WEEK 4: UNDEFEATED 3-0 Denver Broncos vs 2-1 Baltimore Ravens - 2.25pm MDT /// 4.25pm EDT

[lomaxgrUK]

2 hours ago, French Fan said:

Even if he has not taken 1 snap in 1 month with the offensive team and train against the defensive team, Drew Lock is still responsible for the defeat according to some. It's still amazing.

Who? People in this forum? I certainly haven't seen it. Everybody seemed to be sympathetic towards how difficult of a situation it was for Drew to come into.

2 hours ago, French Fan said:

90 yds is Bridgewater's offensive total yesterday and again ... at this point the offensive line was doing a bit of its job.
Then completely dominated by power and speed. Meinertz and Muti are still far from being valid replacements.
0 support from Sutton who still missed many routes yesterday. On the interception ... no desire. Pathetic.
Where has Noah Fant gone since the start of the season?
Inability to stretch the field. KJ Hamler out ... no one behind him.

Totally agree with all of this. In addition, I would add how pathetic Sutton's effort was on that deep ball Drew threw behind him (intentionally) when the CB AND Safety were on top of him. That is football basics - turn and look for the ball on your back shoulder. Instead, Sutton just stropped his way in a straight line.

2 hours ago, French Fan said:

Pat Surtain will surely be a good player, but how many times has he been attacked again yesterday? He is far from his player ... we are not in the NCAA he relies too much on his talent.

He certainly had some mental errors yesterday that you'd expect from a rookie. Know your Defensive call - you can't play soft, outside technique when you're sending a 6 man blitz. That makes the slant wayyyyyy too easy. Get up there with inside technique and make the QB through the go route/fade route.

2 hours ago, French Fan said:

Anyway for years if the opposing team attacks with his TE, no player will be able to cover. Andrews did what he wanted yesterday.
We were still beaten by the passes of Lamar Jackson ... the passes .....

I think you have to put this in to context. There is a reason Andrews cooks so much in that Offense. They are one of the best rushing attacks in the history of the NFL. The stats clearly show that.

So what is their entire passing Offense predicated on? Play Action. This draws the LB's up the field, takes them out of passing lanes, and in particular the passing lanes that you traditionally see TE's occupy. It is incredibly difficult to cover an athletic TE that can lineup inline vs Play Action. The man covering him needs to account for the (NFL record) rushing Offense, and in a split second needs to cover a very athletic TE if it's Play Action.

We aren't the first team to get burned by Andrews, we won't be the last. The TD pass to Brown bothered me a lot more, especially when you've got two guys deep back there that are covering nobody else.

 

[lomaxgrUK]

 

😏

Pathetic. Mike Ford, a guy who's only job on this roster is ST coverage, blowing contain on that Punt to end the 1st half was simply unacceptable. 

I am usually not an advocate of firing people everytime something bad happens, but this is a trend over such a long time now.

Our ST needs something drastic to happen and that means new Coaches.

[Dbrog24]

I'm a bit curious to understand why our ST is so bad. I know when jewel was healthy, he was great at tackles after punts so is that kinda what we need? I mean you see our non-ST defense almost always "plays safe" with their coverage where they don't even attempt to tackle unless the ball has already been caught. This makes for "minimizing yards" I suppose but I guess question still stands. Is it a tackling problem?

Maybe that's completely off and there's some positioning issues that don't allow us to miss tackles so when we do, we get taken for a TD. I definitely saw that happen this past game once. Idk... Any input from yall? 

Edited October 4, 2021 by Dbrog24

[Ray Reed]

On 9/30/2021 at 11:03 AM, Ray Reed said:

This feels like the IR bowl.

Hopefully neither team continues that trend Sunday.

Hope Teddy is ok.

Villanueva got injured for us obviously so will have to see how bad that one is this week.

Honestly ridiculous how many injuries each of these teams is getting.

