Denver Broncos

Happy Monday, friends, as we come off a mostly slow opening weekend of free agency.  Of course, I have some thoughts, and I'd be happy to read your thoughts.  Let's get right to it, without further ado.  Ready.... BEGIN!!!!

1.  First things first, I have a myth to dispel.  The world did not end for the Arizona Cardinals this weekend.  They're probably going to take a step back, but it will be due to the one difference-making loss they have absorbed, in Kurt Warner.  Karlos Dansby is not a difference-making player, and neither are Antrel Rolle, or Anquan Boldin.  They're all pretty good players, who can help a team win, but none is top of the NFL dollars, and I commend the Cardinals' brass for knowing that, and being wise.  Let's break it down.

First, there's Rolle, who was a slower CB, who turned into a faster FS.  I like his ability to cover, and if you scheme him right, he can make some plays.  I like what Bill Davis did with him in Arizona this past season, but I think the scheme was very instrumental in making him look good.  Rolle's signing with the Giants is interesting, because with Perry Fewell running that defense now, I have to wonder what they're going to be doing.  Fewell is a Tampa-2 guy, and if you're going to have Rolle just dropping into a deep half or third most of the time, I don't see how he's worth the money.  For one thing, that's not something he's natural at, and for another, lots of guys can do that.  I liked the play of Kenny Phillips before he got hurt in 2009, so I wonder what this signing says about his health.

With Dansby, I see a guy who makes a lot of tackles downfield.  He runs well, and he's a good tackler, with good coverage skills.  You can find those guys in the second round of the Draft, though, which you know, because that's where you got Dansby.  A player like that, you make it a priority to draft one, and you have the guy cheap for awhile, before he walks, and you hopefully get a good compensatory pick for him a year later.  Dansby helps the Dolphins get a little faster at LB, but I don't like the huge cash outlay for a guy who isn't sacking the QB.  I think it's something a sucker team does, and I'm surprised at Bill Parcells' regime doing it.

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Happy Monday, friends.  I'm writing from vacation, in lovely southern California.  It's been a quiet week for the site, because at my company, the price of going on vacation is doing two weeks worth of work in the week before you leave.  I remember a conversation I had with our VP of Operations, and I was expressing some concern that our revenue was going to tank during the last month of our fiscal year, because people would be taking vacation, so they didn't lose it.  Since our business sells billable hours, more vacation time seemed to me to correlate with lower billable hours.

The VP kind of laughed, and asked me what I do when I go on vacation.  Did my work just go unfinished for a week?  No, not me.  I'm a high initiative guy, you know?  I work hard before and after the vacation.  The VP gave me an important lesson in business that day, and that was that throughput expectations remained constant, even when there was a lot of vacation expected.  The workers could go on vacation, but the work needed to get done anyway.  In other words, vacation is a nice theoretical concept for employees to feel good about, but at the end of the day, we're doing jobs which take 52 weeks per year of work to effectively do.

That kind of reminded me of the NFL offseason.  It seems like not much is going on, but really, it's the best time of year to get better.  Players who want to improve are working hard on their skills and conditioning.  Coaches are working on their schemes, and scouts are figuring out which players can best help their teams.  

Welcome to the best part of the NFL year, friends.  I plan to work hard to improve this site, and really grow the readership.  And this week, while I am on "vacation" the work really starts in earnest.  I hope, if you enjoy the site, that you'll tell your friends to check us out.  For now, it's on to business.  Ready..... BEGIN!!!!

1.  They're still partying in New Orleans, and they should be.  After a week to reflect on the accomplishment of the Saints, I'm even more impressed.  If you remember back to 2005, (the end of the Jim Haslett/Aaron Brooks era), the team was as much of a disaster area as the New Orleans area was.  

Haslett, a good coordinator, never seemed to find the right approach as a head coach.  Brooks had a million dollar arm and a ten cent head.  The roster was talent-poor, and the psyche of the fan base was damaged.  No discernible program was in place, and remember, this was a team which had never known real sustained success in its history.

When Sean Payton came in in 2006, he established a program which ultimately led to the victory in Super Bowl XLIV.  They got lucky in landing Drew Brees, who wanted to go to Miami.  Their choice of Reggie Bush with the second pick in 2006 hasn't turned out to be a great value, in terms of statistical production for the money, but he opens up their offense in a lot of important ways.

The Saints have done a great job in identifying their type of players, finding them, and coaching them up.  If you think of guys like Jahri Evans, Carl Nicks, Marques Colston, Lance Moore, and Roman Harper, none of them was chosen with a premium draft pick.  Players like Scott Fujita, Scott Shanle, Jonathan Vilma, and Bobby McCray came through trades or free agency.

The success of the Saints should give all fans hope that a new program can deliver a championship, especially if you give it time to be effective.  As a Broncos fan, I know a lot of our fan base has tended toward taking every speed bump as a sign that the program is wrong.  I credit the Saints owner and fan base for having the patience to let a good plan work.

