The dude definitely has some work to do and most around here will tell you that…heck that was even what HE said during his season closing press conference.

Realistically you don’t have a drastic offensive scheme change start clicking in only one year. It just doesn’t work that way.

Expectations were overwhelmingly met in his first season. This season coming up will begin the judgmental stage of his coaching career.

No blame assigned to clearly inept interior line play, then. Nope, players hate the coach. Has to be. Got it.

BTW, the 1990 team finished the season the same way. But it doesn’t sound as good as 1967, though, does it?

Fair enough, you’re entitled to that opinion. I’m of the opinion that you long ago made up your mind about McDaniels and won’t be dissuaded from those conclusions (the nickname silliness illustrates this point rather well) so I’m not surprised by your post and issues with “the vibe you get from this site”. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that “the vibe you get” is your perception, and isn’t shared by all.

I think the degradation of the O-line play as the season wore on was obvious, so I don’t fault him for saying that they hadn’t won the battles at the line of scrimmage, because they hadn’t. I don’t see that as “throwing them under the bus”- these are paid professionals and criticism was both warranted and justified.

As far as the Offense overall goes, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with it either. However, I’m not as concerned as you appear to be, because I feel like it takes time to get your system, coaches, and players into place. I don’t think a year is sufficient, and that more patience is necessary.

I’m not ready to say the team quit during that last game, but I wasn’t happy with the effort either.

I see a coach that inherited a team that while was 8-8 the previous year, was much closer to 4-12 than 11-5. I see a work in progress. Others see McDaniels as Voldemort, the Great Evil That Has Descended On The Broncos, and that the team is doomed under his tenure.

Opinions, everyone has ’em. The trick is to not mistake them for fact.

Shanny was 8-8 in his 14th year of head coaching~
McDaniels was 8-8 in his 1st year, so there is a little diffence. There will plenty of time to lop heads, now is premature don’t you think?

Green you shall be!

I love the bifurcations between the Kool-aid drinkers and non-Kool-aid drinkers. As someone once said: “there are two kinds of people, those who believe there are two kinds of people and those who don’t.”

“Emotional reactionary journalism” is easy to write and it saves time since it doesn’t require any reporting. Papers starting following this trend in the early 80s but there are earlier precedents, such as the newspaper wars between Hearst and Pulitizer, which gave birth to yellow journalism.

The angles that sports writers exploit are generally quite easy to recognize. And it’s also easy to see that they’re exploiting these angles because their reports are long on dramatistic devices and short on substance. A recent example was the “two locker room camps” story in which those purported camps weren’t actually observed but inferred.

People are vulnerable to reactionaries who use conflict to manipulate people. An easy diagnostic for identifying these people is their use of emotional language to make their points. My point is that people don’t vary so much in their outlook, as measured by optimism/pessimism, as in their intent. It’s not about Kool-aid. Or to put it another way, the Kool-aid is being served by the lynch mob organizers. And we see some of them here at MHR,and the tone of their posts is what distinguishes them. Rarely are their posts substantive in nature, as are the posts of our frequent posters. Instead, their goal is to browbeat people with negative emotional language in postings that feature pejorative terms but are short of actual arguments. The nature of these posts reveal a clear difference in intent. Most of us try to make points and defend our arguments, whereas others have no concerns about insulting others, which, in fact, seems to be their actual intent.

Just explaining why I’m not taking the bait on that one. Bob’s welcome to love his Broncos however he wants.

I think that, under our own situation in Denver, he’d be a fine replacement of Chris Simms. I think that he has more raw physical tools than Orton, but I’d feel more comfortable giving him a full year to develop and learn the system. Like I said before, he’s had a lot of different systems and is never in one for more than one season. I wonder how he’d do with two years.

Anyways, I’ll address those “certain circumstances” I am talking about. First of all, it would be a bit of a waste to pay him as a starter/backup tweener and then have him sit the bench, and even more of a waste if Brandstater continues to develop. Imagine that we trade Simms and a 4th or 5th rounder to Washington and get him as our number 2 QB, tomorrow. I’m not so sure that he could beat out Orton for the starting job, but since he has been a starter for a long time in the NFL, he’d be getting a really fat contract for a backup.

If Brandstater continues to develop and ends up being a higher rated QB than Campbell over the 2010 season and into the 2011 offseason, then we have essentially paid Campbell as a high end backup to a low end starter salary and sat him on the bench. He’d never see field time because Brandstater would start where Orton left off.

Now, if we were able to get Campbell last offseason, then I think we’d be in really great shape at QB. At this point, I would like Campbell with 1 season of experience over Orton with 1 season of experience.

Hindsight is 20/20, though. If we could get Campbell for similar value as we got Simms, then yes. We should take him right away. Campbell would be a great backup QB and a quality starter, given time in the system. I don’t think that Shanahan would be shopping Campbell around, though. IMO, Campbell has been the bright spot of that offense and, given his circumstances with a new system every year, has done a lot with a little.

Like you said, he did play with a more focused look about him against New Orleans. That is what is so interesting about him, IMO. Later in the season, after he is getting full exposure to the new system, he starts to play really well. If he is under the same system for a few seasons, he can play like that every sunday and not just at the end of the season.

Maybe salary, but I can’t think he couldn’t get paid the same here. Likewise, if the broncos really wanted Turner to stay they also could of promoted him. I find it hard to believe there wasn’t something there if McDaniels blocked his interview with Shanahan. Which is just a petty move. Maybe it is more about Shanahan vs McDaniels, but I think McDaniels has some issues working with Shanahan’s guys.