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The Broncos best offensive player, Brandon McManus, named AFC's special teams player of the month.

— Lindsay Jones (@bylindsayhjones) October 29, 2015

Suffice to say, this is an excellent honor for McManus, and it also is another good sign for the Broncos’ roster building.  While Matt Prater was released for reasons not necessarily related to his overpriced contract, it did allow the Broncos to cut free from that contract, and ultimately find a suitable replacement at the proper price to invest in a kicker.  As he is in only his second accrued season, he can be retained cheap once again in 2016 under an ERFA tender, and still reasonably cheap once again in 2017 under an RFA tender.  If McManus continues his high level of play, it will be nice that the Broncos won’t have to worry about this position for a while.

It’s back to Broncos football this Sunday and we all know the Broncos will have their toughest challenge yet.

The Green Bay Packers are 6-0 and the Broncos will wear their blue jerseys this week, which makes you wonder if they hope the uniforms bring them some of that Super Bowl XXXII mojo.

Seriously, this game will indicate how well the Broncos measure up against one of the best teams in the NFL. Although the Broncos are 6-0, the offense’s early struggles have some people questioning just how good the Broncos really are. And the Packers are 6-0 and are strong in nearly every aspect. Football Outsiders ranks Green Bay fourth in offensive DVOA, seventh in defense and ninth in special teams.
Continue reading Midweek Musings: Here Comes The Pack

Here are the Week 7 rankings. This week, I figured I’d include a notable statistic about every team’s starting quarterback.

As a reminder, the rankings utilized for the Not So Scientific Rankings are:

* Pro Football Focus power rankings

* Pro Football Reference Simple Ranking System

* Football Outsiders DVOA Rating

* Five-Thirty-Eight ELO Playoff Probability Rankings

* Andrew Mason’s power rankings

Please visit each site to look at what they use to determine rankings.
Continue reading The Not So Scientific Team Rankings, Week 7

Jason Fitzgerald reviews the running backs who will be free agents for the 2016 offseason and the contracts he anticipates they will receive.

Ronnie Hillman will be a free agent after this season and the Broncos will have to decide whether or not to extend him. Jason believes Hillman will have to settle for a one-year deal, unless he becomes a dominant player.

While there are still plenty of games to play, from the Broncos’ perspective, it’s best to either extend Hillman (although I can see John Elway allowing Hillman to test the market before doing so) or wait to see what street free agents become available. The draft is an option, of course.

Either way, signing a “big name” RB isn’t the best idea, even though C.J. Anderson has been a disappointment and, if Hillman departs, Juwan Thompson and Kapri Bibbs are the only other backs that will be on the roster.

Now that we are about to enter the eighth week the NFL regular season, I figured we should start an open thread each week where people can talk about anything they want about NFL happenings.

Figured this is a better alternative than to starting threads for every item, unless something is significant.

The thread is yours, everyone.

Ty Sambrailo, DeMarcus Ware, Corey Nelson, Daniels, Evan Mathis, Louis Vasquez, Aqib Talib all practicing. Only Shane Ray was not. #Broncos

— Troy Renck (@TroyRenck) October 26, 2015

This is good news for the Broncos from the “how healthy is everyone” standpoint. Renck also tweeted that Sambrailo may not be ready to play every snap, but Gary Kubiak has tried rotating linemen and may plan on doing it against Green Bay.

Grantland’s Bill Barnwell borrowed AP’s Top 25 ranking of college football teams to rank how he views the top 25 NFL teams this season. One spoiler: He ranked the Broncos ninth, which is arguably fair considering the Broncos’ early struggles on offense.

I imagine everyone has seen my Not So Scientific NFL rankings, but Barnwell’s column prompted a thought about what tiers we might put the NFL teams. It goes like this:
Continue reading Barnwell’s Top 25 NFL Teams

For several years, the NFL has made two peculiar pushes.  The first, which has had some success, is to play more games overseas.  They’re up to three now, and have been talking much about adding more. The second, which has yet to be successful, is their longstanding desire to expand the regular season to 18 games.

I’m not terribly crazy about these two proposals, though I don’t have any burning anger against them, either. It’s clearly an effort by the NFL to make even more money. But if these pushes are to continue, I’ve felt for some time that the proper solution would be one offered today by Mike Florio: Expand only to 17 games, and then send the resulting extra 16 teams overseas.

Continue reading Mike Florio Suggests Expanding Regular Season to 17 Games

  …I attended my first ever Broncos game.  I mentioned this in comments somewhere else, but this game may have very well been the very last home game where Broncos fans could witness Peyton Manning at his typical best.  While I didn’t know exactly that for sure, as the picture at the left suggests I figured to go big for this game, as there wasn’t going to be many other times to see Manning do what he does live.

You can see the entire photo gallery of my time at the game here.  Also, as a bonus, this is where I was at in Denver the day before the game.

As we continue to burn away the bye week, feel free to share your own stories of Broncos games that you’ve attended.