Good Morning, Broncos fans! Yesterday we covered the crucial Chargers/Bears game, so today let's take a quick peek at the game with the most immediate impact on Denver's season: Raiders/Vikings. An Oakland loss would drop them to 5-5 and into a first-place tie ZOMG with the Broncos, and they will be without several key players in RB Darren McFadden, WR Jacoby Ford and CB Chris Johnson, while three others are listed as questionable but expected to play: K Sebastian Janikowski, DT Richard Seymour and S Michael Huff.
As Jerry McDonald stresses, Oakland's first priority will be keeping pass rusher extraordinaire Jared Allen away from Carson Palmer, who will benefit from the absence of starters CB Antoine Winfield and S Husain Abdullah from Minnesota's secondary. The Vikings have struggled to put points on the board all year, but they also also lost to Detroit and Green Bay by just nine combined points, while Adrian Peterson has 11 TDs and nearly 1,000 yards from scrimmage; so you never know. Either way, how great/wild/unimaginable is it that we're talking about the Broncos potentially ending the day today in first place in the division?
Elway, Xanders scouting Oklahoma-Baylor game
blogs.denverpost.com
With the Broncos off this weekend, Broncos’ front-office bosses John Elway and Brian Xanders are in Waco, Texas scouting the Baylor-Oklahoma game.
What We Can All Learn from Tim Tebow
www.huffingtonpost.com
Of course, the bulk of the Tebow story has yet to be told, and the overwhelming likelihood remains that one of the league’s more archetypal quarterbacks will be the one to raise this year’s championship trophy. But for now, the education of Tim Tebow is also a chance for the rest of us to be reminded of some essential truths: that we must continually create spaces for new ways of seeing and understanding old systems; that we should always play to a person’s strengths, not their weaknesses; and that, sometimes, our institutions—and not the individuals who inhabit them—should be the ones to do the adjusting.
No matter what your view on Tim Tebow, the implicit point here is as solid as the ground upon which you stand (assuming you're not reading this in an earthquake): the world--and the systems we've created--are rarely black and white. Remember this the next time you take a side on the debate. No one really knows how this story is going to end. Superlatives make for good theater, but they rarely encompass the holistic thinking required to grasp or understand an issue.
When Tebow ultimately fails or succeeds as a quarterback, his critics or supporters will then write the narrative that shapes the history, as history is always written by the winners. In hindsight one side will be able to claim they knew it all along.
This time, they'll be right.
Toomer prefers Tebow to Mark Sanchez
espn.go.com
Toomer later added: “I’m not a huge Tebow supporter, but when you’re going against Sanchez, it’s not that big of a curve.”
Pundits have questioned Tebow’s NFL credentials because of an unorthodox throwing style. The left-hander had just two completions on eight attempts in a Nov. 13 win over Kansas City.
Toomer believes Tebow will “work tirelessly” to correct his mechanics.
“I’d rather have a guy with a deficiency like that, but at the end of the day he’s going to put it all on the line and he’s going to play with his heart,” Toomer said. “I’d love that.”
Amani Toomer was given the choice Saturday morning between starting a franchise with Tim Tebow or Mark Sanchez.
He picked Tebow, which is something Ted, Doug, and I all agreed with this week in our recent Chewing the Fat session.
Mark Sanchez--bringing Broncos fans together in peace and harmony.
I suppose that each week, at least a simple statement is warranted on the OL. Before the KC game, they had exactly eight regular season games together under their belts - one half of a single season. Many of the best lines in football have been together for several years, so when I talk about the fact that every player has visibly improved, it’s more than just a good sign. It fits with the other facts about the line. Denver’s OL has the signs of it turning into being a serious group. The run-heavy offense seems to excite and fit the players, although there’s been an emotional factor at work. But four of the five starters have been improving both statistically and on film, and when the Broncos look at their OL this offseason, I tend to doubt that there will be any major surprises. I don’t see them making many changes, but that, like all specifics, should wait for after the season.
They took the beating they received in Week 1 from the Raiders quite personally, and everyone got to see the outcome of that one when they played again in Oakland. I like seeing a team that feels like it has something to prove: It almost always shows. It wins games, too. John Elway called the OL ‘unsung heroes’ last week - I guess he isn’t a Fat Man convert yet. We’ll work on him: around IAOFM, the OL sings the body electric, as Ray Bradbury once wrote: there’s an electrifying current of strength coming from these young men. They’ve bought into the offense, and Tebow has bought into them - he trusts his guys, and they earn it. Just ask the Jets.