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Happy Monday, friends, and congratulations to the New Orleans Saints on their impressive victory in Super Bowl XLIV.  It was a total team effort, and I'll have a lot of observations to share to that effect.  I had planned for this to be short-ish, but the party I was planning to attend got canceled, due to a sick kid.  I had another invitation, by a friend who lives in the trendy Warehouse District in downtown Cleveland, but I decided to just make some shrimp jambalaya (which was awesome), watch the game from home, take good notes, and write a robust edition of The Mothership.  Let's get this thing underway, then.  Ready..... BEGIN!!!!

1.  Drew Brees won the MVP award for the Super Bowl, and he played a great game, and deserved it.  The real star, though, was Head Coach Sean Payton.  The Saints got behind in this game pretty quickly, 10-0, and the team's poise improved a great deal after a shaky start.  That's not what usually happens when you go down 10-0 to the Colts; most teams get that "here we go" feeling, and the rout is on.  The Saints got their act together, and played the way they can play.

A key moment in the game was when Payton elected to go for it on 4th and goal from about 1.5 yards away.  There were just under 2 minutes to go, and both teams had all three timeouts.  I loved the call, and judging from my Twitter feed, I was about the only one.  Of course, I understand clock and situation management very well, and most people don't.  It was the right call, without question, and I am going to explain why.

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Happy Monday, friends, and welcome to the Mothership.  It's been quite a month of January, and the site is now in its fourth week of operations.  Thanks for your continued readership, and for being down since Day 1.  Today, we'll talk about some Bowls.  One important one (Senior Bowl), and one unimportant one (Pro Bowl).  And who knows?  We may dabble in some other stuff too.  That's how we do, right?  Ready..... BEGIN!!!

1.  Senior Bowl week was interesting.  I appreciated NFL Network's decision to televise some of the practice sessions, even if I think they showed too much of Mike Mayock talking, and not enough of what the players were doing.  When it gets down to it, it's still more information than fans have had in the past.  I watched all the televised practice sessions, and the game itself, and as you'd expect, I have some thoughts.

a.  I will start with the QBs, because they got the most attention during the week.  None of them looked very good to me in the game.  I thought that Zac Robinson looked the best, but he struggles to drive the ball down the field with velocity, and I doubt he'll ever be more than a backup.  I was particularly disappointed with Sean Canfield, who I liked in his college games, but who looked like he'll never have enough arm for the NFL.

Jarrett Brown showed a good arm, but he is a project, because he only played one season, and that was in a run-heavy, shotgun-spread offense at West Virginia.  I saw some people loving on Dan Lefevour on Twitter Saturday, and when I watched the game Sunday on DVR, I wondered what they were looking at.  I didn't think he looked particularly good throwing the ball.  Tony Pike looked like a borderline player, with a below average arm, and only average accuracy.  He did move well, though.

Tim Tebow looked pretty much like I expected him to.  If you watched some of the practices, he improved as the week went on.  The fact is, most of the things he was doing were new to him.  He did short-arm a couple throws during the game, but I thought that those were footwork related, and not indicative of a lack of arm strength.  When he gets his feet right, he can drive the ball.  It's just that the footwork that the plays he is running called for is different than what he's used to.  He's definitely not going to be ready to start on Day 1 in the NFL, but with good NFL coaching, he'll be fine eventually. Cut To The Chase »

It's Tuesday, and I have to go a bit abbreviated on you, I'm afraid.  I got stuck at the office a lot later than planned, and it's 9:30 PM as I start writing this.  I'll try to give you the most bang for the buck, in transcribing the notes I took over the weekend, and some brief video reviewing tonight.

1.  Arizona Cardinals at New Orleans Saints

a.  I mentioned this yesterday, but Carl Nicks has really turned into an outstanding LG for the Saints, and Jahri Evans has been the best RG for in the NFL for 2 years now.  The job those two do anchoring inside for the Saints is a huge key to the success of the offense.  Since Drew Brees is short, he's prone to being bothered by inside pressure, but those two make great pockets for him.  Nicks was a fifth round pick, and Evans was a fourth rounder, so you have to credit Mickey Loomis for picking them, and Aaron Kromer for coaching them up.  The average Jon Stinchcomb undeservedly made the Pro Bowl, but Nicks should have gone in his place.

b.  A guy for the Saints who I was really high on a year ago was Lance Moore, but he doesn't show much this year.  I wonder if he's still hurt, because the quickness he showed in the past was Welker-like, and he looks like just another guy now.  I was watching him not get open a bit, as Fox's camera work allowed, because I have to wonder what his story is.

c.  This hasn't gotten a lot of mention in the MSM (which is just shocking) but the Saints defensive backs did a fantastic job of re-routing the Cardinals WRs on Saturday.  That's how you beat the Saints, so they realize that it's also how you also beat the Cardinals.  You cannot let them get a free release, or Kurt Warner is going to hit them in rhythm, and kill you.  Add that CB success to the quick pressure the Saints were often getting from Will Smith, and the Cardinals never had a chance on offense.

