Month: January 2016

Midweek Musings: Broncos-Patriots Isn’t About You-Know-What-Matchup

All week long, you’re likely to spend your time hearing talk about the upcoming AFC championship game between the Denver Broncos and the New England Patriots as if it boiled down to a one-on-one matchup or one factor being responsible for whatever the outcome will be.

Julian Edelman’s return means a Patriots win! Chris Harris’ shoulder injury means the Broncos secondary is in trouble! Patriots O-line figured out how to stop the pass rush last week! Every dropped pass is Peyton Manning’s decline! And the one you will hear more than any other, BRADY VS. MANNING FOR THE FINAL TIME, THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER GREAT QB RIVALRY!

That’s just a short list, of course, but my larger point is that you can’t really fit this conference title matchup into a neat little box with just a couple of factoids and trivia tidbits that explain everything about what will happen. We know that football is a complex sport and, while every sports reporter wants to boil a game down to one single play (I should know, I’m a sports reporter in real life), multiple factors play into the outcome.
Continue reading Midweek Musings: Broncos-Patriots Isn’t About You-Know-What-Matchup

Bolden’s Season Over; Harris’ Shoulder Still Hurt

The first bit of news was already mentioned elsewhere, but here it is.

Tough blow, especially after Bolden had a great punt return to start his day. One would suspect somebody gets moved up from the practice squad and Shiloh Keo will be active for special teams against New England.

Kubiak expects Harris to play Sunday, but he will be limited.

The real key, though, is for the Broncos to get the pass rush going and keep those players healthy. The Patriots facing the Chiefs with Justin Houston limited to eight snaps and Tamba Hali not at full strength is one thing, but if the Broncos can keep their defensive front seven intact throughout the game, it could help counter what ails Harris.

Of course, it’s also worth crossing our fingers that the Broncos don’t lose any more defensive backs to injury.

Broncos Extend Derek Wolfe For Four Years

Well, that’s one thing the Broncos can cross off their to-do list for the offseason.

And to think I was spending my time this afternoon tinkering with my offseason game plan for the Broncos. Mind you, though, that’s a good thing in this case.

UPDATE: Ian Rapoport has the contract’s total sum and some details on the breakdown. More information should be coming as to what are the full guarantees, injury-only guarantees and signing bonus.

ADDENDUM, 9 PM MT (Nick): Using Mike Klis’s report as a source, the contract breakdown for Wolfe should be something close to this:

Base Salary Prorated Bonus Roster Bonus Workout Bonus Cap
Number		 Cap
Savings (pre-June 1 cut)
2016 $4,500,000* $1,875,000* $500,000‡ $50,000 $6,925,000 ($5,075,000)
2017 $5,500,000^ $1,875,000* $500,000‡ $50,000 $7,925,000 $2,300,000
2018 $8,000,000† $1,875,000* $500,000‡ $50,000 $10,425,000 $6,675,000
2019 $9,000,000† $1,875,000* $500,000‡ $50,000 $11,425,000 $9,550,000

* fully guaranteed
^ guaranteed for injury only, fully guaranteed on the seventh day of the 2017 league year
† Klis did not specify Wolfe’s base salaries for these years, but these numbers are educated guesses to sum up the total contract worth to $36.7 million
‡ Per-game roster bonuses

Broncos-Steelers Friday Injury Report

Getting to the Broncos first…

Everybody else was a full participant. Brock Osweiler will be questionable for Sunday’s game, but Gary Kubiak remains optimistic Osweiler will be active Sunday. Every other player is expected to play (other than whoever is made a game-day inactive).

On the other side, we know by this point that Antonio Brown and DeAngelo Williams will be out and Ben Roethlisberger will be questionable. Per this article from the Steelers’ website, no other player has been ruled out.

On young QBs and their development

Brock Osweiler has just made his first seven starts in the NFL, and has had some good games and some lesser ones. I wondered if it was possible to extrapolate how he’s going to do when he develops, so I put together this simple analysis.

I looked at the “passer rating” of a bunch of today’s NFL starting quarterbacks in their first two years or so of starting, game by game, and calculated the average of the ratings for their first games. Then I plotted them by number of games, as shown in the following graph. Most of them improved with some game experience, as one would hope! Brock is the wide, dark blue line, with the orange circles.

Young QBs.1 todaysNote: I didn’t correct for the number of attempts per game, so this is just a running average of the ratings. And I left out the games where they either didn’t start, or got knocked out of the game after just a few throws. So the numbers aren’t definitive.

Nonetheless, Brock is near the top. Only Kaepernick and RG3 are higher, and Matt Ryan is about the same. Russell Wilson also passes him eventually, but the rest of them are all lower. OK, Kaepernick and RG3 have fallen from grace, but who knows how that will play out.

What about the quarterbacks that have flamed out? The “Geno Smith, Joey Harrington” highly drafted but never lived up to expectations QBs?

I did the same analysis , and fortunately, Osweiler is well above all of them. (Note I left out the worst of them, the Akili Smith, Jamarcus Russell, Ryan Leafs of the world.)

Young QBs.2 busts

Finally, let’s look at how Osweiler’s first games compare to some of the greatest QBs of all time.

Young QBs.3.alltime

Alright, he’s not right at the top here, but maybe we shouldn’t expect that. He is ahead of Peyton Manning, Joe Montana, Drew Brees. For his first seven starts, he’s basically the same as Tom Brady and Brett Favre. That’s pretty good company!

So based on this pretty simple analysis, I think that Osweiler is a good NFL quarterback, and potentially a very good one.