SHANAHAN THROUGH THE EYES OF A PLAYER: JOHN ELWAY
espn.go.com
The other thing is he was very, very aggressive, and he wanted to win on the offensive and defensive side of the ball. A lot of coaches tried to sit back and win on defense. As a quarterback, why I liked Mike was he wanted to win it on the offensive side. If we needed a first down late in the game, we were going to be aggressive offensively rather than punting and putting the game in the defense’s hands. That’s something I admired about Mike, and it led to a lot of success when I played with him.
At least John Elway understands the sanctity of possession in the NFL. Does John Fox?
(h/t bmp210)
The nickel formation is usually dated back to the early 1960s, when Jerry Williams of the Eagles used it to try and defend Chicago Bears tight end Mike Ditka. The Dolphins made it popular in the 1970s with creative coordinator Bill Arnsparger running the defense for Don Shula (Arnsparger also employed an early form of the zone blitz).
Every team has some version of the nickel now and it’s constantly getting more common to deal with the pass-happy and increasingly tight end-centric offenses.
According to John Elway, the Broncos played nickel in 65% of their defensive snaps. Since the nickel has become the new base defensive formation, I thought we should take a quick look at Denver’s ‘new’ approach to defense.
Happy Friday, Broncos fans! Newly-elected Ring of Famer Tom Nalen says he's not looking forward to the daunting task of speaking in front of ~76,000 fans during his Week 4 induction ceremony.
Nails admits that by the time he retired in January of 2009, he was sick of going to meetings and the monotony of his role in the same blocking scheme, and instead preferred to play NFL Blitz with his fellow linemen.
The radio personality claims he was never a dirty player, and that it was always the guys to either side of him doing the cut blocking, although he does admit to having tried to injure Igor Olshansky to avenge an uncalled facemask infraction by the Chargers NT on the previous play.
Since the news is slowing to a standstill, I decided to go through and update all of our Sporcle quizzes.
Here they are, for your trivial pursuits:
Continue reading "Trivia Trough: We’ve updated all of our Sporcle quizzes"
Peyton Manning Q&A: Broncos QB details long road back, ambitions
www.cbssports.com
Q: You think you will play until you are 40?
Manning: “I really don’t know. I take it one year at a time. My contract is really four one-year deals. I wanted to be fair to the Broncos. I don’t feel like I’ve put them in any type of a bind and I could go out there and play freely. If I can still go out there and perform and be effective, and still enjoy doing it, I will do it. I would like to think I will be a guy who knows when it’s time to stop. I don’t want to be a guy who hung on and hung on. I do not have a goal in mind of a year or a statistic. People might think I am lying, staying to break this. The most important thing is whether I can still play.
Manning's age 40 season is 2016; the final year of his contract with the Broncos. This is a must-read from Pete Prisco and Manning, who says he's throwing the ball "signficantly better" than he did a year ago, and he blames his own limited preseason road action for the disastrous start to Denver's Week 2 loss at Atlanta.
Good Morning, Broncos fans! Probably because he's a baseball guy, Mike Klis follows up his characterization of Von Miller as a "near superstar" by using the retirement of Brian Urlacher to bring up the moronic concept of whether a player deserves to be a "first ballot HOFer".
A guy is either a HOFer or he's not, and we all know that Brian Urlacher is a HOFer.
Now, in that column, Mike Tanier raises the question of whether Urlacher will be a first ballot HOFer, but there he's just acknowledging the HOF's stupid voting process, which caps the number of enshrinees each year. Tanier isn't splitting HOF-worthy players into first-ballot and non-first-ballot categories, as Klis obnoxiously does.
Continue reading "Enough with this ‘first ballot’ garbage Lard"
Legendary center Tom Nalen will be inducted to Denver's Ring of Fame, the team announced on Wednesday.
The induction ceremony will take place on September 29, at halftime of Denver's Week 4 game versus the Eagles. As for why this isn't taking place Week 8, when Mike Shanahan is in town, is beyond us (we hope it's not due to some sort of bad blood between Pat Bowlen, John Elway, and Shanahan).
Nalen was the Broncos' pivot for 14 seasons (1994-2007), playing in 194 regular-season games (188 starts), plus 13 playoff starts.
Continue reading "Tom Nalen to be inducted to Broncos Ring of Fame"
Chiefs add two defensive backs, release two others
www.kansascity.com
The club signed unrestricted free-agent safety Quintin Demps, who spent three seasons at Houston and two with Philadelphia, where he played for Chiefs coach Andy Reid. Demps has three career interceptions, one sack, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery in 48 NFL games.
Demps returned 52 kicks as a rookie under Reid, including one for a touchdown. Last year, in 354 snaps over 12 games, he graded out at minus-2.1 overall according to PFF, with 20 tackles, three assists, three missed tackles, and four stops.
During Houston's Week 3 win at Denver, Demps saw 53 snaps and tallied six tackles, one assist, and one stop.
As we've noted here at IAOFM, new Denver draftees Sylvester Williams and Montee Ball were featured in segments for ESPN's excellent Sport Science.
Two years earlier, the Sport Science team put Von Miller through their testing gauntlet. I enjoy their work - they bring some solid technology to measure the things that make a certain player effective, and it highlights aspects of that player’s skill set. Even if it's a bit late, I thought I'd discuss Von's Sport Science segment here.
Watching Miller’s work is like seeing the Mikhail Baryshnikov of the NFL. Baryshnikov himself used to seem to leap up into the air and just pause there for a long moment; it was astonishing to watch. Miller reminds me of that quality - he often looks as if he’s playing at a different speed than the rest of the people on the field. He dashes through what are pauses between moments to the rest of us.
Urlacher retiring from NFL
espn.go.com
“After spending a lot of time this spring thinking about my NFL future, I have made a decision to retire,” Urlacher said in a statement he posted on Twitter. “Although I could continue playing, I’m not sure I would bring a level of performance or passion that’s up to my standards. When considering this along with the fact I could retire after a 13-year career wearing only one jersey for such a storied franchise, my decision became pretty clear.”
Denver ended up trading down from the #10 pick prior to the 2000 Draft, and the athletic freak went at #9 to Chicago, much to the disappointment of Broncos fans everywhere. Baltimore took WR Travis Taylor with Denver's old pick (oops), while the Broncos took Deltha O'Neal with Baltimore's (oops).
Mark Kiszla and others called for Denver to go after Urlacher this offseason, and a Chicago gossip columnist reported that they had talked to him, but it was never to be (and we're glad for that).
