Rarely agree with Clayton but he is spot on here. When we male the play offs we might do some damage. We just got to get there!

Kyle Orton: 13games, 63% Completion, 2900 yards, 16 TD’s to 8 Int’s, 89% QB Rating.
While he’s not Payton (Manning, not Hillis, haha), I continue to feel very comfortable each week with Kyle as our starting QB beyond this year. Would it be blasphemous to say that we got the better end of the trade even if it was ‘straight up?’ Just sayin…

That was a bad football game yesterday. Sloppy from both teams, several quarters of flat football by each side, poor officiating and poor coaching. Other than for some individual excellence from guys like Marshall, Dallas Clark, McBath, the Colts LBs and Orton, most guys did not play their best ball.

Brandon Marshall is going to be a very rich man this offseason. I don’t think Denver will be able to franchise him because a mid to late 1st and 3rd round pick would be an acceptable price to pay for a Top 5 WR. I think several teams would try to sign him as a franchise tagged player. Eddie Royal’s play has fallen off a high cliff so retaining Marshall will be priority #1 for our offense. Hello payday.

Orton is also going to be pretty expensive. More so than Cassel because Kyle is simply a much better QB. Good problems to have, but bad for Bowlen’s wallet. I must re-iterate that we won’t be big FA players this offseason. It will be all out giving expensive and deserved new deals to our best players.

McBath looks great. The Dallas Cowboy’s had the pick after us in round 2 and when we took McBath, Dallas immediately traded down. Dallas had safety as a top draft priority and being that they probably got a lot of looks at McBath in college (he went to Texas Tech); the Cowboys may have been targeting Darcel. Good drafting there McDaniels. It helps make up for your whiff on Alphonso Smith.

DJ Williams was a monster yesterday. He looked like he was trying to hurt a few of the Colts. I loved it.

Darrell Reid is starting to sound like a broken record when it comes to his boneheaded plays. I’m so glad Reid admitted he did something stupid yet again. Now try not doing something stupid for a change Darrell. We’re done with your excuses pal.

I rather enjoy McDaniel’s sideline hissy fits, but he should yell at himself in a mirror after the game yesterday. McDaniels was the worst Bronco on Sunday – a play calling debacle. Dude, your short yardage running game is broken, has been all season (even against the mediocre D’s like Dallas and Oakland). Please, for the love of God, stop running between the tackles on 3rd or 4th and short. It’s not happening, it hasn’t been happening all year. We suck at it. We don’t have the O-line or RB for it. Stop being an arrogant idiot and give your team a chance. I said last week that Kizsla was a fool for claiming McDaniels was the Coach of the year over the Cadwell or Payton. Kizsla looks pretty stupid today, which is usual for him. McDaniels has done well in his rookie season and his coaching future is bright, but if he gets even one vote for Coach of the year, that voter needs to have his voting privileges revoked.

For all of you that said Orakpo was going to be an NFL bust, he got his 11th sack of the season yesterday. That guy is going to be an NFL star.

The play calling looks the same. I think he is playing it really close to the vest for the post season…?

I think we have a real shot to go deep in the postseason, but we do need to throw it in short yardage situations.

Personally, I have no problem with deferring. If Belichick or Payton or Dungy or Shanahan or Gruden or Holmgren do it, nobody bats an eye, even if it’s against Peyton Manning. McDaniels can do it too. You either get the ball now or later. What difference does it make?

All in all, I came away encouraged. If DJ Williams isn’t a Pro Bowler this year, it will be a shame. The guy is all over the place every week.

I was scratching my head a good bit yesterday, too. But I’ll be far more persuaded by complaints about play calling when I start to hear the choir complain about terrible play calls bailed out by awesome execution. You know: “How dare he call a run there! Fortunately, Clady pancaked his man, got into the second level, and sprung Buck for 35. He should have called a short slant instead.”

After doing pretty well this season with regards to not getting too emotionally attached to the outcomes of the games, I fell off the wagon yesterday. I absolutely loathe losing to the Colts, and I’m sure much of that has to do with their perennial domination of the Broncos.

So it was very cool to see Brandon do such a nice thing for that fan on her birthday. Great reinforcement of what is good in the midst of a disappointing defeat. Kudos to the Colts fan as well. Judging by the interaction with a few of them on MHR last week, and this guys good deed yesterday, I can say that they are right up their as classy fans.

As for the game, in retrospect, I’m going to choose to focus on the great job the defense did against Manning and Co. Woodyard got taken to school by Clark, but for those guys to frustrate Manning like they did after the first quarter is a sign of good things to come on that side of the ball. Too bad the offense, outside of Marshall, couldn’t take advantage.

