I am in no way over optimistic, this is one Eskimo you can not sell a fridge. I think we are moving towards continuous competition with the top teams which is what every Bronco fan truly desires. We want to be a factor year in and year out when it gets to championship week. McDaniels is taking us in that direction.

I agree with Calijoefornia, Pitt’s offensive line play wasn’t very good last season.

they are average in the league. their D Line how ever was very good at collapsing the pocket!

….Calijoefornia meant to say Pittsburgh’s defensive line.

however with Hillis helping in the load and guys like Jordan and Buckhalter there as teachers, it stands to reason that Knowshon could do very well

that and McD’s game planning.

btw, Jon, rec’d for an excellent look.

I think you’re more blue and orange than you realize. :D

Then I have to ask you a queston, Jerry. If you were an agent,, why in the wide wide world of sports would you not want Knowshon as your client? If you wonder about how “unspecial” Moreno may have been last year, in addition to the “unspecialness” of Stafford & Mossoquai, then you would have to consider the injury depleted & underperforming UG Bulldog Oline. These are the kind of perceptions thsat undermine the value of a pick of a guy like KM. You have to see past the stats & production, which, by the way, were clearly there, to how the pick projects into the drafting teams scheme. Knowshon is the perfect fit. He was a value pick in that he was indeed the premier offensive skill position pick in this draft. If the odds against KM developing exist, they are all all in your mind. This is my OROY! Show him the Money!

Like you, I don’t watch a whole lot of college football (Saturdays are usually the day I get stuff done so I can watch NFL on Sunday!) That said, after watching every highlight video of Moreno I could get my hands on (and checking his combine results), here was the impression I was left with:

Moreno disappointed with a sub-par 40 time…but posted the second best 3-cone drill time, implying great acceleration and lateral agility. Watching the highlights, his moves are subtle but highly effective; he doesn’t lose speed in making adjustments, and more often than not finds the hole in the defense. He fights for yards, he falls forward, he has a nose for the goal line. He does everything that you hope a back can do…plus, he is a solid pass blocker and a very good receiver out of the back field.

(Give me a second…I’m having my recurring daydream of Hillis and Moreno in the backfield…then watching them both split out as Denver goes from a two-back set to five-wide without changing the personnel on the field…mmmm…)

Where was I again? :)

Anyway, I can’t say for certain that he’ll be elite…because I’m not a scout, I don’t watch quite enough video, etc. But what I’ve seen, I like. It also helped to hear that Robert Ayers was pretty happy to NOT have to play against Moreno in real games.

AJF, I think you are spot on about Ringer. I think the same thing watching ‘em all play. I also agree completely with the assessment on UGA. Especially because I have always thought that Coach Richt was a great coach…..something doesn’t add up. In the end, if he is just as athletic as Buckhalter (meaning avg) and has some other intangibles, I am counting on him to do well. Doesn’t need to be a star to help…..maybe like Maroney. His health is probably the bigger factor. I think Tenn was lucky to get Ringer so late, but I think we show some insight considering that the Tenn RB selected last year was a beast.

Moreno has ordinary measurables, but he gets almost unanimous and lofty praise for his instincts and vision. In fact, every scouting report I read on him described him as ‘rare’ in this regard, and the best to come along in some time.

I would disagree about your assessment of his quickness, though. He is very quick, he just doesn’t have mind blowing top end speed.

The question is always can he ‘see’ the Pro Game as clearly as he saw it high school and college. We’ll just have to see.

I will go out on a limb and say this: I think Shannahan would have picked him at 12 (although the unexpected availability of Orakpo might have made it more difficult). His quickness, vision and determination make him an ideal one cut and go back, and I have a hard time seeing Shannahan passing on him. For those that say Shannahan NEVER drafted backs early, remember that Lawerence Maroney would have been a Bronco had the Cardinals drafted Cutler at 10. Shannahan said himself that he would have stayed at 15 and picked Maroney.

I obviously think Moreno will shine and will become the identitiy of this franchise.

But I disagree with your final comment that the odds are stacked against Knowshon becoming special. Everything is a crapshoot. Knowshon’s potential depends on which stats you look at. You can’t compare him to other running backs, because he’s different and in a different system, in much the same way you can’t determine the outcome of a roll of dice based on any previous or subsequent rolls. You can analyze the past, but it is a poor indicator of the future when there are as many variables as exist in the NFL. So the odds are neither stacked for him nor against him. He will be what he is to become. How’s THAT for a Captain Obvious Maddenism? LOL

I didn’t though.

Regardless, Bear, I think the failure of the league’s scouting departments is well-documented. Surely, you must acknowledge that scouts did a lot of work on Ki-Jana Carter or Blair Thomas. And I know I’m, once again, going to extremes to clarify a point.

