Denver Broncos News: Horse Tracks - 1/1/12

and we need to put pressure on KO, if so, game over dude, Ricky Stanzi will be the Chiefs’ opening-day starter anyway, they have to find out what they have in him

but why is it necessary to trash someone else in the process? Is it because you’re not really that confident in your praise, and therefore feel it’s necessary to make Kyle Orton look worse than he actually was in order to make Tim Tebow look better than he actually is? Why not just leave Kyle Orton out of it and just talk about how great Tim Tebow is?

He played so poorly that a guy who has trouble throwing the ball was the better solution.

There are a lot of reasons why Denver is winning games after the bye, and few (if any) of them have anything to do with either Kyle Orton or Tim Tebow. It has to do with several injured players who returned after the bye, which enabled a better performing offensive line and defense, great play from special teams, plus some very nice, very long game-winning field goals. There would be no running game if not for that offensive line, and the defense has been great , keeping the score low (in the Denver wins against other average teams, anyway). I wonder how people would be talking about Tim Tebow if those flukey last minute/overtime turnovers or missed field goals by the opponents wouldn’t have happened, and Denver was somethng like 4-11 or 5-10 going into this last game instead of an incredibly lucky 8-7. I’m guessing it would be more in line with what is being said about Kyle Orton, and a lot more people would be calling for Denver drafting a quarterback early in the next draft.

But in reality, I don’t think the quarterback is necessarily the problem now, or when Kyle Orton was under center. Neither quarterback has really had all that much to do with it. The quarterback can’t make his receivers catch catchable balls, he can’t open holes for a running game to be successul, he can’t prevent other players from committing drive-ending penalties, he can’t make field goals, and he especially has nothing to do with the defense forcing turnoveres or limiting the other team to scoring field goals instead of touch downs. But that’s reality, and I guess most people don’t want to deal with that. They’d rather heap false praise on the current player of choice.

All that said, I think you will notice I haven’t said anything either pro-Orton or anti-Tebow. I believe (I pray) Denver will beat Kansas City today. But it will take a team effort. Even Tim Tebow can’t do it without a strong performance from the offensive line, a good running game, and receivers catching balls that they should catch. And the defense has to tackle better than they’ve been doing the past couple games and stop making drive-extending penalties.

I am getting sick of the media trying to play up the Orton was wronged by the broncos angle. Orton was given every opportunity in the world to be the broncos starting QB.

Like him or not, Kyle Orton really was wronged, and he really didn’t have those opportunities. At least not this season. Kyle Orton was replaced by Tim Tebow just as the offense and defense both had several starters returning from injuries. Kyle Orton didn’t have the opportunity to play with all those people in the game. Last season, he played behind a constantly rotating offensive line, the Broncos had no running game, and a crappy defense. But when McDaniels was fired, the interim coach stopped the rotation of the OL, it started to perform better, and the running game improved. It still wasn’t great, but once again, the changes were made just as Tim Tebow was named starter, and the Broncos managed to win one of his three starts. No one can say whether Kyle Orton’s performance would or wouldn’t have improved right along with the rest of the team, but my money says it would have. But he wasn’t given the opportunity to find out.

If you recall Kyle Orton’s first season with the Broncos, they started 6-0. Sure, a couple of the games were won because of flukey plays and defense, but not as many as have been won by flukey plays this season. Kyle Orton was a pretty good quarterback in those first six games. But then the injuries hit (including to Kyle Orton), the OL became a revolving door, the defense fell apart, and all hell broke lose. No quarterback would have won very many games.

I think that after those first six games two seasons ago, the Broncos didn’t really start to get healthier and didn’t really start to play better until after the bye this season. Although they did show some improvement in the final three games last year. But Kyle Orton wasn’t given the opportunity to show what he could do with the healthier, better overall performing team. So yes, I agree that Kyle Orton was wronged by the Broncos.