Strike One: Its not how, it’s how many. As in games you win, right?
The Denver Broncos season opening 27-13 win in New York against the Giants wasn’t exactly riveting. It certainly wasn’t “must see TV” outside our viewing region. It was workman-like. Solid. Complete. And after going winless the past two Septembers, very satisfying.
But was it…entertaining enough for you?
Does it have to be? Or is Bronco Nation happy with ANY win at this point, regardless of aesthetics?
For a team that has had five straight crummy seasons, every win is to be cherished. And if pre-season goals are to be met, and this team is going to win enough games to make it to the post season for this first time since winning Super Bowl 50, the ‘how’ can’t be all that important.
Yes, this is the age of the rocket-armed quarterbacks and the high powered offenses. But Denver doesn’t have any of that. What they have is the personnel to win with a formula that may be old, but at least it’s got a successful history.
Broncos fans – even those who weren’t born yet – still revere the name of the late Red Miller and the stories of the 1977 Broncos, who won 12 of 14 regular season games, plus two AFC play-off games to advance to the organization’s first Super Bowl, where they lost to Dallas. That team wasn’t supposed to do any more than any previous Broncos team – maybe be .500 at best. But they used an outstanding defense and a…timely…offense to win a lot of games.
The 1977 AFC Champs – who were greeted upon their return after losing the Super Bowl by a ticker tape parade through downtown – scored 30 points in a regular season game ONCE all season. And that required the famous fake-field-goal-pass-to-place-kicker Jim Turner to reach that high water mark in Oakland against the hated Raiders. (Denver did top that mark in the first round of the play-offs when they upended the favored Pittsburgh Steelers 34-21.) Otherwise, their winning totals all ranged in the 17-27 points space. Denver averaged just a tick under 20 points per game for the regular season.
Playing it close to the vest? Ya think? Miller’s quarterback, 34-year-old Craig Morton, averaged 137 yards per game through the air. He only completed 51.6% of his pass attempts. Only threw 14 touchdown passes. And the ground game wasn’t all that much better. Otis Armstrong led the way with 489 yards for the entire season. Twice a 1,000 yard rusher, including the season before under John Ralston, Armstrong had to share carries with Lonnie Perrin (who also kicked off) and others. Denver had four guys accumulate over 300 yards rushing. That was about it.
Hardly juggernaut numbers.
It was all about the “Orange Crush” defense.
The game has changed dramatically since those days of course. Having a QB throw 137 yards in a quarter isn’t unusual now. But if the objective was to play it safe, lean on your defense, and have your offense do just enough to win (and not anything to lose) then Miller’s was a winning formula.
Given his situation on the hot season, it’s understandable that all these years later, current Broncos coach Vic Fangio might want to fall back on this kind of formula – or at least a 21st Century version of it. Fangio is a defense-first guy, so his natural instinct is to make that the focal point of the team. New quarterback Teddy Bridgewater has shown he’s the kind of veteran under center that can run a dink and dunk/don’t screw it up offense that can compliment a strong defensive unit. He did put it in the air 36 times and roughly doubled Morton’s per game yardage average – and even tossed a couple long ones that got dropped. But his long completion was 25 yards and his average completion was just over seven yards. Dink and dunk. Miller would have loved it.
In fact, Fangio has so much confidence in his defense that he gambled on fourth down a couple of times and probably had Red turning over in his grave.
But it’s all good when you win.
Can these Broncos keep winning this way? Fangio’s gig probably depends on it.
Strike Two: The SEC brought a pair of it’s teams to town last week and both sixth-ranked Texas A&M and lowly Vanderbilt slipped away with come-from-behind three point victories. These were gut wrenching losses for both the Colorado Buffaloes and the Colorado State Rams, but that’s where the similarity between the two contests ends.
The Aggies were more than fortunate to escape Empower Field with a 10-7 win over the determined Buffs. CU’s defense took control of the game from the outset, making A&M look like anything but a Top 10 team. The Aggies offense couldn’t get anything going until very late in the contest, when they were able to mount a last ditch touchdown drive that earned them a second straight win…but it also should earn the Buffs a ton of respect. Moral victories? You bet. For CU, this one counts. Going toe-to-toe with an SEC power should give them plenty of confidence as they continue a gauntlet of a schedule moving forward.
Later in the evening in Fort Collins, it was the polar opposite. CSU came-from-ahead to lose a game they looked to have complete control of. They jumped out to an easy 14-0 lead, only to stumble, bumble and squander their chance to beat their SEC visitors and lose 24-21 in the final seconds. If there’s the opposite of a confidence building “moral victory” then this was it. Vanderbilt is the worst team in the SEC, and the Rams – despite a dismal showing in week one – were favored to win. A series of missed chances (like a pair of missed field goals) and missed opportunities (like a dropped pick-six) plus costly penalties and turnovers crippled them for a second straight week.
