I made this comment to BSrout's earlier fanpost and at his request I'm reposting it here. 

In response to his question on how the MSM views our team in their power rankings, I responded this way:

the mindset of the MSM is as follows: hope that Denver folds during their upcoming stretch of better opponents. If that happens, then they can celebrate that they were right and that Denver is a pretender. I think the real issue for us fans, is that we’re evaluating the Broncos in the short-term and long-term, whereas the MSM is only looking for their next sound byte.

The Short-Term (the trees before us)

For us, the short-term is this: wow! our team is playing sound, fundemental football. We’re, in my opinion, ahead of schedule as far as implementing two news schemes (offensive and defense) and our team culture is already apparant (team first, aggressive, and tougher). This bodes well for us in the short-term, as it gives us fans the belief that we can truly compete for the division crown and get into the playoffs this year.  I think fans always have high-hopes each season (at least us Broncos fans!), but deep within us lies a "Zappa" who has been teased before with fast starts only to see our team fade down the stretch.  But when we start to see that "times are achanging" we start to take notice and--at least for me--get that old time feeling of being a perrenially good team again.  That leads me to the long-term view we, as fans, have....

The Long-Term (the forest)

As I stated in the other post, it's the long-term that has me even more excited!!!  I also think this is what the MSM fails to see the most.  McD and company are building something on par with the elite franchises (NE, Pitt, Indy, NYG), where we can compete for the playoffs/Super Bowl every year.  In a lot of ways, this season is all FUN for me, because I don’t have grand visions of Super Bowl this season. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be thrilled if we put together a Cinderella run, but for me, this year is all about improvement and building a new culture. Next year and the years that follow are when I started getting jacked up as we should be able to field perinial playoff teams!  As Guru and many others have pointed out, we have a great mix of young and rising stars (Doom, Moreno, Royal, Clady, The Phonz, Ayers etc), seasoned vets (Bailey, Dawkins, etc), previously untapped potential (Fields, Haggan, Reid, etc), and steady eddies who might not be "great" but who bring all the right "stuff" to build team chemistry (A. Davis, Orton, Buck, Goodman, etc). 

The MSM

But back to BShrout's post, I really don’t care where they rank us (part of being a Broncos fan is being disrespected by the media.  I wear it as a badge of honor!)  What I do care about, however, is where we stand in our division and conference.  I care about us staying healthy and winning the turn-over battle, beating the crap out our division and the continued emergence of Kyle Orton’s neckbeard and the superpowers therein!

Go Broncos!