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View Full Version : The Politics of Starting a QB in Denver



WARHORSE
09-30-2011, 02:31 PM
If youre running an organization, you have to have a view of the big picture or youre going to flame out if youre even lucky enough to flame in the first place.

Orton is clearly.....CLEARLY.....not in the big picture. So the situation begs, "Why play Orton knowing that, especially when you dont know what you have in a touted first rounder sitting on the bench?"

Answer: The lockeroom.

Tim suffered in the offseason for sure, and in practice he looked bad while Orton 'outplayed' him in front of his teamates. So when you have a clean slate at the beginning of the season and everyone is full of hope for the year, and Kyle looks great in practice and Tim doesnt, you know the team is going to want to be behind Kyle as well. Think this makes its way back to the coaches?

Sure does.

Think about it. You CANT play Tim if the players and coaches can clearly see a big difference in play during training camp. If you do that, you risk losing the lockeroom if you lose.

Orton clearly outplays Tim in training camp, and everyone sees it. Come the first game of the season, coaches announce Tim as the starter.

As soon as that happens, the whispering starts. The players will at a minimum be entertaining the thoughts that the front office doesnt care about the players, because they arent trying to win now, theyre building for the future. Winning means JOBS for these players. Playoffs mean JOBS.
They will play hard initially, because its a new season and theres hope.

In this scenario, if the team starts losing with Tim at the helm, the lockeroom will stop caring. That translates to huge losses, and empty seats at Mile High, etc, etc. Bad times organizationally.

Now, if the team starts winning, then all will be forgiven, and the players will say, the team knows what it doing.


So you have to play Kyle, UNLESS you clearly believe Tim has shown you enough in practice that youre going to roll the dice with him. That clearly didnt happen, Tim suffered not being mentored more through the offseason. Lifting weights will not make you a QB, nor will simply running through drops.

Not only are the fans getting sick of watching the losing(see BILLBOARDS), but the players are too.

Champ Bailey is never going to say the wrong thing to the media. But do I believe he would rather have Orton right now than Tebow?


When youre a defensive player on the sidelines watching Kyle Ortonary go three and out........again......after you just busted your butt trying to get off the field, you better believe youre going to be on the 'give Tim a shot' bandwagon as well.


We are at this point imo.

It may be, that this is the game where Tebow comes in at the goaline. The coaches can do this without messing with the 'psyche' of the starter, because clearly, he hasnt gotten it done.

The players all know the rules when it comes to that. You play your starter and give him a shot. Ok. We have done that Kyle, and you blew it.


If Tim comes in and begins converting in goaline packages.....which he will.....and we still end up losing.....which is a probability at this point and time.......the window will be there to play Tim.


I believe it is then that the coaches will commit to at lease five or so starts to see if Tim gets better with some game reps. We will then get to see what Mr. Tebow has.







And the lockeroom will be behind it.



:coffee:

BroncoStud
09-30-2011, 02:58 PM
I agree. I said it then, once the Orton trade fell through the coaches and front office had no choice but to let him play himself out of the position, which he has.

Joel
10-01-2011, 01:33 AM
Lotta truth to that. The players and coaches have to know the coach isn't a weathervane for fan opinion and the team has stability and direction. If a player thinks that the moment a few vocal fans turn on him the coach will, too, he starts thinking about how to keep his job instead of how to DO his job. If the FO thinks a coach is putting players or letting fans write wildly incompatible gameplans from week to week, it'll find someone who leads instead of follows. Doesn't even matter if the coach is buckling to fan pressure, only if the players and/or FO THINK he is. Unfortunately, on the occasions a clear majority of fans loudly line up behind what is just as clearly the best decision for the team coaches can hesitate to do what they know they should to avoid the appearance the fans pushed them into it.

Hopefully we're at the tipping point where Fox can say pulling Orton is the only choice based on his record, whatever fans say. Of course, a great help in that would be focusing on that argument (for which there's a mountain of evidence) without overreaching to declare which of Ortons possible successors is the Next Big Thing despite the host of drawbacks surrounding each of THEM.

ladypanther
10-01-2011, 04:51 PM
Billboards will make it hard for Foxy.

lgenf
10-01-2011, 05:03 PM
Fox has a three year pass

It doesn't matter what the fans scream,cry about, put on billboards nothing

He joined a dead team with the hope of rebuilding it and had one draft so far with no OTA to get the team up to speed

Locker room or not they better get something positive going, doesn't mean wins necessarily, but the current QB play in the 4th quarter has to be better

Maybe instead of T2 coming in on goaline or redone packages he should just play the 4th quarter completely

Agent of Orange
10-01-2011, 09:16 PM
If youre running an organization, you have to have a view of the big picture or youre going to flame out if youre even lucky enough to flame in the first place.

Orton is clearly.....CLEARLY.....not in the big picture. So the situation begs, "Why play Orton knowing that, especially when you dont know what you have in a touted first rounder sitting on the bench?"

Answer: The lockeroom.

Tim suffered in the offseason for sure, and in practice he looked bad while Orton 'outplayed' him in front of his teamates. So when you have a clean slate at the beginning of the season and everyone is full of hope for the year, and Kyle looks great in practice and Tim doesnt, you know the team is going to want to be behind Kyle as well. Think this makes its way back to the coaches?

Sure does.

