About 3 months before this time of year, you start to hear terms bandied about, sometimes accurately, sometimes carelessly. The most common point of discussion is talked about as 'need' versus "BPA' or best player available. The fact is, no team drafts exclusively for one or the other. Both come into play when a team talks about any player. Let's start wth scouting and move along the path to the draft.
One of the complaints that you will hear yearly at this time comes from the scouts in the game. I'll explain in a little while. Some teams use services, like BLESTO (which was originally and acronym for the Bears, Lions, Eagles and Steelers scouting organization. National Scouting Service, knows simply as 'National' is the other larger scouting house. More and more, though, teams have their own scouts arranged usually by region or by conference. They may still subscribe to the info from the scouting services, but they do their own legwork once the early work is done.
Continue reading "Draft theories and systems: general theory"
If you care about god, country, and apple pie, you should care about one thing in this year's NFL draft.
Continue reading "Karl Marx hates return specialists, so let’s draft one"
Fat Man blogger TJ “The Dude” Johnson posts The Dude’s Mail Revue on Thursdays, in which he takes your questions about the state of the Denver Broncos. Got a titillating question? Put a dollar bill into the Dude’s G-String and he might answer it—after bowling practice.
Continue reading "The Dude’s Mail Sack: Draft Sean Weatherspoon because he likes Van Halen!"
In Part I, I tried to look at where Denver stands right now, and to establish how a year's familiarity with the team and systems could, for most of the players and coaches, provide a noticeable benefit. In this installment, I'm going to dissect the defense and look at some strengths, weaknesses, and potential for the future.
There's a new defensive coordinator in town, and Don 'Wink' Martindale has been unabashed about his feelings on the game. He's enthusiastic, he's excited and he plans to increase the aggression level of the Denver D. There was a lot of 'read and react' during the unlamented 2008 version, and it didn't work well. You still saw some of that in 2009, but it was (thankfully) limited. What you did see a lot of was what Renaldo Hill called 'vision coverage' - the DBs watched the QB's eyes to take their cues, which is somewhat different from read and react, an approach that deals with both run and pass. Vision coverage is, according to an interview with Renaldo Hill, a little moment slower and leaves some openings that receivers can take advantage of as a result. According to Hill, that won't be the case this year. You can expect to see the players locking harder onto the offensive players who come into their zones. Hill seemed to think that dropping this coverage and implementing the different approach would improve the secondary and the pass defense. There will also be more blitzing, and there will be an effort to avoid using eight in the box as much as is possible unless it's being done to exploit an offensive weakness. Nate Jones, the newest cornerback, is said to specialize in cornerback blitzing, so there should be some opportunity there which adds a weapon to the arsenal.
Continue reading "The state of the herd: familiarity and the defense"
The Denver Broncos came into 2009 on the heels of a shocking dismissal of long-time head coach Mike Shanahan. The next few months would be filled with the hiring of Josh McDaniels and his entire coaching staff, the dismissal/firing of both Jim and Jeff Goodman, the architects of the 2008 draft class, a tiff with QB Jay Cutler that resulted in his trade to Chicago, rumors of trades of Tony Scheffler (who ended 2009 in the doghouse of the new coaching regime), a very active role in free agency and a hotly debated role in the 2009 draft. Other than that, it was unusually calm in Dove Valley, unless you include redecorating and even removing some pictures, resulting in some (even more) irritated fans. Comparatively, 2010 has been very quiet. The two worst problems are trying to know if we have an interior line guy on either side of the ball and trying to understand who folks are talking about when they just say, 'Quinn'. Brady or Richard? Richard is the taller one....
Continue reading "Familiarity and the year 2010: the state of the herd report"
Fat Man blogger TJ “The Dude” Johnson posts The Dude’s Mail Revue on Thursdays, in which he takes your questions about the state of the Denver Broncos. Got a titillating question? Put a dollar bill into the Dude’s G-String and he might answer it—after bowling practice.
When I was asked for a piece on Mario Haggan and the inside linebacker position, I went through the three research files on Haggan that I had already developed and quickly realized that there was a lot more to the situation than just a story on Mario. Since I've covered him a few times already, I felt it best to deal more directly with the question, "What options do the Broncos have for ILB this year?" Since getting it all done solo wasn't an option right now, I gave a call to the Dude, admired the way his rug pulled the room together and enticed him into the project. Never one to miss out on some play time, TJ tossed in with gusto. At this point, you hopefully can't tell where one of us stops and the other begins, in a literary sense. We both hope that you enjoy the offering. - Doc and TJ
Fat Man blogger TJ “The Dude” Johnson posts The Dude’s Mail Revue on Thursdays, in which he takes your questions about the state of the Denver Broncos. Got a titillating question? Put a dollar bill into the Dude’s G-String and he might answer it—after bowling practice.
Continue reading "The Dude’s Mail Sack: Jason Elam is Bon Jovi"
Give me a running back with the power of Walter Payton and the speed of Eric Dickerson. Now you've got a guy who can take you to the promised land. But, unfortunately, a guy like that only comes along every 50 years. And we've already seen in our lifetime a guy named Bo Jackson.
Continue reading "A stop watch, a scale, and a prayer - drafting a running back"
We've been talking for weeks now about the nose tackles in this league, on this team and in this draft. It seems that every time I turn around, some other NFL team has decided that the intelligent answer to the short passing-based attack that has been sweeping the NFL is to move to the versatility of the 3-4 formation. As more and more teams use this attack as their primary or secondary weapon (in the case of some of the hybrids formations, another commonality in the NFL right now), there is a growing demand for nose tackles. Big ones and shorter ones, faster and slower ones, nose tackles are becoming one of the talks of the league.
