effective in the red zone, that has been the real problem the past three years.

The NFL as a whole has become more pass happy, Shanahan is merely keeping up with the ongoing changes.

However, some of the emphasis on passing pertains to the Bronco’s current personnel. We currently lack the power back to make a ball control running game go, although Torain would appear to fit the bill. Young was deficient at breaking tackles last year but he’s added some weight and could improve in that department. I’ve yet to see that improvement, though. Hall is better in this area, and that’s why I’m advocating using him much more than they have, perhaps as a co-starter. And, of course, this isn’t Alridge’s forte. We’ll have to see how the FBs do in this area, but I doubt we’ll see a lot of running yards from any of them.

Another reason for the seemingly growing preponderance of passing is the number of quality receivers at RB. This is more than just a reflection of personnel, Shanny’s been talking about throwing to the backs for a long time. Developing the short passing game should help the possession and red zone offense. The ‘X & 0s’ people can help with this, but I believe having backs stay in the backfield helps by allowing them to block, which helps combat the various zone blitz schemes, etc., that are in vogue, and it also allows them to trickle out into the flats for a pass. Having a back as a target also allows a safety valve when there are a number of blitzers. It also allows the offense to stretch the field horizontally.

I don’t see us abandoning the run in any sense, it’s more a question of setting up one with the other. It’s also a question of taking what the opposing defense gives us, which will change from week to week. The worst thing we could do is become one-dimensional and allow the defense to completely dictate our offensive options. There will be plenty of running plays this year, although I expect the percentage of passing plays will increase somewhat. I don’t know what the percentages were in years past but I expect that it actually will be fairly close to a 50/50 split.

On a hunch I decided to look at the statistics on the official Broncos site for the first two games. It looks like there’s been 58 running plays and 62 passing plays. It might be more accurate to say that — based on the first two games — the offense is more balanced than in the past, although the perception that we’re throwing more would still be correct if we ran more in the past.

and how much more improved the team looks i don’t see why this team can’t win between 11-13 games

The numbers on the Broncos site are a little confusing since the total of plays doesn’t match the combined rushing & passing plays, but here it is:

They list: 976 offensive plays.

They show: 429 rushes.
They show 515 passes.

If we ignore the total listed we get 944, with Rushing @ 44.45% & Passing @ 54.56%.

It seems that we were a passing team last year, too, although I still see them as attempting to balance the offense fairly evenly — when possible.

…once again another comment from me having nothing to do with the subject at hand.

However, if any of you guys are watching the Giants game right now…Hixon has 3 TDs and it’s still the 1st quarter.

Not too shabby!

Hillis was a running back before McFadden in college, maybe he could help carry the load a bit in power running situations once he gets that hammy right? Not saying he will, just throwing it out there for thought.

and is another very fine young receiver out of the backfield. MMan, we hav ea lot of great young weapons – this is a team being put together to last a long time at the top. If Torain turns out to be who Shanahan thinks he is, watch out.

During OTCs i recall an interview with Shanny in which he commented that Cutler and young J Bates had come to him and discussed cerain changes to the passing game. Based on their presentation (It may not have been that formal; I’m just ‘passing’ on the jist of it) he agreed to try out their approaches. so far, I’m very impressed with the results and I just suspect the Mike S is pretty happy too.

As HT has pointed out, the West Coast offense (this was in an interview with Bill Walsh) generally has a tendency to pass in order to get ahead in the game score and then run to manage the clock. Obviously, it’s not black and white – you do what they give you, and you also do whatever you can to attack their preconceptions.

I love Colinski’s info, but have one codicile – I’m a Mark Twain fan, and he once pointed out that there are lies, damned lies, and stats. The balance of run versus pass may be substancially different in different quarters (or in different scoring differentials). I thought that we dominated with the passing game in the first half – could be wrong, though, sure.

I’m starting to believe it’s going to be mainly Hall and Torain by the end of the season. Aldrige could be a heck of a scatback to change to pace and challenge the Ds.