With that in mind, I really don’t care whether or not Knowshon Moreno was widely regarded as the best offensive skill player in the draft, as some commenters have claimed. By the way, I was under the impression that Michael Crabtree was widely regarded as the best offensive skill player in the draft. Or was it Mark Sanchez? Who knows? It was entirely dependent on which talking head you heard talking that day. And besides, these are the same geniuses who couldn’t decide which was the better player, Peyton Manning or Ryan Leaf? Remember, there was actually a debate about this.

So what’s my point? It’s simple really. You can’t trust the scouts. And you can’t trust the talking heads (I can’t believe I actually need to say that HERE of all places). So before we crown Knowshon the league’s Offensive Rookie of the Year, as one commenter already did, we might want to see him actually take a snap in the NFL.

Also, I’m not clear how anyone can speculate how Moreno will fit in a scheme in which he’s never played.

As for my resources, I didn’t hide anything. My talent evaluations were entirely dependent on combine numbers, private workout numbers and Youtube highlights. I don’t even own a stopwatch.

I hope I’m wrong and very well could be. At the very least, Knowshon seems like a really nice kid, and, in my book, that counts for a lot.

appreciate your time

Josh McDaniels has made it clear that he wasn’t pleased with offensive line’s performance in the red zone.

There’s lots of ways to think about this, but I believe the problem is the zone-blocking scheme itself. Because the scheme requires the offensive lineman to be more athletic and agile, they tend to be undersized. Again, that’s been well-documented.

Maybe someone else who knows more about football can explain why, but this lack of size doesn’t seem to be an issue between the 20s. But for some reason, perhaps because the short field allows the defense to crowd the line of scrimmage more, the scheme becomes less effective near the goal line.

I think Shanahan recognized this and his signing of Montrae Holland, an unusually large guard by Broncos’ standards, was his attempt to address this shortcoming. Obviously, Holland’s weight problem proved to be insurmountable.

Given McDaniels’ comments, if I had to guess, I’d say that they might incorporate some man-, drive-blocking schemes near the goal line. Longer-term, I wouldn’t be surprised if they dispense with the zone-blocking scheme all together.

I’m confused as to what McDaniels means when he says they’ll retain elements of the zone scheme while incorporating elements from his system.

PO, the film that I saw was of McDaniels referring to adding more gap or ‘regular’ blocking in which the guards are pulling, something that he had great success with in New England. They wouldn’t have kept Bobby Turner and Rick Dennison together if they were getting too far away from the ZB scheme.

We had this great Oline last year, and everyone has treated it like a crystal vase and set it carefully on a shelf so it doesn’t get damaged (or change). But everyone in the league knows how good Ryan Clady is, and knows how solid our line was last year, and they will be gunning for us and game planning for us. I hope we can repeat performance, but I’d be setting myself up for disappointment if I didn’t entertain the thought that this year might be substantially less spectacular than last year on the Oline stats.

thats a mouthful ha ha the quote you lay out is a prefect example of what I think McDaniels is doing. Let the media rag us to the ground cause they are building our house!

I wanted to but I had to be fair, when you are looking around the league we see very few feature backs and more committee systems. Its harder to poke a hole in a single back (AP) than a set of backs as a top. While AP has a spell and another back he splits carries with, HE made that team into a running dominated offense not taylor

Lesean Mccoy while possibly equal for running ability was not recognized for pass catching and blocking skills which Mcdaniels said was a critical part of the evaluation. I’ve always believed that over half of the picks that fail in the NFL fail not because of a lack of physical talent but frequently due to poor scouting. ie mismatched skill sets for the system being utilized and their inability to translate their college game to the pro game. I also think that it’s highly unlikely that the Broncos only had 100 or so people on their board as sa result of inadequate scouting but more likely as a result of a more comprehensive filtering process that considered many factors. Mcdaniels said it best " We’re not going to draft people so we can cut them later" . Just my opinion but without all of the research to look at it’s hard to second guess and say that other players were actually similar.

If you truly believe the “tag line” I associate with the records than fair enough, but if you are saying 13-3 and dont believe we have improved than what is the basis for 13-3 and likewise if you say we are MUCH improved but vote for 5-11 what is the basis there. I think we realistically fall between 7-11 wins thats a big area to cover so i tried to break it down as best i could

SD is not in the mountain time zone so they matter in the world of sports. Also one talking head made a comment about San Diego’s depth a few years back and that started the heads on how deep SD was and that it was their year to win. the MSM doesnt like to be wrong (cutler bandwagon) and doesnt like to acknowledge our teams existence so its easier than just the safe pick its also the pick that doesnt make them look stupid right now after everything they said

I have been impressed with the humility, the willingness to learn, the appreciation of what it means to be a Bronco, that our draft picks have demonstrated. Whether it was Moreno asking Darrent’s mother if he could wear 27, or Ayers asking Al Wilson if he could wear 56, or just the way these guys hang around, soaking up knowledge from the vets, these guys have demonstrated that they don’t just want to be football players, they want to be Denver Broncos.