Never too Early to Over-Hype the Denver Broncos
By Kevin Gillikin August 18, 2014
Preseason is all about practice, conditioning and seeing what five or six players will impress the coaches enough to earn their way onto the 53 man roster. The scores don’t matter, wins and losses don’t mean crap and there should be zero excitement following a blowout win against a quality NFL team.
That’s at least what most people will tell you.
I’m not one of those stupid sport’s pundits tries to suck all the fun out of anything and everything that’s not the Superbowl.
Preseason IS a glorified practice but it means something and occasionally it shows a lot about one or both teams that face off on the preseason gridiron. The Broncos against 49ers was one of those times.
Butt whooping, slaughter fest, smashing, murderation…..all words that come to mind following Sunday’s 34-0 clobbering of the San Francisco football team. The question all morning has been asking if this is a bigger deal for Denver or San Fran. I’d say it’s equally good for the Broncos and really really worrying for the Niners.
Denver:
Peyton Manning could have an even better year than he did last year. Considering he hadpossibly the greatest season that any QB has ever had…that’s no small prediction. It’s also not a huge stretch to think it a possibility. The O-line should be better with Ryan Clady back in the lineup at Left Tackle and big Orlando Franklin
moving to guard they should be a stout group. Eric Decker left to the Jets but they
brought in a faster, smaller but potentially more skilled receiver in Emmanuel Sanders who should flourish under PFM’s leadership. The Thomas boys (Demaryious and Julius) should have another huge year and Wes Welker is always that annoying little security blanket that will destroy the middle of the field week after week.
The one weakness this offense could have is at running back. The Broncos lost Moreno to free agency after a career year in 2013 and the 3rd year of Ronnie Hillman doesn’t promise to be any better than his last two. Montee Ball is the future hopeful star for the team and undrafted rookie, Juwan Thompson, has been impressive in the preseason but the position may be the team’s weakest.
Anyway….I’m getting carried away with season previews when really what I wanted to say was the game against the 49ers showed me a lot.
The Broncos are going to be great and the 49ers are hugely overrated. National media dopes keep touting San Fran as the “team to come out of the NFC” and I just see no reason to believe that. They are banged up, have a QB who is talented but erratic and have a coach that the players don’t like and who was almost traded to the Cleveland Browns in the offseason. Add that to a brutally tough NFC West division and a tough schedule and this team doesn’t even make the playoffs.
Preseason shows which teams are coached well, healthy and most importantly which teams have depth. The Broncos showed in colors that they are DEEP. They are three deep in nearly every position and there’s only one injury that would kill this team’s season and after seeing Brock Osweiler on Sunday, I think he could be a good to very good replacement for the great PFM.
Rambling over.
Broncos finish the season 14-2
49ers finish the season 7-9