Perspectives from the Outside

I’d say we’re still rebuilding. I agree with you that MLB is by far our biggest need but I doubt we can find a huge upgrade in the draft unless we move up for Luke Kuechly. Hopefully Nate Irving develops into the starter we all want him to be.

You are slightly more optimistic on the defensive backfield than I, but we pretty much agree on everything else.

Fox ususally has a good MLB in his defences. Carolina has Beason and Dan Connor. Beason was hurt and Connor did a nice job for them. Perhaps they’d be willing to part with the much more expensive Beason? Unlikely but that would be pretty cool.

The first is defensive backfield. We need to replace Dawk, and I am not sold on Moore, and we need a true stud corner to play opposite Champ who I think has another couple of years as a truly good (but no longer great) corner left in him.

The second is the interior pass rush. We got no pressure from them all season long and this needs to change. Pressure up the middle is really the only way to take the Tom Bradys, Payton Mannings and Drew Brees’s out of their game.

Third is a good running back in the draft. McGahee is a stud, but we need to acknowledge that he is long in the tooth for an NFL RB and we need to plan for the future. He is the man and I love having him on the team, but we need the two part of our one-two punch in the backfield.

Last is WR/TE. I am not convinced Royal will be coming back due to his trade request earlier this season. And I do not think that Matt Willis is the answer. We absolutely need one or two more playmakers in the WR position. And while I am a fan of Fells, the rest of our TEs were horrible this year. (And Fells had his bad moments as well.) We got no production from the TE spot all year and that needs to change in a big way.

The fact that Elway and Fox inherited most of Shanahan and McDaniels’ hold overs there was nothing they could really do but use what was at hand. Not unless they wanted to gut the team entirely. I thought EFX did a marvelous job of separating some of the wheat from the chaff, but there are more to get rid of. This offseason we’ll see players released that we might of thought should stay. They might not fit exactly what Fox wants to rebuild around. Players like Hunter, Willis, Vaughn, Goodman and others that were here before the new regime arrived. It will take 3 years as John Elway suggested last year to get where they want to be. Added free agents and draft picks will change the face of the roster.

Champ is still a year out from making the move, he is too good at corner still to move him. Our biggest need this offseason has to be to address the Defensive backfield, I think through draft and FA!

On OL, I though Hochstein did EXACTLY what you want from a utility OL backup. No noticeable drop off after the Babyface Assasin got hurt, so I say Russ keeps his job. I am scared of Harris as main backup because of injury concern. He could be your guy that you are counting on, come in for one play when someone goes down, and then be out for the season. He plays great, but he is too injury prone with his back to count on him in the case where you are already reaching into your depth.

Too reload we need to have a solid foundation on what this teams identity is. Right now it’s hard to say which direction this team is going identity right now.

Also we have a young raw QB who could boom or bust, a young all around team, and a few older key vets. So we’re still rebuilding, it’s a 3-4 year process. We started out well, need to keep going. Need to have another great draft this year and hit on a few FA signings and hope our young guys progress this offseason

we could easily upgrade at just about every position on this team. It will interesting which way they choose to go through Free Agency.

Also i’m interested about the Broncos budget, we’re about 24-25 million below the cap i believe. So we could easily spend big this offseason, but i wonder if Bowlen has Xanders and Elway on a budget