MVN - Most Valuable Network

Beyond Sauerbrun and Hester

It’s easy to pin the loss at Chicago on Todd Sauerbrun and the special teams.  In addition to giving up two returns for touchdowns at the hands of Devin Hester, Sauerbrun also suffered a blocked punt.  However, that simply does not tell the whole story.  It’s important to remember that at the onset of the game, Hester was pretty much kept under control.  At his nadir, Hester committed an unnecessary muffed punt that resulted in a turnover in favor of the Broncos.

I was somewhat correct in predicting that Sauerbrun would try to line drive his kicks so that it would bounce right before reaching Hester.  This tactic worked quite well for the first few tries, until Hester began to adjust by moving up about ten yards while preparing for the punt.  Had Sauerbrun made adjustments in response, Hester might have been guessing again.

Nevertheless, even with the Hester advantage, the Broncos could have—and should have—still won this game.  Look no further than the touchdown bomb to Brandon Marshall that Jay Cutler threw on just one play immediately after one of Hester’s returns.  No, the bigger lynchpin has been the one that has been a problem for the Broncos all season long—the defense

More accurately, the pass defense seems to be disintegrating as a tradeoff to compensate for the awful run defense earlier in the season.  Much like the week before against Vince Young and the Titans, the Broncos played far too soft in allowing short passes towards the end of the game.  This allowed Rex Grossman, who had a mediocre day at the beginning, to pull off masterful drives to come back from a 14 point deficit to tie the game and then win it in overtime.

When the Bears had won the toss, I had the same bad feeling I had when the Packers won the overtime toss on a previous Monday night.  I was chiefly comparing the threat of Favre throwing another long bomb to the threat of Hester on a return.  It didn’t quite work out that way, but instead Grossman and company resumed driving down the field.

What are the problems on defense?  I honestly don’t have an answer as qualified as the coaches would have.  I could take some guesses, such as a green defensive line or a pure lack of talent at linebacker (although Ian Gold did play a better game).  Again, I don’t know if it can be fixed at this point.  At least the offense has the power to put points up on a board, and to take their chances in a shootout.

It must be said that if there was one game out of the last six that the Broncos could “afford” to lose, it would be a road game in the NFC.  They still control their own destiny, but it would require the team to win out from here on.  This would include a victory over the Chargers in San Diego to give the Broncos the divisional tiebreaker.  One more loss, however, and the Broncos will be dependent on the Chargers to lose an additional game to the Christmas Eve showdown, and that’s never a good situation to be in.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 6:16 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.