After two weeks, it’s pretty clear that CU found the right head coach – perhaps by accident – when they landed Karl Dorrell a year and a half ago. His steady hand has proven to be just what the program needed. The schedule doesn’t have many lay-ups the rest of the way and getting to six wins this year might be too tall a task, but nonetheless, CU football is on the right path. That much is crystal clear.
Can’t say the same for Steve Addazio and CSU. While Dorrell was handling last year’s COVID mess with a steady hand, CSU and Addazio were in the news for all the wrong reasons. Then came a disjointed (not all his fault of course) mini-season with a poorly handled quarterback situation adding to the difficulty of transitioning to a run-based offense with players left over from Mike Bobo’s pass happy tenure. Addazio was actually close to leaving CSU to become the offensive line coach for the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars this past off season, just so you know.
Now, through two home games this season, it’s looking more and more like Addazio is one of several guys who may be a good football coach, but who is simply in the wrong fit for their current job.
These Rams aren’t going to approach the six wins needed to make a bowl game. But how many wins do they need for the head coach to keep his job? That’s the bigger question. There were already a lot of empty seats at Canvas Stadium on Saturday night.
A great tweet about embattled Southern Cal Head Coach Clay Helton read, “A coach should make the team better, excite recruits and the fan base. USC’s coach in failing in all of those aspects.”
Is CSU’s?
Strike Three: When college football conference re-alignment first began to shake the earth about a decade ago, Boise State was still everyone’s favorite underdog. They’d upset mighty Oklahoma in that memorable 2006 Fiesta Bowl. Since then they’ve won three Fiesta Bowls in the last 15 seasons, seven bowls overall. The Broncos have finished in the Top 10 four times and in the Top 25 13 times since 2002. They’ve been the team for the little guy.
Boise State was a member of the Western Athletic Conference when all the rumbling began more than a decade ago, and when the Mountain West conference was faced with the loss of TCU and the University of Utah, they extended the invite to Boise (right after it became clear that Texas and Oklahoma were not going to go to the Pac 12, the Big 12 wasn’t going to implode and schools like Kansas State and Iowa State weren’t going to become available) and the Broncos accepted. (There had been a last ditch attempt by the WAC to keep Boise State and add BYU, but that fell apart.)
It wasn’t all that long after they became a member of the MW that the Big East Conference – remember when they used to play football? – came after both Boise State and San Diego State. The two MW schools actually agreed to move conferences (and yes, everyone realized how stupid it was going to be for San Diego State to be in the Big East) before coming to their senses and staying put. The Big East crumbled as a football conference – they were actually considered the sixth ‘Power’ conference back then – when Syracuse, Pitt and West Virginia left that fold.
But Boise didn’t lose it’s luster. Subsequent rumors of more realignment – like when the Big 12 was talking publicly about it six years ago – always included some bigger conference wanting Boise State. And BSU parlayed that interest into a sweetheart TV deal with their existing conference.
Through the years, the MW has always worried about Boise State’s wandering eyes. Maybe they don’t have to anymore?
When the Big 12 suddenly lost Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC last month (the two will still have to play in the Big 12 for a couple more seasons) they decided to stop tip toeing around and swiftly grabbed some additional dance partners. The expansion is going to add four new schools, bringing them back to 12 members. It would have been a foregone conclusion that the darlings of the realignment rumor mill – Boise State – would be one of those four, right?
Wrong.
Shockingly, it appears Boise State was never really in the conversation. The Big 12 made it official and added Houston, Cincinnati, Central Florida, and…(and this one has to sting) BYU. Unlike the Broncos, BYU had been pretty much irrelevant in football until the pandemic season of 2020, when QB Zac Wilson helped the Cougars go 11-1 and finish 11th in the final rankings. Suddenly, all those dismal seasons as a football independent from the past decade were somehow magically erased and BYU was a national brand again. What seemed to matter more to the Big 12 was BYU’s bottom line, which has been the best among non-Power Five programs.
Meanwhile, Boise is still Boise, even after losing their coach to Auburn. They’ve won seven conference titles since BYU won their last one and had those four Top 10 finishes to BYU’s none during the same period.
Still, for some reason, the orange and blue appear to have lost its realignment luster.
The Broncos remain nationally ranked, as they have been most of the past decade. But for whatever reason, they’re now being lumped in with a group of schools that include North Texas, Arkansas State and some MW schools (including Colorado State and Air Force) as potential replacements for the three programs that are leaving the Group of Five American Athletic Conference for the Big 12.
Moving to the AAC would be nothing more than a lateral move for MW schools and probably mean a pay cut for Boise State. So it makes no (dollars or) sense.
When everything finally settles – in about five years or so – Boise State will very likely join the big boys in the western portion of a new College Football Super Conference, whatever form that takes. The Broncos remain a Top 25 program and its hard to imagine any College Football Play-off expansion that won’t include their participation over the next several seasons.
So…none of this shuffling will really matter that much in the long run. But you have to wonder why The Little Program That Could was suddenly left on the sidelines.