 

[big_palooka]

Denver's QB situation is tough. Teddy is who he is. He can manage a game, but he's not going to put a team on his back when he needs to. Matt Rhule and company quickly realized that and moved on. Lock, is exactly who they thought he'd be coming out of Missouri. An inconsistent QB with accuracy issues who lack any presence on the field. Not to mention he is impossible to root for. 

The challenge here is the defense is good enough that they will be picking middle of the pack in the draft. The 2022 QB class looks pretty meh at this stage compared to the past few years. Going to be hard to identify that QBOTF type for them.  They may need to sell the farm in a trading for a vet if available. 

A lot of like about this team. But they have got to figure this post Manning QB era out. 

Also... Fangio is a joke. But you all knew that when he was hired right? Pretty obvious he's a better DC and HC.

[lomaxgrUK]

13 minutes ago, big_palooka said:

Denver's QB situation is tough. Teddy is who he is. He can manage a game, but he's not going to put a team on his back when he needs to. Matt Rhule and company quickly realized that and moved on. Lock, is exactly who they thought he'd be coming out of Missouri. An inconsistent QB with accuracy issues who lack any presence on the field. Not to mention he is impossible to root for. 

The challenge here is the defense is good enough that they will be picking middle of the pack in the draft. The 2022 QB class looks pretty meh at this stage compared to the past few years. Going to be hard to identify that QBOTF type for them.  They may need to sell the farm in a trading for a vet if available. 

A lot of like about this team. But they have got to figure this post Manning QB era out. 

We've got 170 pages talking about exactly this 😄 But yeh, I don't think anyone is going to disagree.

It's just impossible as a fan to not cast your mind back to chances we've had to pick a franchise QB and either whiffed (Lynch) or decided not to take them (Allen, Jackson).

For sure, we're in QB purgatory right now with no end in sight.

13 minutes ago, big_palooka said:

Also... Fangio is a joke. But you all knew that when he was hired right? Pretty obvious he's a better DC and HC.

He's been much better this year, but yeh, that clock management at the end of the 1st half yesterday was just abysmal.

 

[big_palooka]

39 minutes ago, lomaxgrUK said:

We've got 170 pages talking about exactly this 😄 But yeh, I don't think anyone is going to disagree.

It's just impossible as a fan to not cast your mind back to chances we've had to pick a franchise QB and either whiffed (Lynch) or decided not to take them (Allen, Jackson).

For sure, we're in QB purgatory right now with no end in sight.

Forgive me 😆 But I can imagine. Nothing worse than having a team of parts that lacks the QB to make it whole. Broncos have made some egregious decisions around QB for awhile. Is Elway to blame mostly for this?

Having Fields fall in their laps and passing will likely look ugly in time. Assuming Nagy is fired before he ruins him. I thought Fields with the collection of skill talent could have been fun in Denver. 

Plus side... Denver is always a desirable place to play and the parts are there to pull off something crazy like a Rodgers trade. 

[BroncoBruin]

Oof. Vic doubling down today on the last play criticism. Said it was bull**** but he wasn’t surprised the Ravens did it because player safety is secondary there. 

[lomaxgrUK]

Embarrassing himself to be honest. Get over it. You sound like a jealous ex.

"Honestly, I don't give a **** about that last play. I care about the ones that came before it thoroughout the game" - Kareem Jackson with the best response.

[broncos67]

13 minutes ago, lomaxgrUK said:

Embarrassing himself to be honest. Get over it. You sound like a jealous ex.

"Honestly, I don't give a **** about that last play. I care about the ones that came before it thoroughout the game" - Kareem Jackson with the best response.

Vic sounds ridiculous, and his anger is ridiculous. I agree George, he's got big time "jilted lover" vibes.

[broncos67]

15 hours ago, AnAngryAmerican said:

What’s concerning is that, for this franchise, that target - barley plus .500 and a WC contender - is now the upper end of the stated goal.

George Paton comes from a franchise where they were always a bridesmaid and never a bride. These aren’t the Bowlen/Shanahan/Elway/Reeves Broncos anymore where the Super Bowl is the goal. It’s a team where the goal is “to play meaningful football in November and December.”

