@MarkKnudson41
Strike One: If you’ve ever attended a junior varsity game at your local high school, you know they can be sloppy, mistake-filled, maddening – and totally entertaining – all at the same time. If you watched the Denver Broncos defeat the New York Jets last Thursday night, you saw all of the above. Broncos v Jets was the NFL’s version of a JV game.
Due to circumstances both within their control (under-constructed roster) and out (unimaginable bout with the injury bug) the Broncos have been reduced to NFL JV status for the time being…meaning all of what’s left of the 2020 season most likely. And that’s okay.
Even when 100% healthy, this year’s Broncos were built to be a .500 team at best. Perhaps good enough to slip in the back door to the expanded post season, but certainly not good enough to tangle with the upper echelon of the league – including the World Champion Kansas City Chiefs – on a regular basis and come out ahead. Not now, not yet.
Now, with their best player, their best receiver and their young starting quarterback all taking up space on the overcrowded injury list, the Broncos have been forced to go deep down the depth chart to get enough players onto the field. The upside is that we get to see if any of these guys who would have played sparingly this season can actually play – and become contributors to a better squad down the road. Sort of like if we had gotten to see any pre-season games.
Second year QB Drew Lock will be back soon they say, but we’ve been able to watch the Broncos back-up QB/future Head Coach of the future, Bret Rypien take some snaps. The kid’s got a good head for the game, even if he lacks the elite talent to be a standout NFL starter. He could be the next Gary Kubiak…an asset. So will several of the young cornerbacks and receivers that have been forced into action. Denver is young in the middle of the offensive line, but that future is bright, too. They’re getting better at linebacker (tell us again why Todd Davis was released?) and Bradley Chubb is working his way back from injury to be a solid edge pass rusher.
And they have a great place-kicker, too. So there’s that.
Injuries don’t let the front office off the hook, however. Neglecting the offensive tackle position in draft after draft is unthinkable and unforgivable at this point. Many are touting Garrett Boles for his improved play this season, but for a lot of observers, it’s hard to imagine the unreliable Boles being a cornerstone left tackle for a title contending team. And the right tackle position is a mess. Both the run blocking and pass blocking has been below average through four games. Example: If Melvin Gordon doesn’t bust a 43-yard scoring run late in the Jets game – a play that was supposed to go inside to help run out the clock before Gordon improvised it back to the outside – his final stat line would have been 22 carries for 64 yards, or less than three yards per rush. They aren’t exactly blowing people off the line of scrimmage.
There is some young talent on the O line, but not nearly enough. If they fail to address this in the next draft, the entire front office, including the legendary John Elway, should be fired before Roger Goodell signs off.
And the Broncos weren’t all that good at cornerback before AJ Bouye got hurt. Now, neglecting that spot in the off season player acquisition process looks pretty bad, too.
Injuries aside, a good deal of work remains in terms of roster building.
First things first. 2020 isn’t over yet. At least for this season, the front office will get to see a lot of guys play who they didn’t know very much about. They’ll see what kind of progress their JV players can make and see if they can become contributors to the varsity in time for next season.
Strike Two: For awhile there, it looked like next season would be the first time we’d get to see what Steve Addazio’s CSU Rams looked like on the field. But like several other conferences, the Mountain West ran a reverse and decided to play some football games this fall after all – COVID-19 permitting of course. (Certainly no guarantees there.)
It’s been a bizarre 2020 for everyone, but even a tick more so for Addazio, who is now preparing his first CSU squad for their first game against New Mexico, less that three weeks away. Remember, it was early August when the entire football program was shut down, “suspended” and reportedly investigated after accusations that Addazio’s staff had A) not been fully supportive or compliant with COVID-19 safety protocols, and B) been verbally abusive and insensitive to racial issues within the program. Some heavy stuff.
The end of the suspension/investigation was never formally announced, but the team hit the practice field – without any outside media coverage – the same time everyone else did, following the league’s announcement of the resumption of a fall schedule. No findings from the investigation have been announced as of yet.
