Thin Air

First of all, I know some of you will be raising your eyebrows when you see this week’s rankings. To which I’m going to say, I know. Things may not make sense, but the criteria and the rankings I use for my Not-So-Scientific Rankings will remain the same.

I will say, though, that the rankings will tell you who are likely to be the most dangerous teams in the playoffs, and playing that role may be more advantageous than being considered the favorite to win the Super Bowl, because the latter tends to be based more on reputation than anything. Being the dangerous team in the playoffs, though, doesn’t always account for past reputation and looks closer at what the team did early in the season, to what the team is doing now and how much it has improved.

Moving on to the rankings, which are an average of:

Pro Football Focus Power Rankings

Pro Football Reference Simple Rankings System

Five Thirty Eight ELO Playoff Probability Rankings

Football Outsiders DVOA Rankings

Andrew Mason’s Power Rankings
Continue reading The Not-So-Scientific Rankings Week 13

Broncos have signed former Texans safety Shiloh Keo. #9news #9sports

— Mike Klis (@MikeKlis) December 9, 2015

As Ian Rapoport also pointed out in reply to Klis, Keo was quite direct and public in his desire to play for the Broncos:

@kaleo10 Keo–Josh was with us in camp and first 4 games-u know how much I think of u–hope that little Keo is doing well

— Wade Phillips (@sonofbum) December 2, 2015

@sonofbum I hear ya, still the same system tho. Little man is doing great. Keep me in mind tho if things don't pan out

— Shiloh Keo (@kaleo10) December 2, 2015

Coming from the Idaho Vandals in college, Keo was selected in the fifth round by the Texans, and played for both Gary Kubiak and Wade Phillips during his entire tenure in Houston, which included 11 starts in 2013.

Nick already reviewed what’s needed for the Broncos to make the playoffs, but I wanted to look at the upcoming schedules for the AFC teams who have the best chances to make the playoffs.

For this exercise, I made the following assumptions about the AFC.

* Cincinnati, Denver and New England will win their divisions while Kansas City should easily get a wild card berth.
* The AFC South is between Indianapolis and Houston.
* The final wild card spot is between the New York Jets, Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Oakland.
* While others are still mathematically in the hunt, too much must fall into place for those teams to make it.

With that mind, let’s look at everybody’s remaining schedules:
Continue reading AFC Playoff Contenders And Remaining Schedules

Via Andrew Mason:

The Broncos waived QB Christian Ponder on Tuesday, leaving them with 52 players on the primary roster, including three quarterbacks — one of whom, Peyton Manning, will not play this week as he continues his recovery from a plantar fascia tear.

The roster vacancy leaves the Broncos room to make a move as soon as Wednesday. That spot could be used to address the safety position, which is coping with injuries to T.J. Ward, David Bruton Jr. and Omar Bolden.

Continue reading Christian Ponder, We Hardly Knew Ye

As part of OTC’s ongoing 2016 Free Agency Preview series:

The Broncos may make a big push before free agency to lock [Malik Jackson] up before having to turn their attention to Von Miller. It actually may benefit the Broncos to use up some cap room on Jackson to try to show a more limited pool of money when dealing with Miller. If Jackson hits free agency expect the teams that miss out on Wilkerson or don’t want to spend top tier money on a 34 end to be very active in acquiring Jackson.

Projected Value: 5 years, $36-$40 million

[…]

If the Broncos don’t see any positive signs with Jackson they will quickly turn their attention to [Derek] Wolfe. It’s possible they may prefer Wolfe if they had to choose one or the other though Jackson is probably the more expensive player with a bit more upside. If the Broncos don’t push to re-sign him, he should find a pretty robust market as he should be about as sure a bet as there is in free agency to fill a specific role as good as anyone else in the league. If Denver lets him go I would not be surprised if he lands with the Chargers.

Projected Value: 5 years, $33-$37 million

These projected deals fit well in line with the current gap between the first and second tier of 3-4 defensive linemen (excepting that JJ Watt is in his own world).

My own take on how to deal with Wolfe and Jackson remains simple, and unchanged from the beginning of this season: whoever takes the more team-friendly deal first stays, and the other one walks. It will be very difficult for the Broncos to keep both of them while at the same time retaining Von Miller, Brock Osweiler, and their wide array of RFAs and ERFAs.

I’ll take a win when we get one, but I wasn’t a fan of the offense. The Broncos scored less than any other team against the Chargers. The average score against the Chargers is 28 points while we only got 17, 7 of those points coming from a defensive interception.

If we win every game the rest of this season then we are guaranteed home field in the offseason. However, the Cincinnati Bengals will be a very difficult opponent.

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

We all know and respect John Elway mostly for his accolades in professional football.  But the Pac-12 made incredibly sure not to ignore his college accomplishments, as in the lead-up to Saturday’s conference championship between Stanford and USC, Elway was named the Pac-12 Offensive Player Of The Century.

Legends in the house. The Offensive and Defensive Players of the Century @johnelway and @RonnieLottHOF. #Pac12FCG pic.twitter.com/o5L0Tjnd8V

— Pac-12 Networks (@Pac12Networks) December 5, 2015

Continue reading Stanford University: A Wealth Of Broncos Connections

So after 12 games, how do advanced metrics measure how the Broncos have performed? Let’s examine a few numbers.

We’ll start with Pro Football Reference’s Expected Points. I’ve gone over this previously when examining Super Bowl winning teams, in which I’ve used the following scale for evaluating PFR’s Expected Points and what they mean for each area.

Positive double digits: Great performance
Positive single digits above 2: Good performance
Between +2 and -2: Average performance
Negative single digits below -2: Mediocre performance
Negative double digits: Bad performance
Continue reading The Morning After: Broncos and Advanced Metrics

Broncos need safeties: David Bruton just said he has 2 sprained left knee ligaments and bone bruise. Out 1-2 weeks. #9news #9sports

— Mike Klis (@MikeKlis) December 7, 2015

It remains to be seen if T.J. Ward will play this week, but all things considered, it was a smart decision for Gary Kubiak to rest DeMarcus Ware. Getting him to full strength will improve the pass rush and take pressure off the defensive backs.

If Ward can’t play against Oakland, it’s likely you’ll see plenty of Josh Bush and Omar Bolden. Bradley Roby could play safety on a couple of downs, too. And it might mean Lorenzo Doss sees a couple of snaps on defense.

The important thing at this point is to get everyone healthy, as after Oakland, two key games against Pittsburgh and Cincinnati await.

(EDIT 1:25 P.M. MST: I meant to say Lorenzo Doss, not Taurean Nixon, although it’s possible the Broncos could move Nixon up from the practice squad.)

I spent a lot of words talking about this last week, when more scenarios were open. But I made sure to bold the simplest and best path for the Broncos: “win out and one Patriots loss”.  Well, thanks to the Eagles, that one Patriots loss came earlier than we thought.  Coupled with the Broncos’ win at San Diego, Denver now controls their own destiny to the #1 seed.  Win out, including defeating the Bengals, and the path in the AFC goes through Denver.

The Broncos are going to be nowhere close to clinching that for a while, but they will have two paths available to get into the playoffs come Week 14:

Continue reading Broncos Playoff Standings: 2015 Week 14