Bronco Meltdown Post Mortem

I don't know. I don't think Montana's 49ers could've beaten the Feb. 2, 2014, Seattle Seahawks. They played probably the best 60 minutes of football that I've ever seen an NFL team play. Manning was by no means good, but the Seahawks made it clear on both sides of the ball that every Denver action was going to be met by an equal and devastating reaction. There wasn't much Peyton Manning was going to be able to do about that.

 

I agree with Batman. I have never seen a rout in football that wasn't a murder-suicide pact. But even if the Broncos had avoided almost all of their many self-inflicted wounds, they still would've lost by 10 or more. Seattle just wasn't going to be beaten by anyone Sunday night.
3 Octave: It is my contention that the diet of mush that is the AFC East has had a real negative influence on the Patriots. They didn't play as wretchedly in the AFC title game as Denver did Sunday night, but they were never really in the game at all.

 

New England was lucky to catch the other teams at the ebb of their franchise lives (although the Jets have usually been more competitive in the Brady-Belichick era than they were in Fart's boyhood).
But sending those teams into their spirals is also some function of being good.
Also fortunate Indianapolis was moved into its own soft-serve ice cream of a division, what with an expansion team and the seven-year-old Jaguars.

 

Agree the Seahawks played a tougher schedule overall. Was just saying that pointing out that the Broncos were overrated because they beat up on Jacksonville and Tennessee wasn't the way to go about it in this particular season since both Seattle and Denver played the AFC South.

I'm not looking to reignite the Manning-Brady debate here. I won't argue Manning left stains on the bed that will might never come out even if he wins the next two Super Bowls.
I will suggest, though, that Super Bowl XLII is in the same ballpark as this one. Or should be. The Pats were 18-0, a double-digit favorite against a mediocre Giants team, and had a chance to cement their status as the greatest team of all time, hands down. And they scored 14 points and lost. Even though it wasn't a blowout, it was certainly an appalling failure on the level of this year's Broncos team, given the stakes.

 

That Raiders loss was made more humiliating after the fact, when NFL Films showed John Lynch calling out the Raiders' plays. It was their worst possible match up (they might have beaten the Eagles) made worse by poor preparation. The ensuing decade of futility for the Raiders has only made it worse.

 

NFL Film of this one should be interesting. There is a story that Sherman and
crew cracked Manning code for tagging his receivers and what routes they
would run.

 

I hear Sherman went to some fancy college for smart people.

 

Um, what would you prefer? Losing? Winning on a last-second field goal that bounces off the upright? You play whomever is on the schedule and play as well as you can. And, unlike college, you don't even get a say in that schedule. You just go play the freakin' games as they appear on the schedule, with whatever players are healthy that week.

 

That was their third possession of the game. Seattle did a good job of keeping the Denver offense on the sideline early. But Denver had the ball for most of the second quarter.

 

Fourth possession, dumbshit.

 

Thugs be stealin'

 

I actually felt sorry for the Broncos and that's pretty rare for me to feel that way about a pro sports team or athlete. But the way everything that possibly could go wrong went wrong at the worst possible time, it reminded me of a few too many moments in my own life.

But, at the end of the day, it was still just one game. You pick up the pieces, try to feel good about your many other accomplishments, remember that 30 other teams didn't get as far and look to the future and move ahead.

So what should Denver do in the offseason? It's clear they're not going to cut Manning and start over --- nor should they. And Vonn Miller is expected to be back from injury next season. So what areas of the team would you address first if you were GM?