2008 Week 1 observations

The Broncos first game of 2008 was, in my eyes, one of the best performances I have seen from them in years. That said, we have to be careful not to get too excited. The Raiders looked atrocious, and clearly a real team will put up a better game. Still, a win like this must be enjoyed. Sure, don’t hand the Broncos the playoffs yet, it’s just one game, but we crushed the Raiders. We embarassed them thoroughly. That’s a moment that must be enjoyed.

With all that here are some observations I have about this game and what I think they mean.

Offense

• I didn’t hear the name Clady or Harris all night long. That means they didn’t burned, beat, knocked down or penalized. They held absolutely solid. Best past protection Jay Cutler has ever had. And as pathetic as the Raiders are, their D-line is theoretically pretty good at the pass rush. Remember DE Derrick Burgess?
• In contrast to their nearly perfect showing in pass protection, the O-line was a little less effective in run blocking. I didn’t see a lot of those signature massive gaps that let Selvin Young have a great run where he can take on a safety one on one and break that big TD run. I’m a little concerned that we won’t see those. On the other hand, we did see Pittman power it into the endzone twice, and Hall had a lot of good power running too. I think we’re going to see a different Broncos running game than we’re used to. I’m not yet sure what it’s going to look like against a team that can play four quarters of football.

  I think this has a lot to do with our personnel. Wiegmann is really a pretty proto typical NFL center. Clady has always been better at pass protection than run blocking. Harris came from a zone blocking system, but with him and Kuper and Clady all being pretty young, I think their coordination in the zone blocking may just not be as good as we’re used to. It’s possible it never will be. This is probably okay as long as their pass protection remains solid.

• I’ll say it. Jay Cutler is going to be spoken of in the same sentences and Brady and Manning (and it won’t be because of injury). I’ve been a Cutler believer from day zero — heck, I was excited for the guy before we drafted him. Now? Good pass protection, good receivers? Pass first offense. Be sure Cutler is on your fantasy teams.
• I did see Selvin Young completely fail to pass block for Cutler; Cutler saw it coming and got the ball out for a long completion.
• Cutler passed for 299 yards in 16 attempts and a 137.2 passer rating. Yes, thats an 18.7 yards per attempt average. That says that Cutler has a great deep ball, and that he has plenty of time in the pocket.
• Hey, did you hear that the Broncos have issues in the red zone? Not this game. Is this a sign of things to come? Last year we had a ridiculous problem with red zone running. Pittman scored twice in the red zone, and one of those scores seemed effortless, while the other one he just powered through.
• Eddie Royal made a couple of rookie mistakes, not lining up in the right place, etc. I think he gets a free pass on those, given what else he did. Royal beat Hall a lot. Royal beat Asomugha once or twice too. Marshall and Royal have a lot of potential. And the best part? We drafted ’em. We need to make sure we keep them.
• The only criticsm I can come up with is that there were a couple more misses/drops than I would’ve liked. Scheffler dropped a TD in the endzone. Nate Jackson dropped one in the dirt. Well, I know it’s hard to catch passes in the dirt, that’s because we’re not playing baseball. Scheff made up for it with that 72 yard reception. Jackson still needs to.
• Shanahan played aggressively. He didn’t let up late. I respect that. The worst thing that can happen is watching a coach go conservative and let a team get back into the game instead of stepping on their neck and keeping them down.

Offensively, the team is exactly what I thought they would be coming out of camp. There are weapons everywhere, the rookies are well integrated into the team. They have poise.

Defense

• Slowik rushed at least 5 almost every passing play. There’s a downside to doing this; it creates weird mismatches in coverage. For example, Jamie Winborn covering Ron Curry. That’s a mismatch, and that’s something an experienced, competent quarterback can take advantage of. Luckily we were playing JaMarcus Russell and Curry and Lelie were receiving.
• I saw Bailey go in on a blitz once. I’m not sure you want to blitz JaMarcus Russell with a CB. Yes, Bailey can do it all, but Russell is huge. What happens if Bailey just bounces?
• I saw something I don’t see a lot of from the Broncos. Pass rush. It wasn’t always just the blitzers. I watched Thomas and D-Rob both break through the o-line and make Russell throw. I saw Doom get around and get in Russell’s face. I saw Kenny Peterson get his hands on Russell’s jersey. These are important things.
• I saw a weakness in the middle. When Russell was making completions, it was usually in the middle. Chances are that means a S or LB was not up to the zone coverage, or that we had too many guys in on the blitz and there simply wasn’t enough personnel in the middle of the field. I think that’s going to take us back to the bend-but-dont-break philosophy, which is going to lead to some very painful contests.

  But remember, this is an offensive league. The rules are very much in favor of the offense. If things are perfectly balanced, then the offense is going to score more often than the defense is going to stop them. That’s the way of the game. We have to be able to accept that sometimes the defense’s job is to slow the offense down more than it is to stop them.

• On the other hand, 2 of 12. That’s 10 times the defense was able to prevent a 3rd down completion. That is one of the truest measures of the success of a defense: Can you put the other team in a 3rd down situation, and can you stop them there? Nothing else matters if you can’t get off the field. In this game, at least, we did that. It won’t go so well next time, but:
• I predicted during training camp that this defense had been retooled enough to revert to the mean. The personnel we have will make this defense average. An average defense is enough. An average defense will get off the field on enough drives to let the offense carry the game. They slow down the run enough to make the other team win through the air and try to capitalize on mistakes. I’m hoping for average from this defense — anything above average is beating expectations. Also, if they manage to remain above average for 4 games, that’s when I would start talking Superbowl.
• Who wold have thought John Engleberger would be a tackling leader. Maybe we’ve been wrong about him. You want your defensive linemen to get a lot of tackles; those are almost always successful plays for the defense. The players you don’t want with a lot of tackles are cornerbacks. And our cornerbacks didn’t have a lot of tackles.

Remember that last year we struggled against the Raiders. Jason Elam had to win games for us, along with Shanahan playing head games. Not this year. Whatever you take away from this week, the Denver Broncos are a better team than last year. Last year they simply could not have accomplished this.

Trying to come down to Earth here, what does this mean for the season? Well, it’s pretty easy to read too much into the opening game. We’ve had huge losses in the opening game and still come back to have good seasons. We’ve put up huge wins in the opening game to come back and have mediocre seasons. So nothing’s written in stone here.

But I think we saw a unit that is ready to play, that is comfortable with who they are. This team has that elusive thing that sports announcers love to talk about: it has an identity. This team knows what it wants to do, and it goes out there and does it.

Next week we face a Chargers team that is coming off of a heartbreaking loss. They played pretty well throughout the game, but their defense looked a little lost, a little off balance. They are going to take that loss, try to correct their mistakes, and come out angry. They are going to play harder, faster and meaner than they did in the first game. They have to prove that loss was a fluke, and they’re going to see the Broncos as their primary division rival, a team that is coming off a big win and needs to be taken down a peg.

If the Broncos celebrate too long and get too cocky, this could be a very poor game. The Broncos need to remember that the Chargers are considered the amongst the elite, are a popular Superbowl pick, and that there is no single more important game this season. If the Broncos prove themselves against the Chargers, they will be considered legitimate Superbowl contenders. Not just a wildcard playoff possibility.

Superbowl contenders.

That’s what next week means.