Certainly school admin would like the entire episode to just sort of, “disappear. One day – it’s like a miracle – it will disappear.” That’s a pleasant enough thought, but it’s unlikely to happen.
Those who made the accusations – many of whom are still with the program – will probably lay low for the time being, and we will all see if any of this impacts what happens on the field. If things go well on the field for CSU, if say they win four or even five of their eight scheduled games, and somehow land a bowl bid (a winning record is not required for bowl eligibility this season, but a fervent following still is) perhaps all of the acrimony from this summer will die off.
But if they struggle, and if Addazio’s old school coaching style grates on his CSU players the same way it did at his previous stop at Boston College, then many of the old complaints will likely resurface.
The CSU admin would have been better off addressing this matter publicly and putting it to rest before the season started (and the season started as soon as practice resumed.) Now there’s some self-induced pressure. The results on the field and the results of the internal investigation are probably going to be tied together in some way. That’s not a comforting thought.
Strike Three: Just going to toss out a name here for fans of the Colorado Rockies to think about: Peter Bendix.
No, you don’t have a reason to have ever heard of him. He didn’t play in the big leagues; he didn’t even play baseball in college. He is an excellent ping-pong player, according to his bio.
Bendix attended Tufts University where he earned a degree in American studies. He’s also been a published writer for “several publications.” None of this screams out “future successful MLB executive” does it?
The American League East champion Tampa Bay Rays think it does. And they have the scoreboard on their side.
Bendix landed an internship with the Rays in 2009 and has slowly worked his way up the ladder of the club’s front office over the past decade. Using advanced analytics, Bendix, now the Rays Vice President of Baseball Development has helped Tampa – with the 27th highest payroll in MLB – become a World Series favorite. His duties include “player evaluation, roster management and long-term thinking.”
Those are all areas where the Colorado Rockies, with the 16th highest payroll in MLB (Tampa is one of NINE clubs with a payroll lower than Colorado’s who made the 2020 post season field) have struggled mightily in recent years. Especially the part about “long term thinking.”
No front office is mistake-free. Drafting and signing free agents is a hit-and-miss proposition, even for the best of them. But some organizations have gotten better than others at the process of team building, and in recent years, those who have embraced more use of advanced analytics have gotten better results on the field and more “bang for their buck.”
The best part is that money/market size isn’t the deciding factor on who excels and who doesn’t in MLB. It’s not how much you spend, it’s how and where you spend it. Do you chase short-term free agent signings – which are typically players on the downhill side of their careers – or do you invest in “long term thinking” and spend your money on talent evaluation, player development and solid roster building?
Followers of the Colorado Rockies have heard the term, “the Rockies way” too many times to count. As an organization, Colorado is and has been committed to doing things in manner consistent with what ownership feels comfortable doing, and they believe will allow them to best compete for a spot in the post season every year. And as we’ve seen, once a team gets into the post season, anything can happen.
This mantra has been in place for many years and has allowed for consistency of management and job security for those employed at 20th and Blake. It’s a well run business operation that values its employees and creates stability.
But it hasn’t produced success on the scoreboard nearly often enough.
“The Rockies way” is in many ways a dinosaur. It has not invested enough in player development and long-term thinking. It’s been a solid year-to-year, “last year’s profits equal next year’s payroll” bottom line kind of approach, which at times has resulted in free agent spending sprees, and at other times allowed quality players to leave town without the team getting any value in return.
Clubs like Tampa, Oakland and others realized long ago that they could not compete the old fashioned way. So they decided to put their money where their talent evaluators were. They didn’t point at a lack of resources for failings, they found a different and often times better way to compete.
So…could someone like Peter Bendix come to a place like Colorado, bringing the “Tampa Bay way” with him, and perhaps turn around the on-field fortunes of the Rockies on the scoreboard…without disrupting the small business/job security/happy employees approach ownership is locked into?
It would be well worth trying. The scoreboard isn’t going to start lying anytime soon.