Thin Air

Football Outsiders’ Scott Kacsmar has his weekly Clutch Encounters column up, in which he discusses observations about Week 6, and he does discuss the Broncos’ win over the Browns.

I direct you to it, though, for what else he has to say, particularly about the Seattle Seahawks. Considers this tweet he shared.

This play is basically the difference between Seattle being known as an almost dynasty vs. NFL's biggest chokers pic.twitter.com/RGdk2g8gTX

— Scott Kacsmar (@FO_ScottKacsmar) October 20, 2015

Read Kacsmar’s column to understand why he said this. It’s an interesting observation that begs the question as to whether that Seattle Super Bowl really was the sign of a dynasty in the making.

Hello Bronco fans! There’s been a lot of activity here at Thin Air and, regardless of where anyone stands, it’s great we can have lively yet civil discussion about the Broncos. And considering they are 6-0 and feature a top-three defense but have plenty of issues on offense, there’s been plenty to discuss.

I’m a bit early with this edition of Midweek Musings because there are a few things that need to be understood with regards to what decisions the Broncos had to make this offseason and what the Broncos need to focus on now that they are six games into the season.

A lot has been discussed about Peyton Manning for obvious reasons. I do want to touch briefly on a couple of items, though, that would not necessarily have been solved by saying goodbye to Manning during the offseason.
Continue reading Midweek Musings: OMG QB Controversy~!

You smell that? That’s the smell of 6-0, or your own farts. One of the two, or both. The media still can’t stop talking about how horrible our offense is. Yet, we had 21 first downs, 36:44 of possession, and 442 total yards. Sure, you could talk about how poor the Browns defense has been this year, but I like to focus on the positives. Our defense made a clutch stop at the end of the 4th quarter and in overtime, while the offense made a clutch win. You can’t ignore that the offense traveled 72 yards in the final series of the game to setup the game-winning field goal. Moving on…

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

Injuries that Denver Broncos players suffered against the Cleveland Browns were not serious, although Shane Ray will miss a couple of weeks.

OLB Shane Ray’s knee injury was not as severe as initially feared. Kubiak confirmed that Ray suffered a sprained medial collateral ligament in his right knee in the second quarter.

Ray will miss some game action as a result of the injury, since MCL sprains usually require a multi-week recovery.

Lerentee McCray is expected to see more snaps and Kenny Anunike could see time at OLB as well.

Emmanuel Sanders and Corey Nelson are considered day to day with a shoulder and a knee injury, respectively.

According to the Broncos official site, Kapri Bibbs was waived and TE Richard Gordon, which was just released over the weekend, has been re-signed to the roster.

Continue reading RB Kapri Bibbs waived; TE Richard Gordon re-signed

Via Ian Rapoport:

The NFL announced today that it will conduct public hearings later this month in Oakland, St. Louis, and San Diego as part of the league’s procedures for evaluating possible franchise relocations.  The hearings will take place on October 27 (St. Louis), October 28 (San Diego) and October 29 (Oakland).

The purpose of these hearings is to provide an opportunity for fans and others in the community to ask questions and express their views directly to the NFL before any decisions are made about potential relocation of a club or clubs from a current market. Members of Commissioner Goodell’s executive staff will be in attendance to listen to comments and answer questions from the audience.

If you’ve ever watched John Oliver’s takedown of stadium financing boondoggles, the portion starting at 13:52 is highly relevant to how I think this will go down.  Rapaport also says these hearings will be streamed live.  If so, October 29 should be some must-see streaming, because, although Raiders fans are typically lacking in many types of characteristics, one area that they decidedly don’t lack in is passion.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone but Broncos’ fans, blinded by childlike enthusiasm for their team, who doesn’t believe that to be true.

As LaCanfora writes http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/writer/jason-la-canfora/25345119/inside-football-as-bad-as-peyton-is-now-its-only-going-to-get-worse:

But if you strip away the fact that this team is still winning games — I think most smart football fans long ago figured out that quarterback wins/losses is an absurd stat — and the fact that it says Manning on the back of his jersey and simply assess the body of work for a highly paid franchise quarterback on a team in Super Bowl-or-bust mode, the only conclusion would be this: The Broncos have a big quarterback problem.

There is no easy fix here. The idea that the shotgun would save Manning has been debunked. He’s one of the worst shotgun passers in the league. Even screen passes have the potential for great misadventure for Manning at this stage, and even with a plethora of gifted weapons he can rarely deliver the ball in a position to tap into much of what they can do.

He cannot make things happen on balls that travel more than 20 yards downfield. He leads the NFL with 10 interceptions and has become one of the more likely pick-six candidates from week to week, especially on anything thrown to the sideline. He’s looked every bit as bad as his quarterback rating of 72.5 would suggest.

Continue reading Jason LaCanfora: “It’s Only Going to Get Worse.”

Steelers defensive end Cameron Heyward is not going to be deterred by the NFL’s fine police.  For the second straight week, Heyward adorned his eyeblack with the words Iron and Head, honoring his father who died of cancer.  Per Mike Pereira, this will cost him $11,576.  Heyward’s personalization comes off the heels of his teammate, running back DeAngelo Williams, being denied a request to wear pink all season to honor his mother who died of breast cancer.

And since this wouldn’t be the NFL without some inconsistency, Williams’s pink-tinged hair ends up being OK.  More strikingly, I’m trying to understand how Heyward and Williams can face fines, but Ronnie Hillman can continually get away with his unique and intimidating mouthpieces (which are also breast cancer aware in October!).

Instead of making clumsy attempts of suppressing the personality of players on game day, I feel that the NFL should instead create a uniform (pun intended!) standard to allow players to express a little bit of themselves in their most public moments.  The league should create a small space somewhere on the uniform to allow personal messages.

Continue reading The NFL Should Create A Personalized Uniform Space

We’ve talked all season about needing to protect Manning and the ability to run the football. Against the Browns, the offensive line didn’t give up a single sack, allowed only two QB hits and plowed the way for 150 yards rushing (though strangely [EDIT: only Evan Mathis] graded positively, per PFF).

So why is everyone so unhappy?

Continue reading Balance, Compromise, or Koobs v. Manning