Again and Again, Elway (And Vegas) Wins

Punditry is the profession of know-it-all'ism, yet time and time again, we know it all's keep falling for the same emotional okey doke like everyday fans do when we don't adhere to axioms like defense winning championships as they keep saying. After Superbowl 50 ended, the top defense had added to their victories over the top offense when both meet up in the Bowl, increasing the lead to 10-2.

Defense is that known quotient that all champions attest to as the reason they walk around with the shine of victory's glory, but its never really the reason we tune in for the show.  We appreciated Von Miller being the most reliable entity in all of football this year, but not enough to ignore the bore of watching Manning and Osweiler dink and dunk their way to Superbowl supremacy.

Consequently, the speed at which our local conversation has switched over to draft and free agency in Denver is mind blowing.  Come to think  of it, we might have been  there prior to our Superbowl victory, with our head coach and the backup quarterback (the original backup, not Manning) included in the conversation of people we should retain, or not.  For now, most of that Fire Kubiak stuff has died off, yet the backdrop of doubt over the backup who's scheduled to get paid remains, along with quiet skepticism over coach Kubiak's approach and his worthiness to keep leading this great team that Elway has compiled.

The defense played so well, that we don't really know which coach to actually credit for this victory, so let's focus on the compilation of players and coaches instead.

Once again, John Elway has done exactly what people thought impossible, just like he did when he took Denver's under manned football teams to the Superbowl again and again, culminating in Superbowl victories, again and again, to close out his career. Whoever actually won the award for NFL executive of the year needs to take that award and deliver it to Elway, pronto.

This time, Elway successfully pulled the levers, engineered a plan and put it into place by compiling the parts, pieces and the mantra for how it would be accomplished.  In defensive era football, you get lucky to connect on the few chances that even great defenses will give you to make big plays in big games. Take too many chances and you are more likely to turn the ball over and suffer defeat at the hands of teams perfectly willing to make field goals and grind it out versus shooting for the stars and getting stuck in the trees.

That was how I viewed things as a pundit of the team I love.  But the Broncos remain the team that I love, which means my deep analysis is often just hope masquerading as clear eyed perspective.

In order to gain that clear eyed view when I look at teams and games from the "know-it-all" view of a pundit, I have to tip my hat to the place with the best track record for know-it-all'ism.

VEGAS.

According to the word on the street, Denver was struggling too much with offensive production and identity with the in and out of  Osweiler and Manning, whose best production had barely shown glimpses of the kind of greatness that Denver's defense produced regularly.  Listening to that same word on the street, I heard that Pittsburgh's offensive production was too much to stop for Denver or any defense.  The same unstoppable expectation torch was passed to the legend, Tom Brady, after Ben Roethlisberger and his Steelers couldn't get it done.

The rhetoric was justified and the expectations reasonable based upon the emotional view of the contest and the  regular season track record of the quarterbacks being asked to live up to the emotional view of things.

Yet, the Vegas betting lines never matched the emotions.

Sure, Vegas had New England to beat Denver, but they didn't have them to win by the numbers that emotional pundits promised the Patriots should win by.  Was Vegas confused and struggling against the trend of emotional bets?

Similarly, pundits had Cam killing Denver, but Vegas had him squeaking out a win by 3.5 points that stretched to 5.5, giving ground to emotions betting habits just to help maintain the ruse. Did Vegas already know what we finally learned?

Let's get this straight once and for all.  VEGAS IS RARELY CONFUSED ABOUT WHO WILL WIN.

If you ever start to feel like the fix is in when you watch too much NFL football, it is not because the players have pre-planned some shenanigans, it is because Vegas tells the NFL- and the rest of us- who will win (indirectly) and the NFL believes what they say, even though the rest of us don't listen.

In fact, the NFL listens closely, they try to engineer story lines around Vegas probabilities.  What that demands is to understand what Vegas does when they expect a team to be a double digit winner versus what they do when you expect the wrong team to be a double digit winner. Whatever you are thinking about the game, remember that Vegas intends to be the only real winner.

If Vegas ever catches America talking about a blowout from a team they don't even expect to win the game, it becomes a case of betting enticement that ALWAYS ends up with Vegas on top. Keep the line too low, and the bettors catch wind.  Push the line too high and the bettors get afraid their team can't cover those points.




Just so you know, Vegas might be at it again.

When the opening lines for next years Superbowl champion came out, the Broncos were nowhere near the top, with 14 to 1 odds of them winning again.  By day two, those odds dropped down to 20:1.  Did Vegas lose faith in the QB  and the free agent uncertainty in Denver, or were there just not enough people biting on the opening line so Vegas had to extend the lure a bit?

Believe it or not, Vegas might they have agitated the wrong bettor this time?

Did the lack of betting line respect for the Broncos final games impact the bite in the dogs from Denver?  Did it propel the Broncos teammates into a brotherhood of togetherness unlike we've ever seen in recent championship history? Will Peyton Manning bring that championship trophy over to the Papa John's that is 3 minutes away from my house in Denver, Colorado (where my daughter works) so we can get pictures of it?

