Horse Tracks: John Elway and Denver Broncos focused on ultimate prize

The Peyton Manning Effect

I do not normally lead off a horse tracks post with one of our own posts on Mile High Report, but Kyle's "The Peyton Manning Effect" post was must read for all Denver Broncos fans. John Elway is showing Jim Irsay how he should have been managing his team when Peyton Manning was with the Indianapolis Colts. You do not waste one second with one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history on your roster.

The effect Manning has now is attracting top tier talent for another Super Bowl run. The only AFC team even trying to keep up with the Broncos is the New England Patriots, while other teams just whine about unethical agents not sticking to a verbal agreement. Welcome to the Free Agent **** Fest and the Denver freaking Broncos are in it to win it, baby! Warning, foul language contained within this video - as with most comical Youtube videos...

Free Agency News

In case you missed it, the Broncos exercised Wes Welker's option this year with no problem, meanwhile Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie cost himself millions of dollars by playing hardball with John Elway when he took a lesser deal with the New York Giants yesterday. As DRC would say, Dizzam!

Stadium Blueprint Contest

I got my own Sports Authority Field blueprint a few weeks ago and its big enough that I have to go find a specialty frame for it. Consequently, its still rolled up waiting for my lazy arse to go shopping for a frame, but I figure I'll get to it long before the man cave needs to be visited every Sunday.

Mile High Report is running a contest on Twitter also for users to win their own blueprint. I've seen few better contests on this blog since I began writing here in 2007, so if I were you I'd go retweet whatever Tweet Kyle wants retweeted for your chance to win one of these bad boys.

Horse Tracks

• It's clear to any football fan that of all of the AFC teams, only the Denver Broncos and New England Patriots are serious about contending for the conference championship in 2014. The rest of the teams are hoping for "any given Sunday" to come into play in the tournament, which is always a possibility.
• John Elway told Lindsay Jones that he felt the arms race between the Broncos and Patriots was a fun one and is excited to see how it plays out in 2014.
• Bucky Brooks provides his analysis as why the Broncos are on the verge of something special.
• Not all contracts are equal, so next time you see numbers thrown out by the media, it might be a good idea to look only at the number with the word "guaranteed" next to it.
• Pretty good read about nickel and dime defenses, but I am growing tired of the constant Super Bowl analysis by the Seahawks fans on SB Nation's staff. But hey, I'm petty and bitter like that.
• The flagship seems unwilling to buy into the Broncos free agency tactics even though they used the analogy of bad teams spending big in free agency without fixing the problems that initially caused their team to be bad. Well, the Broncos are a good team that just got better, so maybe they buck the trend of bad teams not getting over the hump, eh?