I’m supremely confident that McDs playcalling, the defenses early game play, and the offenses issues on short yardage/goal line will all be vastly improved by this time next season. Consequently, I expect to see fewer games like yesterday where one phase seems to fall apart while another is playing out of their minds.

Oh, and thanks as always for getting this together, Doug. Much appreciated.

Thanks Doug. It’s much more pleasant to be reading this than vomiting over political news.

I know he went down in the 4th quarter, but did he return? I read about him having his arm in a sling….sure hope its not too serious because this kid is for real and we sure need him.

All I could think after the game was, “they are who we thought they were, and we let ’em off the hook”. One could certainly question the play calling and the decision to defer on the coin toss, but I feel the most important factors in the loss were short yardage and the screen game.

Short yardage has been a problem all year, and I don’t care who is running the ball, if the back is getting hit right after he gets the ball, it’s not going to work. The bottom line is, teams regularly blow up the center of our line. It’s gotten a little better once Hamilton was replaced, but the interior line was absolutely terrible yesterday in those situations. Sure, you could say that we should run outside or throw more in short yardage, but those plays are low percentage. In order to be a successful short yardage team, you need to be able to line up and run the ball up the middle consistently. This personnel grouping cannot, and I do not see an answer this year.

Indy did a great job of defending the screen yesterday. The ten or so screen plays McDanials calls each week are absolutely essential to the success of the offense. They often result in huge chunks of yards and are the type of plays that dig the team out of down and distance difficulties or provide the big play spark that a successful drive needs. If you have to drive down the entire field in four and five yard chunks, odds are the drives will sputter out at some point. Indy’s D wasn’t going to give up big passing plays, so the offense needed a few big runs or successful screens to sustain drives (especially in the first half). Indy’s keen awareness of the importance of our screen game and their ability to take it away was a huge factor. Kudos to them.

In order to be a successful short yardage team, you need to be able to line up and run the ball up the middle consistently. This personnel grouping cannot…

but we did anyways…cutting off our nose to spite our face. and that explains the issues people had with the playcalling to a T.

it never cease to amaze me the ignorant of those who make up things just so they can hate a particular player (in this case it’s Orton). Hey Fried, go back and watch the games that Orton play with the Bears last year before his injury. In the game against the Vikings, Orton had 7 long passes over 20 yards and he thrown them with such accuracy that the announcer Tim Ryan was raving about Orton having a laser cannon for an arm. Orton was 3/7 with the long passes in that game but should have been 6/7 because Marty Booker dropped 4 of those passes when they hit him in HIS HANDS.

Tim Ryan also rave about the ability of Oton to throw a “feathery touch” pass that drop right on top of his receivers like a sinker and they shows footage of Orton throwing this kind of passes during the 2008 game against Tampa Bay.

Stop making up things about a player that you hate and learn to at least spell his name properly.

Any update on Larsen? I think his absence in the run game is huge, especially short yardage. Did I miss something as I didn’t think he came back in the game at all. Thanks.

Unfortunately, I had to miss the second half of yesterday’s game, and despite the loss, it looks like one I really shouldn’t have missed.

As some of us look to the future, McGeorge has rightly pointed to some factors, particularly new contracts for Doom and BMarsh, that will make the Broncos lesser spenders in the future.

I was curious about where some of the dead money may be coming from, so I looked it up.

2009 Cap Figures:

Dre Bly — $4.55MM
Tom Nalen — $4.11MM
Ben Hamilton — $3.81MM
Patrick Ramsey (yes, you’re reading this right) — $3.77MM
John Lynch — $2.5MM
Montrae Holland — $2.5MM
Travis Henry — $2.3MM

That’s at least $20 million in dead cap money that will be coming off the books shortly. There’s an additional $10 million-plus on the way from Keary Colbert, Niko Koutovides, John Elgelberger and many, many others. And if you look ahead to 2011, Champ’s $12 million figure will be coming off the books.

I’m sure we’ll see escalations in the cap figures for DJ and a lot of rookie contracts take the place of some of this. But that’s a massive amount of dead money that will be coming off the books.

I am sure I am the 500th person to mention this, but while I understand McD’s reasoning for the decision, sometimes you can be a slave to statistics and percentages.

As was mentioned, when you’re facing a team like Indy, get the ball first, get down the field and score.

Because I am not sure about the exact odds of Peyton Manning scoring on HIS first posession, but I have to guess they’re pretty high.