What we can hope for is for a new owner - whomever it may be - to reestablish the Super Bowl culture around here. 

I do not understand your dislike for George Paton. Every time we have a coaching vacancy, you rail against the "hot coordinator" candidates. So for the GM role, we go out and hire an incredibly well regarded personnel guy. He has had ONE offseason, and now you've pivoted to this idea that we're okay with mediocrity. Is the current coaching situation less than ideal? Yes. But you have no clue what the internal dynamics were behind keeping Fangio. None of us do. All I know is this, the guy is well regarded around the league for his talent chops. Bringing in a GM is not a one-year process, and I know you know that.

[champ11]

29 minutes ago, lomaxgrUK said:

Embarrassing himself to be honest. Get over it. You sound like a jealous ex.

"Honestly, I don't give a **** about that last play. I care about the ones that came before it thoroughout the game" - Kareem Jackson with the best response.

So embarrassing when the game was garbage time way sooner than it could have been. Should have been a competitive game and it was a horrid performance. Extreme loser vibes from him 

[champ11]

1 hour ago, big_palooka said:

Forgive me 😆 But I can imagine. Nothing worse than having a team of parts that lacks the QB to make it whole. Broncos have made some egregious decisions around QB for awhile. Is Elway to blame mostly for this?

Having Fields fall in their laps and passing will likely look ugly in time. Assuming Nagy is fired before he ruins him. I thought Fields with the collection of skill talent could have been fun in Denver. 

Plus side... Denver is always a desirable place to play and the parts are there to pull off something crazy like a Rodgers trade. 

I’d say the vast majority of Broncos fans were ecstatic Fields fell to 9 and were upset he wasn’t the selection tbh. Still pretty wild. We’ll see how it works out. 

[The Helicopter]

I thought our running game and defense gave us a legit effort and opportunity to keep the game competitive. Is there any team in this league that's better off w/o their proven 1st string QB on the field? Shurmer's pass happy offense and our special teams...and now our injuries will make it hard to beat most teams on our schedule.

Edited October 4, 2021 by The Helicopter

[Broncofan]

4 hours ago, Dbrog24 said:

I'm a bit curious to understand why our ST is so bad. I know when jewel was healthy, he was great at tackles after punts so is that kinda what we need? I mean you see our non-ST defense almost always "plays safe" with their coverage where they don't even attempt to tackle unless the ball has already been caught. This makes for "minimizing yards" I suppose but I guess question still stands. Is it a tackling problem?

Maybe that's completely off and there's some positioning issues that don't allow us to miss tackles so when we do, we get taken for a TD. I definitely saw that happen this past game once. Idk... Any input from yall? 

ST is literally 10-20 percent talent (you need enough speed to cover), 20-30 percent kicker/punter skills (KO guy gets it deep, punter gets hang time/directionality/sideline ability) - and >50 percent coaching.   It's embarrassing that we're this bad year in and year out.    It's about preparation, drills, and coaching on angles, staying in lanes, and training the skills that are the easiest to learn (out of the pro football skill sets).

There's a reason teams like New England and Baltimore do so well on ST's.   Coaching literally makes the difference in ST's.    And to be as bad as we are, and have been for a while now, is flat out inexcusable.   And that's not just on the ST coaches, but on the HC.    Accountability is key.   It's what makes Fangio going on about BAL's decision to go for  the record so ridiculous.    Honestly, you don't like it, don't be in that position to begin with.  SMH.

Fangio is a great DC, and he can develop D talent.  He gets players and teams ready to compete.    But his game management (outside of week 1) has remained the same.   We gave him a pass because it wasn't needed Weeks 2-3.  It's just disheartening to see it in a game where it did matter - and to show Fangio going back to his game mismanagement ways.    He should be fired up about how bad our ST play is, because that's actually fixable, or holding an Urban Meyer-level presser to apologize for his game management (again).   To waste time on BAL's last play - man, it's a bad look.  SMH.

Edited October 4, 2021 by Broncofan