Broncos #1 overall - per football outsiders
 

link

we should also mention that KC comes in dead last, oak and SD are 24th and 25th, respectively.

I remember back in summertime there were a lot of us worried about this seasons schedule. Some of these games got a bit easier with how bad a lot of teams have become.

Texans are worried..... as they should be.

Concern I would start to have is that if we dominate against lesser opposition down the stretch, that we may get shocked by a better team in the playoffs and get knocked out early, not being ready to deal with an above average team.

If we start a big winning streak, the media is going to be all over this team singing our praises. Hopefully the coaching staff and leaders on this team can keep everyone grounded and focused as the season progreses.

Yes but don't sleep on the Bengals, the Browns and the Buccs. All are trap games and all have B in their names.

Every team in the league should be worried with the way Manning is playing and how our defense just shut down the top passing attack in the league. If we can stop losing the turnover battle in games, we are going to be very hard to beat. I'm still wondering if that's going to happen though. Turnovers remain the one thing that could really derail what is starting to look like a serious contender.

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As in our biatches....lol I hope

Good point -- surprised this isn't covered more in the media.

East coast games have been our bane for decades.. in fact east of the Mississippi have not been stellar games..

While he have won a few the CIN game a few years ago was on a lucky tip of the ball..

I still am concerned about BAL although most of their stellar players are on IR, CIN HAD a potent offense last year but not much happening now.. the BUCs could be a scary game Panthers seem to be coming back and always a struggle at arrowhead..

while it looks good now things can change week to week..

I feel loads better about this team than I did during TC, I did not think the manning mind meld would happen so fast with his no huddle thought it would take a few months before it started to click.. right now looks pretty well done..

lets all knock on wood for some great games coming up..

What a problem to have.

Like Houston and NE?


Regardless whether we go 5-4 or 8-1 the rest of the way. These two teams expose our weaknesses on D the most. While I think our O will be better not sure if our D will improve enough to actually expect to beat these teams. NE has really toyed with us lately.

I'm worried about Cincy and Tampa. Tampa is for real offensively right now, and Cincy has a good D line, good run D, and AJ Green

Do we get some sort of trophy for attaining this ranking?

yep the "scares the hell out of upcoming coordinators silver one"..

Joe Mays isn't starting for us anymore. That goes a long way towards nullifying the weaknesses against those two teams.

Denver is a scary team to play. You don't know which team will show up. Double digit leads are meaningless until the clock reads 0:00. If the offense comes out firing it is almost impossible to stop. The defense can flip a switch and go straight beast mode. And the team still has not hit it's peak; We have yet to see a complete mistake free game.

I'm not really concerned about that. IMO that would be a bigger deal if this was not a team full of veterans or if it was a team w/o any playoff success.

The vast majority of players on this team have won at least one playoff game. That means quite a bit, IMO. It's not like we are the Atlanta Falcons, who have struggled in January and now have that "can't win in the playoffs" label. It's not like we are the 2011 Detroit Lions, a team who's leaders don't have any playoff experience at all.

Cincy loses to crappy teams and TB just lost Nicks. They now have both All Pro guards out

AJ Green can be taken out of the game then Dalton has to win in some other way

Do you mean the Cleveland Browns or Kansas City "Browns"?

:)

The Kansas City Clowns!

I actually believe winning games and going on a big run is a good thing. The parity between teams in the NFL is very close. This isn't like beating up on a big sky opponent at home and then going to Mobile to play the Crimson Tide. Historically teams that win a bunch of games against bad teams tend to win many games against good teams too, though the margin of victory isn't as big. This is because the things that win football games are universal and teams can get good at it. We just have to make sure we don't play down to an opponent, which we haven't done all year, to be honest.

I'm anxious to see if we can perform better in games starting at 1:00pm. That's been a problem for the team for quite awhile. Wonder if JF plans to have the team leave early to try and adjust to the time zone?

Having an easy schedule and taking advantage of it are two different things.

I'd feel a lot better about it if Denver didn't have such a miserable history - going back several years now, even into the Shanahan regime - of fading down the final stretch of the regular season.

So we'll just have to wait & see.

It certainly helps that the rest of the AFC West is such a mess.

"Both Denver and San Francisco now rank in the top five for both offense and defense, with roughly average special teams."

"Average" special teams?

Prater is the best kickoff guy in the league and is one of only four kickers who are perfect on field goals and extra points this season.

Colquitt is the #5 ranked punter in the league in net distance.