Blowing Up the Broncos and Building a Winner

After getting my hopes up for the 2010 season with a 9-7 prediction, it doesn’t feel very good to get smacked in the mouth all season. For 2011, ideally, I’d like to go in with no expectations. The good thing about having no expectations is that you’re never disappointed. Although, there’s very little chance that I’ll have no expectations once the excitement of the draft and training camp roll around….

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

6 and 10 would be an improvement over 4 and 12. uch an upward trend in the Broncos fortune would be welcomed and likely to garner management support from the fan base.

After seeing the 2009 Broncos nosedive under the last regime, I predicted a 6 and 10 effort in 2010. I’m still in shock and disbelief that my lowball prediction was overly optimistic.

I’m actually very high on the 2011 Broncos, if there is a collective bargaining agreement settlement this off-season. stil, my enthusiasm is guarded and I’m not counting on them making the playoffs. Of course, anything can happen in a weak division. Just look at the joke of Seattle hosting a playoff contest this season at 7 and 9.

I think the Broncos will research their management selection a bit better this time around. There certainly should be more oversight of whomever they install as the Head Cheese. As for the new regime retaining personnel, there are only a few top shelf players remaining on the team so the bleeding would be minimal at worse.

I think most fans are hoping for a stable, competent regime who will guide us back to a winning orm. Personally, I am not asking for a super-bowl any time soon. I just want the division…:)

Would I like Champ to return? Absolutely. He’s a great player…

But if they get rid of him, I’m not going to be torn up about it, either. Champ deserves a chance to be in a Super Bowl and he’s not going to get one in Denver, if he sticks around. As long as we can get something for him, I’d feel comfortable letting him go.

I just got the DVD for the 1st season of the show, can’t wait to re-watch it. So hilarious. I never tire of the Monkey News either.

That is probably what he did say. Put that error on me. I’ll go fix it. :)

I thought, oh, Troy must have not understood it was the British word for housing projects… But then I realized how… well, slow Pilkington is and attributed it to Karl lol

“if our defense could just be AVERAGE…”

man, it’s been freaking years. 2011 doesn’t need to be the orange crush, but with some decent moves—not necessarily even genius ones—the defense could at least stop giving up 30+ points per game.

I simply went there because I was covering the history of our “building” over the past few seasons. No use getting all bent out of shape over it.

Blowing up the team is not a good idea. Evaluating the talent, setting a course and direction given the talent the team currently has NOW and moving forward with a plan to get better is the right way to handle the situation.

Whether or not the new coach uses the pieces available to him is his choice (or Bowlen or Ellis or Elway or Xanders… I don’t know). It has gotten to the point where I don’t know who will be doing what or who will hire some guy to do task X, but we’ll find out soon enough…

McDaniels is gone. He’s gone from this team and he’s gone from my mind. Let’s just put all that behind us. We have to deal with what is in front of us…. namely, a team with no identity.

… and still losing.

I go much, much farther than you. I see a team that’s a few players short of being a very good team. And part of the problem this year was the fact that we ALREADY BLEW THE TEAM UP. Being in the middle of a rebuilding job (as we are now) puts a team in a very vulnerable position. I wish I had written on this subject back when I first thought of it, but there already was enough negativity going around at that time.

Most teams undergo a down period — e.g., Kansas City, Oakland, San Diego. The only difference with us was our expectations, there were/are many people who thought/think that we could return to glory on the strength of the 2006, 2007 & 2008 drafts. Actually, NO. And the added complication is that we traded some of most valuable parts of 06’s draft so we’re waiting again for those draftees to develop (just as we waited for Cutler and Marshall, although many have forgotten already).

We waited far too long to start rebuilding. And it’s hard to replace a large number of players in a short period of time while staying within a budget for FAs and draft picks (actually, impossible). Most of what was done in rebuilding is a temporary solution that overlays the young nucleus you’re developing — i.e,, Moreno, Ayers, Thomas, Tebow, etc. The payoff for those young players is over time, typically reaching near full potential in the 4th-5th year.

Our defense has yet to be a full beneficiary of the rebuilding process. One can argue with the lack of DL/LB choices (we wanted to draft some, IMO, but other teams took the players we targeted), but we were forced to replenish the defense with FAs within our price range — Dawkins, Goodman, Hill, Davis*, Reid*, Holliday*, Smith*, Fields — and that’s just year one. Year two: Bannan, Vickerson, Williams, Green*, Jones, Mays, Hunter — and a host of rookies, late season pickups and other players. That’s a lot of turnover. The point is that we’re finally in the position to add some high draft picks to our defense and finish what we started in 2009.

Fixing the defense isn’t ‘that’ hard. And part of the process involves keeping some of the parts we acquired the time together, along with adding new talent to the mix and giving everyone time together in the offseason. A final point — fans underestimate the disruptive effect of a massive overhaul and tend to likewise underestimate the need for more time together in order to fix problems. It’s another one of those “LAGGED” effects that I"m fond of citing. I don’t think it’s all that surprising that our defense has had some problems (I’ll save discussion of the offense for another day), since much of what we’ve done looks like a band-aid on 2008’s corpse. There was almost no talent left in the pipeline when Shanny left and it would have been a miracle if we had some how grown a defense with chewing gum and duct taped plastered over a stinking cadaver.

Unless we somehow get Harbaugh and Luck. Not saying that’s likely, but it could happen. Then can we trade Tebow? Only if McD lands somewhere where he has some clout. Personally, I hope we keep Tebow (and get Harbaugh). Though a phenom QB out of Stanford does sound appealing.

We’ve had a different defensive coordinator every year, for as long as I can remember.

You say the panthers would be gladly take that deal…. So would I. Luck is good but I think Tebow is too. And having the first pick on D in the draft is exactly what we need.

I couldn’t imagine what it would be like for a lot of Broncos fans and PR if Tebow got traded. I know people will say that it shouldn’t matter and it turn it into whether you are a Broncos fan or Tebow fan, but it isn’t that easy.

I don’t think McD ever would have recovered with him image in Denver after the whole Cutler fiasco unless he won a Super Bowl. Whether trading Cutler was right, wrong, or indifferent it loomed over McD and the franchise for the past 2 years (it’s always in coversations and posts). I just couldn’t imagine the backlash if it did happen again and how hard that would be on a new HC to build a positive atmsophere with the media and fans.

Under those circumstances, will people rally around Elway or Tebow? If you ask me, that will be more intense than the “Orton vs Tebow” or “Orton vs Cutler” or “McDaniels vs Shanny” comparisons….

I sure hope it never comes to that.

But really, it’s six of one and a half dozen of another. :)