Denver Broncos @ Detroit Lions

[cdumler7]

I figured might as well go ahead and get this thread going for discussion leading up to the game.

So some interesting facts heading into this one. The Lion's QB Stafford has been hit the 2nd most of any QB in the league only ahead of Kaepernick. That does not look good considering he is going against the best pass rush in the league so far in actual pressure.

Just to give you guys another laugh here is another great video of the Broncos win against the Chiefs...


You can bet that the Broncos will be sending plenty of pressure towards Stafford on Sunday Night. Stafford when not pressured has a QB Rating of 102.5 and completes close to 80% of his passes. Under pressure this year though he has a QB Rating of 43.1 and only completes 32.3% of his passes.

So far for the OL of the Lions the great surprise is that Manny Ramirez is the only Lions OL player to have a positive grade in pass blocking. The worst of the group has been Riley Reiff who will be going up against the top pass rusher grade wise in Ware this week.

A reporter actually saw Stafford after the Minnesota game and said he had a blood soaked bandage on his left arm, another on his left wrist, his throwing arm was all bruised and cut up, his big toe on his left foot was actually blue, he had another two toes taped together on his right foot, and was struggling to breathe with the pain to his ribs which he had x-rayed with no news on how that went.

 

[TDs3nOut]

First home game of the season for Detroit, after losing at SD 33-28 and 26-16 at MN.

Encouraging that they have been vulnerable to the pass rush, since that certainly seems to be one of our strengths.

Very interested to see whether we totally abandon "the new offense" and go exclusively with what we've done the past three years. Either way, sure would be nice to get the run game going.

 

[cdumler7]

First home game of the season for Detroit, after losing at SD 33-28 and 26-16 at MN.

Encouraging that they have been vulnerable to the pass rush, since that certainly seems to be one of our strengths.

Very interested to see whether we totally abandon "the new offense" and go exclusively with what we've done the past three years. Either way, sure would be nice to get the run game going.

I'm guessing that is exactly what this 10 day break has been focused on. Kubiak hinted towards that very thing in realizing you just can't win in this league especially the playoffs unless you have a run game to help the pass game. Now I could see us going quite a bit of shot gun and slowly working in Kubiak's offense as the season goes on to where by the time the playoffs roll around nobody will know which offense we will use. Definitely going to be interesting.

 

[cdumler7]

Oh and good news on the injury front! Kenny Anunike is back at practice. He was limited but the coaches were impressed with how he looked. Anunike last week said before injury reports even started that he was going to miss the Chiefs game. He is now thinking he could be ready for this Sunday.

Omar Bolden who missed the game on Thursday was limited at practice as well.

The only player sitting out from practice today was Louis Vasquez. He got pretty beat up in the Chiefs game so the coaches decided to give him a day off. No reason to panic just giving a veteran an extra day of recovery.

 

[wingsauce7]

I really hope the masterminds over at Dove Valley are smart enough to run with what you've got.

Manning is the QB and is obviously not comfortable under center and being out of the loop with regard to the play calling. The dude has a couple years at the helm at best. Let Manning's run play out with the Offense that works for him. With this Defense, great things could happen.

Save your preferred Offensive scheme for our next QB.

 

[cdumler7]

So having another day full of facts...

The Broncos defense last year forced 3 turnovers when the opposing team was inside the Broncos 20-yard line. This year already they have matched that total after just 2 games.

The Broncos biggest issue in pass protection has been they just can't seem to pick up the delayed blitz. Baltimore used this against us quite a bit and KC early in the game did the same thing. Once the Broncos started spacing things out with 3-5 Wide sets though it made things a little easier to see where blitzes were coming from. If we ever want to get the run game going though the OL is going to have to figure this out.

Run Blocking wise the Broncos had 12 of their 22 rushing attempts against the Chiefs go for either no game or negative yardage.

The Broncos haven't played in Detroit since 2007. No player on the Broncos roster was around at that time. The last time we played the Lions though was 2011 in Denver where they beat us 45-10. If you remember right after that game was when we switched to the read-option offense with Tebow.

 

[Draft Crazy]

I was sorta hoping we wouldn't get an 0-2 Lions on the road, but I think we can manage.

 

[TDs3nOut]

I'm guessing that is exactly what this 10 day break has been focused on. Kubiak hinted towards that very thing in realizing you just can't win in this league especially the playoffs unless you have a run game to help the pass game. Now I could see us going quite a bit of shot gun and slowly working in Kubiak's offense as the season goes on to where by the time the playoffs roll around nobody will know which offense we will use. Definitely going to be interesting.

That's an interesting thought. At the same time, it might be best to try to keep things simple as much as possible, especially for the youngsters Sambrailo and Paradis. I don't know. I feel pretty sure, however, that Manning isn't going to last the season taking the beating he's taken the past two weeks.

 

[58crash]

First home game of the season for Detroit, after losing at SD 33-28 and 26-16 at MN.

Encouraging that they have been vulnerable to the pass rush, since that certainly seems to be one of our strengths.

Very interested to see whether we totally abandon "the new offense" and go exclusively with what we've done the past three years. Either way, sure would be nice to get the run game going.

I will Donate a $100 to the hire Alex Gibbs fund gladly !!!!!!!!!!!! I am not kidding either !

 

[randymon]

Oh and good news on the injury front! Kenny Anunike is back at practice. He was limited but the coaches were impressed with how he looked. Anunike last week said before injury reports even started that he was going to miss the Chiefs game. He is now thinking he could be ready for this Sunday.

Omar Bolden who missed the game on Thursday was limited at practice as well.

The only player sitting out from practice today was Louis Vasquez. He got pretty beat up in the Chiefs game so the coaches decided to give him a day off. No reason to panic just giving a veteran an extra day of recovery.

