| Travis Heath. 11th August, 2005 - 4:24 pm
 The Denver Broncos walked off the field in disgust at The RCA Dome last January after being pummeled by the Indianapolis Colts for a second consecutive season eliminating them from the playoffs nearly before they began. Peyton Manning again performed precision surgery on the Bronco defensive exposing seemingly every weakness. This rerun was supposed to have been prevented by the acquisition of Champ Bailey to bolster a secondary that was scorched the previous year by the Colts. However, the Colts simply threw to the other side of the field exposing rookie cornerback Roc Alexander. Even though Alexander took most of the heat for the loss, it was clear that the Broncos complete lack of a pass rush was the primary culprit. No cornerback, no matter how talented, can cover any NFL wide receiver for 8 seconds or more.
So, offseason priority number one was to improve an inept pass rush to help compliment an above average corps of linebackers and defensive backs. Acquiring some top-flight defensive lineman was something that everyone, coaches, fans, and media, realized was in the teams best interest. However, what most people didn’t realize was that the Broncos would attempt to upgrade their defensive line by acquiring virtually the entire defensive front formerly employed by the Cleveland Browns. That’s right, Courtney Brown, Gerrard Warren, Ebenezer Ekuban, and Michael Myers could potentially (assuming Trevor Pryce struggles to recover from last season’s career threatening back injury) fill the four formerly unproductive slots on the Broncos defensive line.
Okay, you think to yourself, maybe these guys in Cleveland were just what the doctor ordered. Hey how did Cleveland do last year anyway? Yikes, they were 4-12. Well, it seems logical then that the reason these players were let go was due in large part to the fact that a new coach was brought in, and he just wanted to clean house. I’m sure he wouldn’t know anything about defense if it bit him in the you know what. Remind me again who the new coach in Cleveland is? Oh yeah, Romeo Crennel, the brains behind a New England Patriot’s defense that won the Super Bowl three out of the last four years.
All right, so Cleveland was a bad team last year and these defensive linemen were released by a newly hired defensive genius. But their defensive line was fantastic a year ago, right? Not so much. Courtney Brown, yes that Courtney Brown the former number one overall pick in 2000, played in only two games last year because of injury recording just 3 tackles and no sacks. In case you were wondering, the previous year when Brown played in 13 games his numbers were also far from stellar with just 6 sacks and 66 tackles. Ekuban last year had decent numbers tallying 8 sacks and 54 tackles, but contrast that to the previous year when he played in only one fewer game and managed just 1 sack and 43 tackles. Myers brought down opposing quarterbacks just once last year. Warren, a former number 3 overall pick, recorded 4 sacks and just 38 tackles last season. So, let me get this straight. The guys the Broncos brought in to revamp their anemic defensive line recorded only 13 combined sacks last year. Last years NFL sack leader Dwight Freeney compiled 16 sacks by himself last year. And in case you were wondering, second on that list was Bert Berry with 14.5 sacks, released by the Broncos before last season, but that’s for another discussion.
Okay, I get it. Yeah, these guys were on a terrible team, let go by Romeo Crennel, and produced very little on the field the past couple of years, but that’s because they were poorly coached the past couple of seasons. Everyone remembers that Butch Davis resigned last year mid-season, and he obviously was not helping these players reach their potential. More specifically, the defensive line coach must have done a horrible job since former number one and number three overall picks both failed to develop under his tutelage. Whew, that’s a relief. Good thing the Broncos new defensive line coach will get a chance to help these guys reach their full potential. Come to think of it, who is the Broncos defensive line coach? Didn’t they just hire a new coach at that spot? That’s right, his name is Andre Patterson the former defensive line coach the past two seasons for the . . . yep you guessed it, Cleveland Browns.
I wasn’t a math major in college, but I tried to make these moves add up in any way that I could. The problem is that they just don’t.
Mike Shanahan, the artist formerly known as the mastermind, is an accomplished NFL coach with two Superbowl titles. However, the fact remains that he hasn’t won a playoff game in six seasons and counting. Even though owner Pat Bowlen has repeatedly stated that Shanahan has a lifetime contract with the team, Shanahan’s ego almost certainly won’t let him endure yet another football season without at least one playoff victory. In the past, the coach has made doubters look silly by turning players drowning in obscurity into All Pro’s (i.e. Rod Smith, Ed McCaffery, Terrell Davis, etc). Recently though, Shanahan’s exploits in the draft and free agent market have been less than stellar. Perhaps, Shanahan has regained his previous slight of hand and again pulled the wool over the eyes of the rest of the league. He better hope so, or this Lake Erie Conspiracy may be the final chapter in Shanahan’s Denver saga.
Travis can be reached at travismheath@msn.com |