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Woody Paige really gets my goat, or he would if I had a goat.  My non-Broncos readership is growing a bit (big up, early adopters!) and many of them may have never read my thoughts on the onerous Mr. Paige.  Also, I was a bit reluctant in my Mile High Report days to fully describe my feelings toward Paige.  John Bena never told me what I could or couldn't write, which is a credit to him, but I held back on this topic, because he does have to have a working relationship with the Denver media.

Happy Monday, friends, and welcome the Mothership. We’re getting underway after an interesting week, and there’s lots to talk about. We’ll get into some coaching matters, and talk about the Wildcard weekend that was, and the Divisional weekend that will be.

I’m happy, because we’re done closing December at my day job, so I’ll have more time to devote to this site for the next few weeks. I’m working on some video stuff, as I’ve previously mentioned, and I want to write a couple more articles this week than I was able to last week.

No time to waste, so let’s not waste any time. The lines are cast off, we’re pulling away from the Echo Chamber pier, and heading for the open ocean. Ready….. BEGIN!!!!

1. Black Monday wasn’t so black this season, and I didn’t really expect it to be. With a better than (Bill Williamson Memorial) decent chance of a chance of a lockout in 2011, owners have to be planning for expense minimization, based on the risk of the major reduction to their revenue streams that would go with a lockout.

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Happy Tuesday, friends, and welcome to Information From My Eyes. MHR people will recognize that title as something I used for sections in my old Shallow Thoughts & Nearsighted Observations posts. The title refers to a phone survey about sports blogging I participated in with a Penn State journalism student last year. The guy asked me where I get my information, meaning what websites. I guess in his mind, bloggers find information from “professional” writers, and repost it. I got a little annoyed with the poor kid, and told him my information came from my eyes.

I think Information From My Eyes is apropos of my whole Tuesday article though, particularly in the regular season, because this is going to revolve around games I watch on Monday nights. Normally, I come home and watch 5-6 recorded Sunday afternoon games, and then the Monday night game live. That’s what I did tonight. Of course, as we get into the offseason, there will be less to watch, so I will probably go back to regular season game video for that analysis.

For now, I’m going to get moving with this. I’m downing a Five Hour Energy, which is the best friend of people who spend 35 hours working between Sunday and Monday, like I typically do during the regular season. I ought to see if I can sell them ad space, once I get going with this. Anyway, here goes.

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Happy Monday, friends, and welcome to the official launch of SmarterFans.com.  I mentioned that some changes were afoot to the old formula that you've known for a year, which was called Shallow Thoughts & Nearsighted Observations.  So begins the beginning of that, which I have decided to call The Mothership.  I'll be talking about details as we get going here, and without further ado, (not adieu) let's get it on and popping like Orville Redenbacher.  Ready.... BEGIN!!!

1.  See, not everything has changed.  On Mondays, we'll still get ready before we begin.  I actually want to start by thanking my longtime friend Jessica Blaze for spending a few hours helping me build some pages for this site on Saturday.  The result of that work is the menu item marked NFL Team Pages, which are a work in progress, but so is the whole site.  Jessica is actually the person who got me saying Ready.... BEGIN years ago, so she's been a part of every ST&NO, whether y'all ever realized it or not.  She has a user ID here, which is, fittingly, readybegin.

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I am writing this pre-launch, to accomplish a few tasks, actually, but I hope it's a value-adding piece of content, and not just a throwaway for taxonomy building's sake.  I was talking to my father over Christmas about coaching trees, and their associated ideologies, and it struck me as something worth exploring, and writing about.  For all 32 teams, each coach came from somewhere, and learned distinguishable strategies and schematic ideas.  We're going to look at each team, and try to make some sense of this landscape.

Buffalo Bills -- Perry Fewell (Interim Coach)

Fewell comes from the tree of the man he replaced, Dick Jauron, and has worked for him for years, in Jacksonville, Chicago, and Buffalo.  He worked for Mike Martz and Lovie Smith in St. Louis too, but that's a secondary relationship.  It's a little bit tough to place Fewell, because it's tough to place Jauron.  Jauron worked for Hank Bullough (a key figure in 3-4 history), Lindy Infante, Mike Holmgren, and Tom Coughlin.  That's 4 totally unrelated coaching philosophies there.  I'm going to have to decline to declare Jauron as being part of any tree, because his roots go so many different directions, and say that Fewell is not part of a specific tree either.

Miami Dolphins -- Tony Sparano

There's no question that Sparano comes from the Bill Parcells Tree.  He worked briefly for Chris Palmer in Cleveland, Marty Schottenheimer in Washington, and Tom Coughlin in Jacksonville, but his career took off when Parcells hired him in Dallas in 2003.  Parcells, of course, continues to be his boss in Miami.  This one is a no-brainer.

New York Jets -- Rex Ryan

He worked under Brian Billick and Mike Nolan for a lot of years, and under Jim Harbaugh for one, but Ryan seems to be most influenced by his father Buddy.  He isn't particularly related to many other coaches in the NFL nowadays, and his approach to defense is very original.  I'll give his dad, Buddy, his own Buddy Ryan Tree, because another branch or two will hit there as well.

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