First Quarter Review: Expectations For The Rest Of The Season

“The ocean might be a little damp”. Optimism this year is just being competitive, showing improvement. Improved schemes, coaching that suggests movement in the right direction (whatever that is). Watching new players develop. Winning may not be among the positive things to look for. Not saying it can’t happen. Mr. Orton thinks they are about to turn the corner. Does that mean they will be going around in circles?

I thought that they could go 8-8 and I even bet the over at 5 1/2 in Vegas. Disappointing that they lost 2 winnable games with poor play and unimaginative coaching. The remaining schedule is very tough and this season could easily end up with 3 to 5 wins. That does not show any progress over the past year.

They got brutalized against the Raiders but have improved every week against some very stingy defenses in the Bengals, Titans, and Packers

“How much better from last year did you expect this team to be? " Every year at the beginning of the season I predict 16-0. I did this year too. Now its 13-3, only because they have already lost three. They should have lost only one. For the rest of the season, I say beat ‘em all. As Steve Jobs would say, "Don’t settle." To those who say otherwise, I say, “Get some gumption.” Next man up, make it count, balls to the wall, get it done, its 5 o’clock somewhere, oh wait a second I got off track.

Maybe because they were told my a prominent writer on this blog that Josh McDaniels left the team in better shape than when he came in. Never mind that neither of the ’09 first rounders have played to that level, and all three 2nd round picks from that year are no longer on the team.

Who is setting the unrealistic expectations? Those of us who acknowledge that the team is actually rebuilding are not surprised.

My question is:
 
Why?

Because people are frustrated. “We’re rebuilding,” people say. True enough. But that over looks one key point. We spent two years “rebuilding” under McD and instead of going forward we went backwards. Think whatever you like about Shanny but the football team that Fox got was worse than the team Shanny gave to McD. At best, it plain just wasn’t any better. There is a point in time when the “we are close to turning the corner” bit wears thin.

And here’s the reality. We might spend two more years under Fox and not get any better. There are no certainties in the NFL. So people are looking for a sign of hope. Some trinket they can hold on to that Fox is indeed the one to lead us out of this mess. Yes there is now a “new maturity” in Dove Valley. But so far it hasn’t translated into wins.

I like Fox. I like what he is doing with this team. But no one at this stage should get a free pass. I don’t blame fans for being upset. I think they have a right to be upset. I think it’s a good thing, truthfully, because it means that fans have high aspirtations for the team. And Denver isn’t going to get any better with low ones.

Just tons of holes to plug. It’s going to take more than one year to be competitive again. If the Broncos really get lucky, they will fill half of their holes by the start of the 2012-13 campaign. But yes, Von Miller is definitely the cornerstone of this defense already. Hopefully Denver can hit on their first round pick next year also. Maybe that first round pick will be very Luck-y.

and is the anti-DP point of view, which insists that a QB change is all that is needed. This has been a team without horses for many years; and also without a team focus. They were an offensive team- with suspect defense and special teams. This left us as a .500 team, and the last regime squandered its draft picks. But the scheme’s seems better, and the games are closer- things are looking up. I think we still can get a .500 season- which is all I was expecting with the lockout, new staff, new scheme, etc. Many think because we kept the same OC and terminology we have the same offense- which is incorrect.

A feel good blog. Cheers

As I’ve said on other threads, the teeth gnashing here on MHR is ridiculous in my opinion. There is a big difference between descriptive events and predictive data. Descriptively we’ve been bad. Predictively, I see signs of hope.

We’ve gone 1-2 in 3 games against mediocre/poor teams that were essentially decided on the final drive… the games were basically coin flips. But if you look closer, in 2 of those games our QB underperformed his career QBR by over 20 points, and we were also missing our 2 top stars DEF for most of those 3 games. It is not absurd to think that had the QB performed simply to his career average level, or we had a touch better injury luck, we could 3-0 in those games. That the losses were so close with such bad QB performance could in some ways be interpreted as a positive indicator for the future.

Then we got blown out… but against probably the best team in the NFL. We pretty much knew we weren’t in their league going into the game, so why is it all of a sudden such a worry when we proved it?… But while our secondary got blowtorched (absent its best player), our run DEF looked improved and the offense was generally overall pretty successful moving the ball against a pretty decent defense. There were some hopeful signs for games when we don’t play the best offense in the NFL.

Now, there are a couple other things to consider –
1) Our QBs “under performance” has been around for about 6-8 games now… he is not performing to the same level he was earlier, so its possible he has regressed or been “figured out”. If so, and he continues to throw up sub-70 QBR games, he’s done and it is time to move on. Another bad performance or 2 (without some significant good ones first), and “small sample size” is no longer a plausible excuse. Orton has used up any mulligans he had with very bad games against OAK and TEN.
2) Our team is very young, and has a new coaching staff that had no offseason to speak of… expecting the team to come shooting out of the blocks probably was never realistic. But improvement over the year might be expected.
3) Our schedule does us no favors… We dug a bit of a hole for ourselves by losing winnable games early… but if the team improves (see #2), it is not implausible that we could still steal a game or 2 we should lose going forward… “Any Given Sunday” still applies.
4) Our division however, looks quite weak. Perhaps the best opponent is 3-1 with wins, at home, against teams with a combined record of 1-11… and they were destroyed in their 1 road game. The other potentially decent looking team (which we lost a close one to) is severely unbalanced with no passing game to speak of (even though teams stack the box consistently against them). Thinking the division winner could be 8-8 or 9-7 doesn’t seem far fetched, and division record will probably be determinative. We have a chance this week to even out our division record at 1-1.

Will we win 10+ games… probably not. But 8+ is still possible (my pre-season prediction)… and if the youngsters develop and we finally get healthy, its far too early to say this season is over.

The offensive line I have been happy with. If there was a weak link it would be Zane Beadles. Orlando Franklin has been doing alright but has struggled at times with his blocking schemes. Ryan Clady has not been the same since his knee injury but I sure hope the Broncos can get him re-signed by week 17. But again, this is very much the same offensive line as last season.

Beadles flat out gets blamed too much and disrespected far too often. Week in and week out he has graded overall within 1 or 2 percentage points of Clady and Kuper—two Bronco favs on the O Line. Kuper makes $5 mil a year. Clady makes $3 mil a season. Yeah I know Clady is just getting totally over his knee injury, but at the same time Beadles is in only the beginning of his second year. Beadles earns $1 mil a year. That’s very economical for only 1 or 2 percentage points difference in O Line grade.

There aren’t any free agents or waiver wire guys or next year’s draft picks that are going to blow Beadles out of his starting position. Denver can’t afford to spend a draft pick above the 5th round on an O Line guy. They have too many other problems that need addressing.