Adam Gase: "We need to be a better turnover margin team and it starts with us"

The Denver Broncos have been atrocious when it comes to fumbling away golden opportunity throughout the last two seasons, to the tune of almost 50 fumbles in two seasons. That's just disgustingly bad and not something a Super Bowl caliber team should be doing. Broncos offensive coordinator, Adam Gase addressed that and other topics in his presser today.

On Emmanuel Sanders

I’ve been very impressed. He’s been exactly what we thought from watching him in Pittsburgh. His ability to get off versus the jam is very impressive. Just that quickness, top of the route, and that speed down the field is something that we were very interested in to start with... and he’s shown us that he’s still got that.

On Montee Ball

We drafted him in the second round to be a big contributor. I know I keep saying the same thing, but we do have a lot of confidence in him. He brings that full package of a good running back ... (He has made) big strides. I’d say he’d probably be the one guy (who) made the most improvement. And to see him make the next jump in his second year, we’re looking forward to that.

I would say everybody behind Montee right now is competing for the second spot. So whoever wants to step up, take the spot, that’s what we’re looking for.

On Demaryius Thomas

What’s different to me is his speed and just how physical he is at the top of his routes. That was the big question on him coming out was, "Can he run routes?". He played in an option offense, but we saw enough from him in 2010 to draft him as high as we did and he’s proven us right. His route running ability is a lot more impressive than what people probably give him credit for.

When I first met him, he was such a quiet guy. I was kind of waiting for him to come out of his shell. But as the year went on, you could kind of see he’s got a great personality. 

I think he’s competing with himself right now and trying to make sure that he tries to have a better year than he did the year before. All these guys, it’s not going to be easy. Our expectations are so high. You’ve got to work hard to make sure we can get better than we were last year.

On ball security issues

I think over the last two years we’ve had 48 fumbles and we’ve lost quite a few of those. We’ve been in the back half of the league. I know I talked about it a lot last year and we kept putting the ball on the ground. We’re starting it right now. We need to improve on that. We need to be a better turnover margin team and it starts with us. We can help the defense out. We need to get in the plus category. And if we stop putting the ball on the ground, that can help us. So it’s been in a big point of emphasis for us right out of the gate and hopefully it’ll be nothing but positive for us.

On the offensive as a whole

As a staff we do a lot of studying of other NFL teams. We study some college teams. We kind of take a look at what we did last year, what we didn’t like. And we’ll make little changes here and there. And we find some areas where we didn’t think we were that good. We kicked a lot of field goals and a lot of people probably say well you scored a lot of red zone points, but we left a lot out there. And we’ve looked at those. And obviously the turnovers, we’ve been talking about that. But we look at those categories and figure out, how do we get better in those areas? We try to find ways to improve in those areas.