Building a team the Bronco way

Hey everyone.  This is my very first post.  I’ve been a huge fan of MHR for about a year now, but I’ve never tried my hand at a fan post for the simple reason that I never had an original angle to write on.  The posts hear are, in general, so well thought out and informed that it’s hard to find something compelling to write about; if I find something unique or interesting, chances are it’s already been stated.  Yet I want to add my two cents in anyway.  Hope you enjoy it.

We all know this had been one of the rougher off-seasons in recent memory—we lost every semblance of stability in what seemed to be the blink of an eye.  Whoop.  There goes the coach, the coach’s staff, the GM, nearly all of the defense, the “franchise” QB, and now it looks like the star wide-receiver wants to blog his way out of town.  It’s a lot of adversity for a franchise that seemed to consider itself one key piece away from the super-bowl every year.  And with that adversity, a strange thing happened:  everyone turned on the Denver Broncos.  The MSM gives us no chance.  The fans by and large seem disenfranchised, confused.  The Broncos we have now do not resemble any Broncos team we have ever seen.  Everything has been shook up.  You can see it on the DP’s fan postings, people ranting and raving about how their team has been destroyed, how McDaniels was sent here covertly to bring us and all we stand for down.  You can see it in the MSM.  No one seems to have faith in the Broncos’ decisions.  McDaniels and Xanders aren’t making moves that people simply don’t “get.”  They’re making moves that people absolutely hate.  They, in almost every imaginable way, have gone against the grain of common wisdom, and because of this, they have been vilified.  This is not a bad thing.  If they continue making moves that, on the surface, people don’t understand, then it can only mean one of two things:  Either McD and X-man don’t know what they’re doing, or they know something that everyone else doesn’t.  I suggest the latter.  It’s okay to be counterintuitive, especially when most commonly held intuitions are wrong.

In the past few years I’ve developed a fascination with the building of a team, with how a GM can shape a team’s success.  It appears to be both laughably simple (find the best players) and infinitely complex (what does “best players” even mean?).  It is an art and a science, a stimulator of the left brain and the right brain.  And it’s a role that has evolved and morphed more than any other position in professional sports today.

One of the ways I weathered the offseason was to research other teams and sports and find out what makes a team tick.  The one book that helped to shed light the most was Michael Lewis’ Moneyball about GM Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s of the early 2000’s.  Now regardless of what you think about the team and the man, Beane and his ilk brought on a revolutionary way of building a baseball team.  He tore down antiquated conventions and replaced them with a new way of thinking—a statistical revolution, a new way to judge a player and a team based on numbers and math, on what the eye can’t see.  In basketball, a similar movement is happening with Houston’s GM Daryl Morey, another GM who uses a wealth of stats to build a team and who has had reasonable success.  The main point of Moneyball is that there is more of what happens on a field than meets the eye.  The market is full of inefficiencies and if the GM can figure out a way to exploit those inefficiencies then they have a great chance for success.  The more I follow McD and X-man, the more I believe they follow the Moneyball maxim, and trying to exploit all the “givens” of how a football team is “supposed” to be built.  And when you push against the norm, you will gain enemies.  But it is better to have the ignorant hate you for what they don’t understand, then to have them praise your decisions.

These are what I believe to be the inefficiencies:

Inefficiency # 1—The Inadequacy of Current Metrics

We all know the dangers of stats.  They can be twisted, misrepresented, used in a myriad of different ways all to prove whatever it is you want to prove.  The most common example bandied about on MHR is that of offensive yards.  When people say the Broncos had the #2 offense, they really mean that we gained the second most yards.  Yet as has been proven time and time again, that information is not the proper way to represent the Broncos.  To be #2 implies that we were a good offensive team, but we were really quite average in the stat that matters more:  Scoring average in which we were an unimpressive 16th. We worked really hard to score very few points.  So that’s a simple example of how stats are misleading.  But let’s go deeper.

Look at Brandon Marshall.  There are many pundits and fans who think we are crazy to hesitate to pay the man big money.  After all, outside issues notwithstanding, Marshall has been one the most productive receivers in recent years, right?  104 catches in 2008 alone.  By that number, Marshall seems to be pretty dominating.  A top 5 receiver.  Yet here’s where stats fail us.  He was the #1 targeted WR in the league last year (181 times); that’s measurable information.  And he only scored 6 td’s despite all those catches.  So the real question is, were those 104 catches helpful to the team or counterproductive?  How many times was he given the ball in lieu of a more open receiver, someone who could have potentially gained more yards or more points?  Think of the first Kansas City game, where Jay stared down BM so egregiously, that he missed a wealth open targets.  Sheffler was revealed to be wide open on two of the INT’s Jay threw in BM’s direction.  BM was targeted at the expense of better options.  And who knows how much that affected the game, how many points might have been left on the board?  Cutler and BM could play catch all day, rack up some nice stats, but it’s very possible the numbers came at the cost of better options left on the field.  Was the constant targeting of BM a detriment to the team’s overall efficiency and if so, how do we properly measure BM’s worth to the Broncos?  Because 104 is the number that keeps coming back up, but what does it mean when only 6 of those 104 were actually for points.  I would venture to say that his presence made our team less efficient.  Yet we currently have no way of measuring such an effect.  BM racked up many of those catches in situations where the ball never should have been thrown his way but no one talks about this.

