The Game vs Dallas

I did well on my self-imposed internet ban from Saturday 8pm until the re-airing of the Denver/Dallas game on the NFL Network 5pm (Eastern) Sunday. It was pretty easy, all things considering, as I stayed very busy.

I worked a bit more on clearing the half-acre of woodland behind my house, went to church, took my wife and our 5-year-old foster daughter to a nice Chinese restaurant for lunch, visited a gun & craft show (don’t ask) and continued working on a chainmaille coif (for those of you in Oakland, that’s medieval armor for your head). All in all a pretty full day!

So, I was ‘all ready’ for the game Sunday evening! My wife made chilli and I promised not to jump around and shout too loudly — it is only preseason after all (and I did a pretty good job keeping it quite while the little-one slept during the 49ers game).

However, I broke my promise almost immediately after the re-broadcast started. Not more than two minutes into the game the NFL Network scrolled the following news along the bottom of the screen: DEN Travis Henry to undergo MRI on injured knee.

All that preperation and effort went to piss within two minutes of the game. Oh, well. :)

As for the actual game… Wow, we stunk it up pretty badly.

The Denver 1st Team defense allowed Dallas to convert 6 of its 8 third-downs (10 of 16 total) and averaged over 13 yards per play. That simply won’t do.

The lose of Ekuban (and the trade of Warren) means we’re down two starters on the D-line. This means we need some of our old vets (like Lang) and/or our rookies (Thomas) to step up and give fans a reason to believe again in our dominate run defense.

However, it’s not the line that troubles me the most… I’m worried about the linebackers. Bates new system requires the D-line to fill the holes and the LB’s to kill the play by tackling the ball carrier. However, our linebackers, led by the talented D.J. Williams have been rather unimpressive. Ian Gold and Webster had some good plays, but I’ve been general underwhelmed with our starting linebackers.

On the positive side of the defense, our secondary is solid. Yeah, there were some plays made against some of our DB’s, but our CB’s and Safeties were EVERYWHERE. Lynch and Ferguson were flying around all over the field hitting people like they were in their mid-20’s. Bly had a great interception as well.

On offense… Well, we didn’t game-plan and Dallas did. Also our O-line was pretty banged up. I don’t know if I’m buying either of these excuses. I agree with Kyle over at BroncoTalk that I really don’t want to hear these excuses from our players. Fans can fill pages of blogs and forums with endless complaints and debates on this subject, but I want the PLAYERS to get on the practice field and get this $%!& fixed! And, to their credit, they seem to have done just that on Monday.

Highlights during the game on offense were the play of our back up O-line, WR’s Quincy Morgan and Brian Clark (dude, they looked like STUDS this weekend!) and the progress of backup QB Patrick Ramsey.

…more game notes and thought to follow!