I bet you didn’t know…..

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Any Mic’dUp fans out there? This is reasonably entertaining. “OMG Von Miller!!!”

 

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The world according to Melvin.

 

[LGM]

Yeah, the fumbling at the goal line was a major reason why.

 

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Yeah, the *repeated* fumbling at the goal line was a major reason why.

 

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And THEN…. Melvin said this.

 

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Listen to a little Romo to get you over the hump of the week. Good 10 listen.

02-07-23 Bill Romanowski with the Sports Zoo - KOA Sports | iHeart

None

www.iheart.com

 

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Press play and listen to this. What else do you have to do?

 

[LGM]

Really like when guys like Demitroff can tell people how great a match the Paeyton's will be tog.

 

[PumpFake]

Where the Denver Broncos stand on fire stadium, new uniforms and more

PHOENIX — When the Broncos sent out extensive surveys to season ticket holders last week, it provided fans an invitation to dream about what a potential new stadium, or even a reimagined version of the current venue, could one day look like.

Pondering the shape a future stadium could take is not the territory of fans alone, though. It also applies to those who would be charged with turning such a monumental project into a reality.

“We call them visioning sessions about what the future can be,” Broncos team president Damani Leech said Tuesday at the NFL’s annual meetings at the Arizona Biltmore. “But (the organization is) far from making any decisions or even having favorites. Sometimes we talk about and we joke about how today we’re interested in this and tomorrow we’re interested in that. It’s just too early.”

The surveys that landed in email inboxes last week were another step in an information-gathering process for the Broncos’ Walton-Penner ownership group that formally began in January. That’s when the team announced it was partnering with Legends, a sports advisory firm, to build a market research project around the Broncos’ stadium future and the general game day experience. That began with focus groups that Leech said totaled 112 people. Seven thousand fan surveys have been submitted so far, Leech said, asking fans for their opinions on everything from location preferences for a new stadium to what kind of roof they would want for the venue.

The Broncos will have the full results of those surveys in late April or early May. Leech said it was too early to conclusively gauge what fans would prefer in a new stadium from a big-picture perspective, but he did provide hints as to what some of the feedback from the focus groups provided.

“Definitely, (fans) want to see improvements to the game day experience,” Leech said. “It’s some of the things we’ve talked about: wider concourses, (more) restrooms, technology — those things that make the experience a little bit easier. I think that’s probably the bigger thing. Fans just want things to be better. But I think it would be premature to say there are any conclusions yet. … We’ll get that feedback back, and it will be interesting.”

Any firm decisions on the future of Denver’s home venue will not be made soon. The Broncos, after all, still have nine years remaining on their current lease at Empower Field at Mile High. All options remain on the table. But the work being done to research possibilities has been thorough. During the middle of last season, Leech and owners Rob Walton, Greg Penner and Carrie Walton Penner toured “half a dozen stadiums and arenas or more” as part of their research, Leech said. That included tours of Wembley Stadium and Tottenham Hotspur Stadium when the group was in London last fall.
“There were the games we played on the road, but then (we) had intentional visits where we spent more time in probably five or six stadiums,” Penner, the team’s CEO and co-owner, said Tuesday afternoon. “We didn’t come away from any of those saying, ‘If we decided to go down the path of a new stadium in Denver, this would be the perfect stadium for us. I think it’s really unique to the market. We want something that’s inherently Colorado, the Broncos. But we saw a lot of interesting aspects from different types of room covers, different types of fields, different mix of seats. So it was a really interesting process for us.”

While the exploration of a possible new stadium is still in its infant stages, fans have been able to tangibly measure the progress of the current stadium project — a massive, $100 million renovation that has touched multiple areas of Empower Field and began immediately after the conclusion of Denver’s season in early January. It includes the installation of a brand new, state-of-the-art scoreboard, which Leech said will be 70 percent bigger than the previous screen. Drivers passing by the stadium can see that the old scoreboard has already been fully removed, and Leech said the project overall is “on schedule and on budget.”

The installation of the new scoreboard, Leech said, will be finished “toward the end of the summer.” The next steps in the project include renovations to stadium suites and finalizing the designs for the new team store and stadium club. The renovations “should be” completed by the time Denver hosts its first preseason game in August, Leech said.
Another possible new aesthetic for the franchise in 2023: Leech said the Broncos are “definitely exploring” the idea of an alternate helmet as early as this upcoming season. The NFL in 2022 passed a rule allowing teams to wear two different helmets, the second to be worn with “classic, alternate or Color Rush jerseys.” Thirteen teams used an alternate helmet last season, and more are set to be introduced in 2023.