Louis! I kept saying Manny I believe.

 

[Draft Crazy]

I will Donate a $100 to the hire Alex Gibbs fund gladly !!!!!!!!!!!! I am not kidding either !

Crash you really need to stop!

I will donate a donut to Elway if we draft my buddy Jordan Lomax this year.

 

[SpringStein]

The last time we played the Lions though was 2011 in Denver where they beat us 45-10. If you remember right after that game was when we switched to the read-option offense with Tebow.

DC and I were at that game. Probably the worst game I've ever attended.

 

[Draft Crazy]

DC and I were at that game. Probably the worst game I've ever attended.

It was for me too then I attended the Rams/Broncos game last year which may have topped it. It was pretty close. Rams game wasn't quite the killing Detroit gave us that year, but much higher expectations when we lost to the Rams.

I remember when I told people I was going to the Rams/Broncos everyone kept telling me oh you're gonna see an easy win. I kept telling them games aren't won on paper, but still didn't expect that beat down. After that game realization hit me and I told myself while riding the train back to my car that we aint winning it this year!

 

[Draft Crazy]

We have actually been beat down by the Lions a few times pretty bad.

I believe the last time we played the Lions before that we were beat down pretty good. I wanna say like 48-7 or something similar to that in Detroit.

I actually attended the last two times we played the Lions in Denver. Barely squeaked by the 2003 matchup.

 

[wingsauce7]

I think DC and Springstein need to stay far away from Mile High Stadium..

 

[cdumler7]

This will probably be the toughest test our two corners have all year. A healthy Megatron and Tate looks scary. We are going to need that pass rush to do well for sure. I'm getting ready to watch the Lions/Vikings game here and see what they did as it obviously worked pretty well. They also had quite the run game going getting close to 200 yards on the ground. Now obviously it helps when you have an AP on your team

 

[randymon]

I really hope the masterminds over at Dove Valley are smart enough to run with what you've got.

Manning is the QB and is obviously not comfortable under center and being out of the loop with regard to the play calling. The dude has a couple years at the helm at best. Let Manning's run play out with the Offense that works for him. With this Defense, great things could happen.

Save your preferred Offensive scheme for our next QB.

Look nobody here is blind to the fact that Manning at this point so far has looked more comfortable and been more effective in the shotgun,etc and the run game for the most part has struggled but unless your just satisfied with Denver winning the division, which they could still probably do, and be one and done in playoffs or if they did get lucky enough to make it to SB and actually compete without a at least decent running game then all the power to you. Denver's only hope to get to the big game and compete with a healthy- ish Manning, is to get this run game and Manning to get better acclimated with Kubicks system or it's all she wrote. As good as this D is, there's no way they can bail out a One dimensional offense like your suggesting if they want to be winning games in November and December.

 

[Mingo]

I actually attended the pre-season game between the Broncos and the Lions -at Denver University Stadium - the Broncos won - and became the first AFL team to beat an NFL team. All Pro DT Alex Karras - was quoted prior to the game that if the Lions lost he would walk home. He didn't.

My first thought is that this is a bunch that will make Peyton Manning feel younger in the passing game.

i want to see the RBs average 4.0 (Make sure that they know that this is not a reference to the college gpa).

I want to see the Defense get some target practice - run up some stats.

 

[TDs3nOut]

Look nobody here is blind to the fact that Manning at this point so far has looked more comfortable and been more effective in the shotgun,etc and the run game for the most part has struggled but unless your just satisfied with Denver winning the division, which they could still probably do, and be one and done in playoffs or if they did get lucky enough to make it to SB and actually compete without a at least decent running game then all the power to you. Denver's only hope to get to the big game and compete with a healthy- ish Manning, is to get this run game and Manning to get better acclimated with Kubicks system or it's all she wrote. As good as this D is, there's no way they can bail out a One dimensional offense like your suggesting if they want to be winning games in November and December.

I'm not convinced that that is true, Randy. There have been stretches over the past three seasons in which we committed to running the ball and had good success.

Broncoball posted several times about how critical it is for the QB in Kubiak's offense to have the ability to run the bootleg in order for the stretch plays to work effectively. I've only see Manning run the bootleg a couple of times. To me it looked as if he ran in it okay, up until he both times made inaccurate throws.

Another feature of Kubiak's offense that I think is critical is to effectively use the FB. Though I don't recall many snaps where we've had a FB in the game, the results of those plays have been very underwhelming.

I'm not a coach or an even "an Xs and Os" guy, but I think that we might be best off to simply run the offense we've run the past three years, with the additional caveat that we maintain some semblance of run/pass balance.

Think they said during the game the other night that Manning have been sacked seven times in our first two games, whereas he was sacked seventeen times all last year. I think he is just more comfortable identifying where he wants to go with the ball and getting it out quickly when he is in the shotgun.

 

[cdumler7]

Manning definitely is not the best fit for what Kubiak has done most of his career. Manning loves to space a team out so he can easily tell where blitzes are coming from and what type of defensive scheme the defense is wanting to run. With the Broncos running more 2-TE sets and Manning being under Center it takes away his ability to always know where things are going to be coming at him. It makes things much more complicated and is only made worse when teams know we can't run the ball. They can just attack Manning knowing the run game isn't going anywhere. If we had a run game it would make this under center offense a little easier for Manning. Until then though if we want Manning upright for the year they need to keep him in shot gun at least until this OL can prove that they can run block. Then we will have to see how Manning does from under the gun.

I would say the other part about Manning in the shot gun is he never turns his back to the defense even when we run the football. He can quickly digest everything in front of him and get through his reads. Where when back pedaling or especially trying to run the play action fake he turns his back or at least has a tougher time of digesting what is happening in front of him. It is definitely going to take some time if this offense is to work at any point this season.