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As a companion piece to what I shared about the Pro Football Hall of Fame ballot for 2016, here is a list of questions I came up with a few years back about what to consider when judging players.

The questions are based off those posed by Bill James, who debated the merits of certain baseball players argued as worthy of the HOF. He came up with a series of questions to consider. I took his questions and modified them to fit football.

Here are the 15 questions I believe everyone should consider when debating a player’s HOF candidacy.
Continue reading Pro Football HOF: Questions To Consider About Nominess

Something that hasn’t been discussed here has been the 2016 Pro Football Hall of Fame list of nominees.

Here is the full list, which includes mentions of the two senior committee nominees and the one contributor nominee. Those three immediately go to the final round and are considered separately. Meanwhile, the rest of the nominees will be reduced to 25 semifinalists.

I am going to present who I believe should be the 25 semifinalists from the above list, in order of position as they are listed.
Continue reading 2016 Pro Football HOF: My Semifinalist Picks

MAJOR changes in Detroit: Lions have fired GM Martin Mayhew and president Tom Lewand, league sources told ESPN.

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) November 5, 2015

Continue reading The Times They Are A Changin’ In Detroit

Pro Football Focus’ Sam Monson does a great job breaking down how well the Denver Broncos defense played against the Packers.

Read how he breaks down the play on which Rodgers had more than seven seconds to find an open receiver, but nobody got open and he couldn’t escape the pocket, so he had to throw it at the feet of a receiver.

Makes you wonder what this defense can do against other top offenses, doesn’t it?

So it’s time for another showdown between Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck. Unlike the last two times, though, we have a vast gap between the two teams, even though they both happen to be division leaders and are probably going to have little trouble winning the division. And that’s why Ryan Grigson is on his way to another Executive of the Year award, amirite?

Of course, we know the real story is that the Denver Broncos lead a division that has a good team (Oakland), an average team that could challenge them in the rematch (Kansas City) and a bad team (San Diego), while the Indianapolis Colts are leading the weakest division in the NFL, and possibly the weakest division ever since the switch to four divisions in each conference. The Colts and the Texans are below average, with the arrow kind of pointing upward for Houston because they got rid of Ryan Mallett, but it might not be enough to overtake the Colts, who still have enough talent to sweep the division.

And to think I was the guy who thought Andrew Luck might set new records on offense this season.
Continue reading Midweek Musings: Colts May Not Be Good But They Aren’t Pushovers

Wow.  On both sides of the ball I was awe-struck.

Continue reading Packers at Broncos: The 10 Things I Liked and the 10 Things I Didn’t

In this week’s Not So Scientific Rankings, I’ll briefly talk about the teams that the Denver Broncos have played or will play this season and we’ll figure out how good the Broncos’ schedule really is. After all, the halfway point is about when you know which teams really rank among the best and which ones are bottom feeders.

As always, these rankings are the average of the following:

* Pro Football Focus Power Rankings

* Pro Football Reference Simple Rankings System

* Football Outsiders DVOA Rankings

* Five-Thirty-Eight ELO Playoff Probability Rankings

* Andrew Mason’s power rankings
Continue reading The Not So Scientific Rankings, Week 8

Derek Wolfe is now the third #Broncos player to be named AFC Defensive Player of the Week. Wolfe for Packers game, Ward and Talib earlier.

— Jeff Legwold (@Jeff_Legwold) November 4, 2015

This is one of the benefits of having the best defense in the NFL: Players get a lot of recognition. To add to Legwold’s tweet, DeMarcus Ware was the AFC Defensive Player of the Month for September.

Considering that Derek Wolfe was Pro Football Focus’ highest rated Bronco in the Broncos-Packers game, it’s hard to argue Wolfe didn’t deserve his award.

I know it’s tough that the Broncos weren’t able to get a deal done for Joe Thomas, but I’m going to go over the reasons why the Broncos couldn’t do the deal if the price was too high.

I did go over in another thread that the Broncos only had a few picks they could trade from 2016: Their first, second, third and seventh rounders, a fifth-round pick from the Ravens and a seventh-round pick from the Niners. Their own fourth, fifth and sixth rounders have been traded and they can’t trade any compensatory pick they might get (and, at this point, it’s not final where those picks will fall).
Continue reading Why Giving Up Too Much For Joe Thomas Wasn’t Wise

The calls to and from Elway’s office continue:

According to a source, the Browns had talks with the Denver Broncos early in the season after Denver lost left tackle Ryan Clady to injury in the preseason. The Broncos were willing to part with their first-round pick in 2016, but the Browns also asked for second-year linebacker Shaq Barrett, and that apparently killed the deal.

In my opinion, that rightly killed the deal.  In the wise words of Ernie Accorsi, you “don’t trade young pass-rushers”.  That’s what he said as Giants GM when Chargers GM AJ Smith tried to get him to include Osi Umenyiora in the famous Eli Manning/Philip Rivers deal.

With less than six hours remaining before the trade deadline, it remains to be seen if the Broncos or anyone else can pry Thomas away from Cleveland.  But to offer another opinion, barring some kind of crazy Herschel Walker type offer, I think the Browns are crazy to even put Thomas on the trading block. If you’re going to conduct a fire sale properly, you want to offer players that either have expiring contracts (such as Alex Mack’s option to void after this year) or players that don’t fit in your system (potentially Barkevious Mingo).  But Thomas is one of the best left tackles in the league, and more importantly he’s under contract for 3.5 more seasons.  You’re supposed to construct rosters around players like that.  If the Browns trade Thomas, they’re not rebuilding, they’re demolishing.

And sadly for Browns fans, it’s something that they are all too accustomed to.