So, the Broncos are 1-2. It's not where you'd like the team to be at this point, but you have to try to look for the orange lining. For someone who's just browsing through teams only looking at their records, it would be easy to dismiss the Broncos. However, after a (slightly) more in-depth analysis -- basically an extension of the analysis I did in making my picks for this week, I see hope for this season.

I'll start off with an extension of the matchup I posted before with my picks:

Okay, the stat I want to bring up is the "13" (I know, unlucky -- wish it was 7). That's the average of all our offensive and defensive stats that were included in this table (10 stats overall). For some teams (the really bad ones like San Francisco), their overall rating is over 20. Not very many teams have a number lower than 15. Our number is better than the Patriots, Colts, and a number of teams that pundits would no doubt say are better than us without hesitation. This would be a bad time to say we're better than the Colts, obviously, so I'm not going to go there.

What I really want to say is don't panic. Before I looked at this, I was looking at the schedule, and I couldn't see 8 wins. Granted, even if we really are this good there is no guarantee we will win a lot of games, especially if not enough elements put together their game at the same time as each other. But we are NOT going to be a 5 win team this year. No way. I think you'd honestly have to be a troll or a professional idiot to predict such a thing after Orton's first 3 games, but there's a lot of those types out there and they happen to be good at getting attention.

These aren't the only stats there are, and maybe they aren't all the important stats, but I think these are the most composite stats. They reflect the results on the field. Other stats might tell more about how those results are being effected, but these stats are okay. The Broncos are good. If they can stay healthy, we should be excited for this year.