It’s a Lone Star State Showdown!
Password: new england clam chowder
That’s right kids, I am back from my weeklong backwoods retreat. I must admit it is quite liberating to get away from your cell phone and laptop for a few days. Life is much simpler when your biggest concerns are the weather on the horizon, avoiding jet skis in your kayak and identifying the right lure color or fly pattern.
Of course, it figures that I am gone when the national crisis also known as the Brett Favre situation is resolved. The Jets huh? Maybe the Jets figure the only way to beat New England and their AARP-card carrying defense is to have a quarterback that is even older.
At least in New York, Brett’s every move won’t be scrutinized by the press. We should put the over/under on the number of weeks into the season the New York Post makes some horrible pun about the Favre era being a disappointment on its back page. I set it at week 4 right now.
Oh and for all you idiots that set a single day record for buying Favre Jets jerseys on NFL.com? I have a Joe Namath - Rams jersey, O.J. Simpson – 49ers jersey, Tony Dorsett – Broncos jersey, Jerry Rice - Seahawks jersey, Joe Montana – Chiefs jersey, and Emmitt Smith – Cardinals jersey for you. All for the low-low price of $299 each.
Anyway, no reason to beat a dead Favre, that is old news. Last night we had our first live action of your Denver Broncos, in a riveting pre-season game against the Houston Texans (and our old friend head coach Gary Kubiak – or Koobs to some of us). So what did we learn? I’m glad you asked.
- While it is hard to learn much from the two short series by the offense there were a couple things that jumped out at me.
- Where was the running game? Selvin Young’s 3 yards on 4 carries didn’t exactly inspire confidence that the Broncos running game has returned to its former glory.
- As if by admission that they couldn’t run, there were a lot of short passes into the flats, especially to running backs out of the backfield. I’ve send this offense before. It is the ‘running game’ that FSU used to run. No, not the offense in those 14 straight years of top-five finishes. That would be the offense in those two straight years of 6 losses. Not that I am saying that is what could happen to the Broncos. There is little chance they have only 6 losses this year.
- Now that the suspension has been handed down by the Commish it is interesting to see the Broncos make the conscious effort to not throw to Brandon Marshall. Young and Eddie Royal (promoted to starter with Darrell Jackson moving over to Marshall’s position) just jumped about 2 rounds in fantasy drafts this coming week.
- How about poor Matt Prater? Misses his first field goal attempt – a thirty yarder – causing roughly 437,896 Bronco fans mutter ‘I knew we never should’ve let Elam go’. Should we just nickname him Brian Griese right now? Ok, done.
- Speaking of former Bronco quarterbacks, I am reading Stefan Fatsis’s book ‘A Few Seconds of Panic’ right now. A fascinating look at the 2006 Broncos by a Wall Street Journal writer who spent training camp as a kicker with the team. Highly recommended reading, but I just read a chapter focusing on Jake Plummer (this was the year they had just drafted Cutler to replace Jake after he guided the team to the AFC Title game). It was nice to see that my long held feelings about Plummer (here and here) were validated. As were my feelings about Mark Kiszla, the second worst sports writer in Denver (congratulations Bernie Lincicome!).
- I haven’t spoken to Turner yet but I am sure he was thrilled with former Sooner Larry Birdine making a nice defensive play in the last minute. Unfortunately Gary Miller, probably the worst play-by-play announcer in all of pre-season football screwed up his number so his moment of glory was short lived.
- Not to toot my horn but – toot, toot – my two early picks for sleepers of camp played well (and even got mentioned by Woody Paige today, the best sportswriter in Denver). Anthony Alridge accounted for 40 yards of offense and another 23 on a kick-off return, flashing that 4.3 speed for the home folks. The only blip was a fumble, but if he can keep it from becoming a habit he should be ok. My boy Christian Morton accounted for six tackles and a sack in a secondary that was depleted with injuries and resting starters. Next week when he shuts down T.O. you will see (ok, that probably isn’t happening).
- My final note is a shout out to Wesley Woodyard, the leading tackler for the Broncos, a rookie out of Kentucky. Why are we still surprised by productive college players who don’t have the ‘right’ measurables looking good in the pros? Woodyard was the defensive leader on last year’s resurgent Wildcat team and recorded over 100 tackles in each of his final 3 seasons in college in the SEC (as we are told 453 times each fall, the best conference in college football).
- So why did he go undrafted? Apparently he is considered small (6’0”, 230 lbs) and a little slow (4.5 40-yard dash). Hmm, let’s pick a random former Bronco linebacker for comparison.
- There was one player that was close to his size (6’0”, 240 lbs) and speed (4.56 40-yard dash coming out of college) and was the defensive leader for a strong SEC team (ironically that also beat FSU in a bowl game in the player’s senior year).
- But why would we want another player to have a career like Al Wilson? He was a total bust – only a 5 time Pro-Bowler and the heart and soul of an AFC championship game team. Nah, why would anyone want that type of guy on their team.
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