I do not understand

  Josh McD. brought in his own style of playcalling .. Not many if any other teams had
 any kind of films or video to study on how to respond or how to attack us. Sadly by
 week 7 teams started to figure us out ..That led to a slide where we went 2-8 down
 the strech . along the way some of the players quit on the season.
 I hope this helped you out . Good luck ….

Not sure what to say about us falling apart last year, but after today I think Baltimore and Pit are hands down the best teams in the league (yes I know balt lost today). I think you guys fell to the second tier in my opinion. The Patsies are there if their defense can get it together, and Indy, as bad as they look, will always be there at the end. You have the talent to win it, I think, but Sanchez has a lot left to prove. He should’ve had 4 picks today.

Wow that’s a lot of AFC teams. Are there any NFC teams that are in the top 5? Top 10?

Check the depth of your roster. Sure we added some skill players in the offseason. But what we really tried to do is add depth. I don’t buy in to the teams started to figure us out B.S. Our injury situation and lack of depth, especially on the d-line caused our demise. We could not hold the line of scrimmage upfront and it put too much pressure on our linebackers and safeties to try and contain offenses. In the offseason we addressed this with a whole new starting d-line. Williams, Bannon, and Vickerson. Their backups are now the personnel we were starting last year. They gained valuable experience by playing alot last year, and are now valuable contributors on our d-line rotation. WE COULD NOT STOP THE RUN DURING OUR SLIDE LAST YEAR. Of course there are other factors. Mostly injury related, but that equates to depth problems also. So I say check the depth of your roster. I think you guys will be fine. Tough road to hoe in the afc this year. Good luck the rest of the way. Maybe we’ll sneak into the playoffs and see each other again. You, of all people should know that its possible to get on a roll and go deep into the playoffs. If we do meet in the playoffs, I hope we kick you. I’m sure you understand.

The players seemed to buy into the hype after 6-0. They got an extended break during the bye week, as Coach gave them extra time away. When the team went to Baltimore after the bye, the Ravens physically dominated us. We seemed to lose every bit of confidence with that loss….

1. New system – the offense was limited in what it was doing all year and teams started figuring it out after week 6.

2. Run defense – We got exposed, then injured in the front 7 and never recovered. The run D alone cost us a few games.

3. Lack of unity – the team was really really young and while we had veterans, the whole team was “new”. We had tons of new faces vs the previous year. I don’t know how you can have each other’s backs with that type of turnover. The two losses really demoralized us and the team didn’t really recover.

Our offense didn’t really play great in any of those early games and our red zone defense seemed to keep us in the games late enough to make one more play.
Week 8: Played a good Baltimore team at home. Our offensive line couldn’t hold up and we were unable to maintain long drives with 55 total yards rushing. Defense played well, preventing TD’s in the redzone but they couldn’t get off the field and crumbled late.
Week 9: Played a good Steelers team in a defensive battle. Again, we couldn’t get the running game going with only a total of 27 yards on the ground. Defensive played well, keeping the Broncos in it, but Orton threw some costly interceptions giving the Steelers a short field to work with.
Week 10: Playing the Redskins in DC, Broncos threw a couple of bombs to Brandon Marshall and were up early. Orton left at half with an ankle injury and Chris Sims sucked.
Week 11: Chargers in Denver, Chris Sims sucks. Eventually replaced by an injured Kyle Orton. Chargers were up early, and the Broncos were unable to score a Touchdown on four trips to redzone.
Week 12: NY Giants on Thursday night. Kyle Orton was healthy and held the ball for long drives. The Defense played well and it was a decisive win.
Week 13: Ran the ball all day and we destroyed the Chiefs at home.
Week 14: Playing a great Colts team at Lucas Oil stadium. Broncos were in the game late but Indy went ahead and closed it out in the fourth quarter.
Week 15: Tough loss to the Raiders at home. Broncos were poor in converting TDs in the red zone and let the Raiders hang around until the end where they made some desperation plays for the win. Run defense was poor all game but they gave our offense opportunities to win the game.
Week 16: Very close game where both teams played for their playoff lives. I thought Denver should have won this one. A few costly penalties at the end of the game were the difference in putting the Eagles on top.
Week 17: Broncos didn’t look like they came to play. Poor tackling let the Chiefs run all day.

Thus, what I’m trying to point out is that 2-8 “slump” was something created by the media. There wasn’t one thing that went wrong that caused the Broncos to lose, and in many of these games the Broncos were in it late and got unlucky. Each loss had a different cause and the Broncos simply couldn’t find ways to win. I think they played some harder teams down the stretch and didn’t get enough credit for how they played against these teams. We played 7 of the playoff teams last season and still posted a respectable 8-8 record after revamping to an entirely new system.

for McD to give our guys the week off before the Baltimore game.

like Scheff and Marshall, didn’t help our team chemistry and IMO helped lose us some games.

That Buckhalter TD run was awesome.

Haven’t you all seen a huge difference this year? Plenty of times last year on 3rd and moderate distance when he could have run but threw an incompletion instead. He hesitated due to the ankle. But he didn’t cry or complain about it.

Orton has played much better since the wheel healed.

and maybe just maybe we got a bit high on ourselves after six weeks. Not that there was any reason to think that, but I’d be hard pressed to imagine a scenario where a team is 6-0 that ISN’T high on themselves at that point. Team chemistry no doubt had a hand in it also. Last season we hit the highest of the highs (6-0) and the lowest of the lows (the remainder of the season in a nut shell). I think the key is to find balance, where you are never so high up that a fall will be fatal, but not so far down that it’s impossible to get up again. You guys seem pretty solid on defense again, so as long as they can carry you and Sanchez gets better you will probably go far. I think your defense is much better than what we had to work with a year ago so that factor alone will be worth a few wins.