“We do have the possibility of doing it this year,” Leech said, though he did not say what the design of a second helmet would look like.

There was no update Tuesday on a potential uniform overhaul for the Broncos, something fans have been requesting for years. As has been the case with the theoretical future stadium, the Broncos have engaged fans in surveys to understand their preferences. The first of those surveys, which was sent in November and sought opinions on various color and design options, said the team “will collect feedback from our fans and work within the framework of NFL uniform policies and guidelines throughout this one- to two-year exploration process should we decide to make changes.”

The NFL requires teams to provide notice at least one year before a change takes place, so it appears any permanent uniform change for the Broncos would not take place before 2024.

“It’s important to know what our fans really think and not just get into an echo chamber of just staff making decisions,” Leech said. “… We continue to research it. We continue to work internally with our creative team and with Nike to explore possibilities for the future. Those of you who do track this around the league, you know it’s a long process. So we’re being patient with it and making it a great process.”

Other takeaways from brief meetings with Denver’s leadership figures Tuesday:

• The Broncos led the NFL in free-agent spending by handing out $136.5 million in new contracts for 10 players over the past two weeks, according to Spotrac, another example of the investment the new ownership group has poured into the franchise less than eight months into its tenure. That included more than $80 million guaranteed alone in deals for new offensive linemen Ben Powers and Mike McGlinchey. But Penner emphasized such spending won’t be an annual occurrence.
“You definitely don’t win the season in free agency, and you don’t want to have to necessarily spend that way every year,” Penner said. “We just felt like this year, with the lack of draft picks, the needs that we had on the offensive line, that was the approach we needed to take. Really happy with how it turned out and the players we got.”


GO DEEPER
Broncos roster reset: What needs remain after busy start to free agency?

Ideally, Penner said, the Broncos’ roster-building formula will include a more even mix of draft and free-agency additions, but that wasn’t on the table this year. The Broncos did not have a selection until the third round after surrendering a combined three first-round picks and three second-round picks in trades for quarterback Russell Wilson and coach Sean Payton. (The Broncos did get a future third-round pick back from New Orleans in the Payton deal.) Denver will have its own first-round pick in 2024.

• Penner on what Payton has brought to the organization in the nearly two months since he was hired to replace Nathaniel Hackett: “He immediately set a different tone coming into the building. As a head coach, probably the most important thing you do is the staff that you hire, and right away he came in and he’s built a staff that’s diverse, and I mean diverse across multiple dimensions. It’s age: You’ve got everybody from Mike Westhoff (75) and the type of experience he has to Davis Webb (28). Diverse backgrounds from different coaching trees and perspectives and all that, so that’s probably been the most impressive thing.”

 

[LGM]

I knew that already.

 

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I knew that already.

That’s because you have more than one subscription to The Athletic!

 

[SpringStein]

That’s because you have more than one subscription to The Athletic!

 

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$4 to get passed the Denver Post paywall for a year. Solid.

Subscription Panel

checkout.denverpost.com

 

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$4 to get passed the Denver Post paywall for a year. Solid.

Subscription Panel

checkout.denverpost.com

Are there any writers in Denver worth reading these days?

 

[Draft Crazy]

Are there any writers in Denver worth reading these days?

There is one in Colorado Springs. SpringStein's reviews on cruises.

 

[Mingo]

There is one in Colorado Springs. SpringStein's reviews on cruises.

I hear Mexico wants to build a wall to keep @SpringStein and his caravan out.

 

[LGM]

I hear Mexico wants to build a wall to keep @SpringStein and his caravan out.

He flaunts his access too, going back and forth to owner's meetings, back for some poke, then back for the sunset...

 

[SpringStein]

Are there any writers in Denver worth reading these days?

Maybe their best writer currently is Mike Singer writing for the Nuggets.

The worst continues to be Kiszla. Whatever he writes, I avoid like the plague.

 

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Maybe their best writer currently is Mike Singer writing for the Nuggets.

The worst continues to be Kiszla. Whatever he writes, I avoid like the plague.

Thx, Broooooooooce!

 

[Draft Crazy]

Maybe their best writer currently is Mike Singer writing for the Nuggets.

The worst continues to be Kiszla. Whatever he writes, I avoid like the plague.

Mingo tells me you're the plague.