What I’m looking forward to vs SF

I think I’ll bring these posts back from 2007. This is just a quick list of things I’m looking forward to seeing in our upcoming game. This week it’s our preseason opener against the 49ers — and I’m completely stoked to finally see bronco jersey’s running around under the lights again!

Here is a look at what I’m most excited about seeing this evening…

COACHING
I’m pretty excited to see how our new head coach operates on the sidelines. I have a good feeling that the folks at the NFL Network will give us some good footage of McDaniels as he runs the game tonight, and I’m looking forward to watching him closely. The thing I’m most interested in is playcalling… I could usually predict (and that means our opponents could too) what play Shanny was going to call in pretty much every situation. There were some exceptions, like Shanahan’s move to passing on 1st down last year, but in general it was predictable (at least to us fanboys). Josh is an unknown commodity. Even what he did with the Pat’s doesn’t really count as he wasn’t the Head Coach and still had to work within Bill’s system. And even though the play book may be more vanilla than a regular season game, I’ll be watching ever play called on Friday night as we all learn the style of play our new Head Coach is going to be running this season.

KNOW MORE ABOUT KNOWSHON MORENO
It looks like we’re going to get a healthy dose of Moreno today! I’m really looking forward to seeing what he can bring to the game even though I would expect some mental gaps just because of his limited camp time. I think our next game vs Seattle will be a more accurate example of his grasp of the over-all offense, but tomorrow night will give us good insight into his physical skill set vs NFL talent.

On a person note, it will be nice to see a talented young player wearing our #27 jersey again.

THE 411 ON OUR 3-4
Nolan’s newly revamped 3-4 will officially hit the field in a little more than 24 hours. For the regular season, I think our starting secondary with Champ, Dawkins, Hill and Goodman is as strong as we’ve ever had, so the question mark is squarely on the our front seven. The main three question are:

• Do we have the talent in the front three to pull this formation off? If so, who fills those positions?
• Who among the converted DE’s make the best OLBs? Who can separate themselves as position leaders here?
• What type of backup talent to do we have within the front seven (and, heck, the back four)?

I think we’ll get some early answers so of these questions vs San Fran. Let’s see what kind of rushing yards are gained against our D… That will be a very telling stat.

OH, ORTON
While I’m not a big Orton fan, I’m still looking forward to seeing if he can run the offense well enough to get us some ‘W’s this season. He needs to show me something more than I’ve seen in camp in order to convince me he’s the answer, but I’m not close-minded enough to count him out yet.

On the other hand, I’m pulling for Chris Simms to step it up big-time tomorrow night. While he’s had a rough camp, there is just something intangible about Simms as a player that I like… Regardless, it should fun to watch both QB’s go through their first snaps in Bronco jerseys this weekend.

FOCUSING ON BEING SPECIAL
God bless our new Head Coach. He’s been be REALLY working on improving our dismal kickoff team play. He mentioned another 35 minutes of training camp time again on Tuesday devoted to this phase of the game and he’s mentioned the importance of starting field position in every other camp interview. My sincere hope is that this attention to our historically TERRIBLE area of play will translate into major improvement. Kicking and returning will also be nice to watch in game situations this preseason, but our kick off returns coverage units need to be much better than what we suffered with under Shanahan’s era.

BACKUPS AND ROOKIES AND VETERANS, OH MY!
Unlike most of my football buddies in my office, I LOVE the 4th quarter of preseason games. For us die-hard Broncos fans, it’s the only time we’re going to see extensive play from our backups who will likely only play on special teams unless a starter is injured. And since many of our 80 players will not join us in the regular season, this will be the only time we will get to see them in orange and blue. I wish them all good luck and happy hunting tonight!

What about you? What are most looking forward to this evening? Is there something you could see tonight that would make you change your win/loss prediction for the season? Are there any 3rd or 4th stringers you can’t wait to see this evening?