            Stats don’t tell the whole story.  It’s why Kyle Orton might be more valuable than Jay Cutler, because every time KO hurts his YPC average to throw it to a checkdown is a time that the ball isn’t turned over.  All those stats that make Jay Cutler seem so pretty and KO so ugly are misleading for the simple fact that sometimes the right decision in a football game is the one that doesn’t show up on the stat sheet, which brings me to my next point…

 Inefficiency # 2—The Myth of the Superstar

 Jay Cutler is something of a superstar.  Kyle Orton is not.  Jay Cutler looks like a quarterback. Kyle Orton does not.  So McD and X-man are fools to want KO and not Cutler.  Or at least this seems to be the main argument that continues to be bandied about by the MSM and especially on certain Bronco fan posts.  The logic goes that good teams load up on superstars of the highest order and win.  That’s a complete fallacy. Tom Brady, the winner of our time, was not supposed to be a superstar.  He was drafted in the 6 round which means scouts and teams had serious reservations about his ability to produce at an NFL level.  Yes, he is a leader of the highest order, one who makes the right decisions, the right throws, and can produce incredible results in the clutch.  Yet his very career came to fruition in what seemed to be the most perfect of circumstances.  He happened to be the right player for the right coach at the right time.  QB’s drafted in the first round are supposed to be stars. If you’re drafted in the first round, the assumption is that you have what it takes.  Brady was not supposed to be a star.  Matt Cassel was not supposed to be a star.  KO is not supposed to be a star.  That’s a good thing.

I am one of those convinced that McD watched Cutler live and on tape and was not impressed.  And it’s not the arrogance that many paint it to be, the belief that McD has the ability to turn any schmuck into a viable QB.  It’s something different.  Brady, Cassel and KO all have something that Cutler doesn’t:  awareness of their limitations.  KO can throw the ball—all you need to do is watch his TD throw at the end of the bears-falcons game last year to believe it—but watch how he chooses to throw it.  Look at some of his incompletions.  His missed throws aren’t always due to his arm strength or his inaccuracy.  Some are incomplete by choice, they’re throws that he put in areas that only the WR could conceivably get it, nowhere near the defenders.  They are calculated risks.  And sometimes that means the ball falls in the middle of the field near no one in particular.  But I would rather have that then watch balls be rifled into confused defenders’ chests all game.  KO won’t be flashy but he will be smart.

This extends to the rest of the team as well.  Think about the defensive veterans brought it.  They are all selfless, intelligent, versatile players.  The only athletic freak is B-Dawk, but he’s aging.  Think about how many times our defenders missed tackles last year because they were out of position.  A smart player who’s in the right place will always have the chance at the tackle.  And the more smart players in position, the more chances at the tackle.  Once again, it’s not flashy, but it is efficient.  McD views players in a way that is different than we are used to.  This is evidenced by my final point

 Inefficiency # 3—The Views of the Draft and Drafting for Need

 This years draft is a prime example of McD and X-man approaching a league tradition by going against the status quo—and getting blasted for it.  They barely addressed our problem areas!  We need a DT and we didn’t get one, are they mad?!?  No, what they did is something quietly revolutionary, especially with all the Shanahan drafts we’ve seen for this squad.  They drafted for value, not for need.  Building a team is a long process, and the one way to do it wrong (hello lions) is to reach for a need, to try and take a short cut, grasp at straws for the hope of more wins.  You want to maximize value and minimize risk.  McD said it himself, they don’t want to draft players just to cut them.  All the players drafted carry a very specific skill set, and they all have thos qualities McD loves, selflessness, intelligence, versatility.  Not superstars or freaks, but football players.  Even Kowshon, who is athletically freakiest of the bunch, was picked because of the little things he does, the blocking, the fighting for yards, all that stuff that once again, doesn’t show up on a stat sheet.  We have a draft where we can expect to see almost all of those picked to still be with us years from now.  They will all play within themselves and make decisions that help us win games.  Will it pay dividends immediately?  Maybe not.  But Bowlen is a smart man, and I think he knows just how mire in mediocrity the Broncos really were.  McD is not under pressure to win now as many would suggest.  Time is on his side, despite what everyone thinks.

            Many of the writers at MHR have said this already, but I want to reiterate it.  McD and X-man have a plan.  Look at how they’ve approached every step of the team building process and you can see it.  It’s an unfamiliar way of building a team, like nothing we’ve ever seen before with the Broncos.  But if they succeed, it will be because they consciously broke from traditions.  They decided to go against the accepted “rules” of How to Build a Football Team and instead are finding their own way.  Keep the faith friends.

Well that’s my post.  Sorry for the length, but I hope you all enjoyed it.  Go Broncos.