Think about it. You CANT play Tim if the players and coaches can clearly see a big difference in play during training camp. If you do that, you risk losing the lockeroom if you lose.

Orton clearly outplays Tim in training camp, and everyone sees it. Come the first game of the season, coaches announce Tim as the starter.

As soon as that happens, the whispering starts. The players will at a minimum be entertaining the thoughts that the front office doesnt care about the players, because they arent trying to win now, theyre building for the future. Winning means JOBS for these players. Playoffs mean JOBS.
They will play hard initially, because its a new season and theres hope.

In this scenario, if the team starts losing with Tim at the helm, the lockeroom will stop caring. That translates to huge losses, and empty seats at Mile High, etc, etc. Bad times organizationally.

Now, if the team starts winning, then all will be forgiven, and the players will say, the team knows what it doing.


So you have to play Kyle, UNLESS you clearly believe Tim has shown you enough in practice that youre going to roll the dice with him. That clearly didnt happen, Tim suffered not being mentored more through the offseason. Lifting weights will not make you a QB, nor will simply running through drops.

Not only are the fans getting sick of watching the losing(see BILLBOARDS), but the players are too.

Champ Bailey is never going to say the wrong thing to the media. But do I believe he would rather have Orton right now than Tebow?


When youre a defensive player on the sidelines watching Kyle Ortonary go three and out........again......after you just busted your butt trying to get off the field, you better believe youre going to be on the 'give Tim a shot' bandwagon as well.


We are at this point imo.

It may be, that this is the game where Tebow comes in at the goaline. The coaches can do this without messing with the 'psyche' of the starter, because clearly, he hasnt gotten it done.

The players all know the rules when it comes to that. You play your starter and give him a shot. Ok. We have done that Kyle, and you blew it.


If Tim comes in and begins converting in goaline packages.....which he will.....and we still end up losing.....which is a probability at this point and time.......the window will be there to play Tim.


I believe it is then that the coaches will commit to at lease five or so starts to see if Tim gets better with some game reps. We will then get to see what Mr. Tebow has.







And the lockeroom will be behind it.



:coffee:

If the locker room is full of people who are pros, it really shouldnt matter all that much. Besides, with a lot of these guys...who cares what they think.

WARHORSE
10-02-2011, 07:03 AM
If the locker room is full of people who are pros, it really shouldnt matter all that much. Besides, with a lot of these guys...who cares what they think.


I disagree. :beer:

Juriga72
10-02-2011, 08:46 AM
If the locker room is full of people who are pros, it really shouldnt matter all that much. Besides, with a lot of these guys...who cares what they think.

MY question is "How does a team full of veterans feel about being down 3 points and having not one ounce of hope?"

Agent of Orange
10-02-2011, 10:01 AM
I disagree. :beer:

Yeah, ok. You're not helping anyone by babying them or catering to them. A lot of guys probably should be weeded out. Some of the guys being cowtowed to are part of the problem. And its a little disgusting that you're suggesting they should be cowtowed to.

You can talk up and down all you want about how the front office shouldnt listen to its fans but at the time McDaniels was hired, most of the fans actually wanted a defensive coach. The fans were right on that one--big time.

Cugel
10-02-2011, 12:56 PM
Warhorse is mostly right on this.

Chad Brown pointed out on 104.3 the Fan just this morning that he's hardly EVER seen in over 10 years playing in the NFL a guy who STUNK in practice be a STUD in games.

As he said "virtually every elite player I ever saw in the NFL was good in practice."

The fans are just WRONG when they say "I don't care what he does in practice." THey are WRONG to think that you can look horrible in practice and the pre-season and just "turn it on" on game-day. It just doesn't happen like that in the NFL.

The players all know that. They know Tebow just isn't ready to start no matter what idiot fans might think. So, the answer is "no" -- at this point the players do not want Tebow starting -- not before they fail to win a few more games at the very least.

Second point: The Broncos are NOT ON THE SAME SCHEDULE as the fans. They have made a long-term investment in Tebow (giving him a $6.2 million roster bonus this season).

He's under contract for 3 more years after this one. There's no hurry to rush him into games before he's ready.

That said, if Orton continues to stink and drop the ball on the field each game then they'll have no choice by about week 8 to put Tebow in.

But, I doubt it will happen before the team is eliminated from playoff competition -- unless the team just unravels and stops playing well.

As of right now, they are playing about as well as you could expect -- given how SUCKY most of the players are.

John Fox inherited an empty barn. He's had 1 draft and 1 off-season to turn things around. It's going to take more than that.

I expect Tebow will be starting by game 8 or 9 but if a miracle happens and they win a couple of games between now and then, then Orton will continue to start.

That's because contrary to what Warhorse said the Broncos entered this season uncertain whether they might not give Orton a long-term contract and make him the franchise QB.

If he had a great season they could do that. Of course that's not happening, but it was a possibility.

Now The ball's going to be in Tebow's court. We'll see what he can do given another 7 or 8 games starting this season. :coffee:

Sinthor
10-03-2011, 01:09 AM
than 8 or 9 games into the season. This team is looking at 1-4 going into the bye week barring a miracle. That's not good....almost a third of the season gone. The offense is looking as lifeless as it did last year before game 14. They need a spark. Orton's done. Get it over with. There is no WAY they're considering giving him a contract extension at this point and in fact, they can't. He's a free agent after this season. Why would he take an extension versus his first chance to test the market?