Continue reading "A first look at Year 2 of the Broncos’ rebuild"
Good Morning (barely), Broncos fans! If there's one game for Denver fans to narrow in on tomorrow, it's the Chargers at Bears at 415pm ET. Denver heads to San Diego next Sunday (Week 12) and hosts Jay Cutler & Co two weeks after that. So aside from scouting Denver's future opponents, a Bears victory would put San Diego a full game behind the Broncos in the AFC West standings and give Denver the opportunity to go up two games on Phil Rivers and the Bolts with a win next week.
PFF's Rodney Hart is interested to see how the Chargers' offensive tackles fare against pass rusher Julius Peppers, which of course will suggest how they'll contain (or not) Von Miller and Elvis Dumervil. Looks like a brutal pair of Sundays for Marcus McNeil/Brandyn Dombrowski and Jeromey Clary. Vincent Jackson also draws some tough assignments, as he'll be up against Bears CB Charles Tillman on Sunday and Champ Bailey a week later. Finally, Hart is interested to see how San Diego manages Devin Hester and the Bears' kick return game; as we all recall not so fondly, Hester torched Denver in the teams' last meeting to the tune of two TDs - one on a punt and the other on a kickoff.
Tracking Tebow, Week 11: Now do you believe?
eye-on-football.blogs.cbssports.com
You know how announcers will sometimes say “(Typical NFL quarterback) has a clock in his head and he knows the ball has to be out of his hands after 2.5 seconds”? Tebow has no such clock (and no pocket awareness to speak of). Instead, his alarm sounds after 55 minutes of horrific football, signifying that now it matters, now it’s time to play…Lost amid all the post-game revelry and Tebowing is…the real MVP of the game was rookie linebacker Von Miller…Denver has as legit shot to win the AFC West because it’s a weak division, but also because through Tebow, all things are possible.
The Sports Guy's Week 11 Picks
www.grantland.com
Tim Tebow is Frank the Tank from Old School. Most of the time, he’s fun to watch because of all the terrible things he does: overthrow or short-hop a wide open receiver … or scramble around like a chicken with his head cut off…But once or twice a game he has a “Frank during the debate” moment when he blacks out and pulls something spectacularly perfect out of his ass…I think Tim Tebow is a lot like the movie/Broadway show “The Producers”. Elway and Fox are the producers, Bialystock and Bloom. Tim Tebow is “Springtime for Hitler”. Elway and Fox think that if they put Tebow out there, he’s going to flop and make them look good and they’ll be able to draft a new QB. BUT, he’s winning even though he still sucks, so Elway and Fox are stuck with this clown until who knows when. Thoughts?
These are Bill's readers...
Vince Young, Tim Tebow have winning reputations
www.timesherald.com
Young hit the NFL with the same rap as Tebow. He was considered a great college quarterback who would struggle playing the position at the next level. Young still isn’t as comfortable as he could be in the Eagles’ system. They’ve been running some of the same plays over and over to get them just right. If Young gets the nod Sunday and Cooper starts in place of Jeremy Maclin, who is nursing shoulder and hamstring injuries, you can expect a at least a small handful of connections.
Not exactly news, but amusing nonetheless.
How to you get your fans excited at the prospects of starting Vince "Dream Team" Young in place of an injured Mike Vick this Sunday?
Compare him to Tim Tebow. Vince Young went 30-17 as a Titan. Tebow is 5-3.
Close enough. Naturally, Riley Cooper will go off.
Redefining Excellence, One Handoff at a Time
fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com
Watching Tebow play quarterback is like watching a television psychic perform a cold reading. He flails about, trying this strategy and that, looking lost and a little silly. Then suddenly, someone shouts, “That voice from the spirit world you are hearing whose first name begins with a J is my great-uncle Jasper!” Everyone gasps in awe and cheers wildly as Jasper delivers his otherworldly message of vagueness, and any skeptic who dares to point out the absurdity of it all is branded a hateful killjoy.
But quarterbacks with the “winner” label always cause headaches for the rational people among us. Fans eager to embrace a new hero apply the post hoc fallacy: the team won, therefore the quarterback must have done something wonderful. They mix in a little confirmation bias: those three good plays are a sign of greatness, so we can ignore the 53 bad ones. Communal reinforcement — even the guys on the talk radio show agree! — serves as a chaser. There is nothing wrong with any of this because fandom is about hope and emotional connections to players and teams, not rational thought. But to cut through the rhetoric and analyze and evaluate these quarterbacks, you are better off consulting the noted skeptics James Randi and Michael Shermer than the gang at ESPN.
As opinions shift faster than sands through an hourglass, Mike Tanier isn't budging one bit.
I'm just pissed because he got to work in the words "communal reinforcement" before I did.
And I was planning to get real kinky, too.
Killjoy, dude.