I said that partially to name drop the fact that Manning owns the pizza parlor where my kid works, but I am mostly talking about the future for Manning the man.  What happens to this legendary champion after all the crowds stop cheering, and he's no longer climbing up the record books? Can Denver find the same passion and inspiration for greatness without their on-the-field coach pushing them to be greater than they otherwise would? Love him or hate him, Manning was exactly that for this team.  A reason to do more, and a teacher to tell you how. As a result, he still might be the most important piece of the championship puzzle that Elway has to keep together.

Is Manning really ready to call it a career just because everyone (except his teammates) thinks he should?

That is where my betting hat starts to analyze things.  Manning, a generally cocky QB, was perfectly happy to tell the entire world how thankful he was to his Bronco brothers for letting him jump on their back for a championship ride. We understood that he was riding wounded, we just didn't accept what our eyes were telling us.  Had Manning finally lost the supremacy that makes NO ONE question him as the best regular season quarterback of all time?  That may seem like a slight against his playoff failures, but sports are a funny business, and we fans rarely agree over topics like GOAT, even if we are limiting him to regular season GOAT only.

In reality, no one ever argues that point.  He stood right at the gates of being crowned as the true GOAT before Seattle and the Seahawks turned him into another losing donkey two years ago.

Quite frankly, that was the last thing that Manning needed for his already tattered legacy, and most of us Broncos faithful were not terribly happy to be gaining a quarterback with the same underachieving label that we already lived with long before his arrival, despite our back to back championships two score ago.

Functionally, the Denver Broncos have shunned their losing label with their Superbowl 50 win, but Manning has not.  Until further notice, he has simply jumped on the back of a team that was totally sick of the criticism over their tainted history with Superbowl's, and said enough already.  They said it in such a way that those same shell shocked pundits are now weighing the defensive performance against the greatest defensive performances of all time.

Denver might not have yet gained the title as Greatest D Of All Time (GDOAT), but the conversation hasn't really concluded yet either.  We are still reviewing the tape from the Bowl and the season to see what we looked at but didn't understand until it was too late. What we keep seeing keeps impressing us more and more to the point that you are either betting that Denver loses defensive players to other teams, or you are betting they retain them and solidify their place in history, depending on what side of this fan fence you sit.

That entire bet hinges on what happens at the quarterback position.  Either the Broncos will spend on their quarterback, or they will spend on their defense, because this championship team can not be retained without a financial sacrifice from several key players.  You know, like the sacrifice from a brotherhood of men that bonded itself together to overcome rookie and wounded quarterbacks as well as doubt and coaching criticism against their way of getting it done.

The criticism kind of continues in the lack of expectation for this coming year.  Either Vegas doesn't expect much from Denver, or critics don't.   The betting lines seem to suggest that critics are to blame just like they were in Superbowl 50, when Vegas knew Denver was going to beat Carolina even though the pundit expectation was for Cam to do a whole lot of dabbing.

I am also searching for some betting odds that Manning will not only stay in Denver, but that he will bring that trophy to our Papa John's so my daughter and the rest of the staff can take pictures and learn what hard work and perseverance can achieve. That speech rings slightly hollow if you were simply along for the ride.

So then he'll take a humongous pay cut just to ride that Bronco one more time, because he has plenty of outside loot with my daughter trying to pump out pizza's like a champion before she heads off to college this fall, .

Peyton might have won Superbowl 50, but did he do enough
to silence those critical of his post season failures?

I am betting that this time around, he's looking to dismount our championship horse while feeling like he was a worthy jockey and not just along for the ride. This time, he'll be playing with the same chip on his shoulder that the city of Denver flicked off with our recent championship.  This time, our championship win won't be for John or Pat or for anybody else on the planet.

This time will be for Peyton.  Bet on it.

Broncos Reach Mountain Top. Colorado Wants More

I sincerely wanted to feel ecstatically euphoric about my Denver Broncos winning Superbowl 50, but I have to be honest.  It was somewhat anti-climactic for a fan who has seen this all before.

Not so much the championship thing. Of course we've seen that part before, assuming you are of a certain age that is.  My youngest kid is heading downtown to see the big parade today because she was too young. I've done those parades, and the only thing really cool about them is the unified joy surrounding the reason you came out to celebrate in the first place.

The rest of it is sweaty, smelly and slightly claustrophobic if you suffer from such things.  The last parade brought out 650,000 revelers. This one promised to be worse...or better, depending on how you look at it.

When you combine the depression of accepting that the most unified moment of fellowship that we consistently enjoy as a nation- NFL football- has finally come to and end, I found myself more interested in searching out all of those crap talking naysayers who messaged their doubt throughout the entire season.  Even though I knew for certain that most of them were resorting to the bitter taste of whiskey to sooth their angered souls- the same whiskey that tasted extra sweet on the lips of the victors- I searched for someone who would swallow their pride and eat crow all in one failed swoop.

Nothing.

 I really hoped to find one guy who taunted all of Broncos nation with his incessant demeaning comments because no one wanted to bet him via Facebook, proving (in his mind) that no Denver fans actually believed that Denver would win.

At last posting, he's refusing to pay up to some of those same fans except an Uncle in his family who probably was the only person who had a hope in hell of collecting in the first place.

When we won it all, I thought about this "bet taunting" joker and how I could stick it in his face for doubting that my city has the stuff of championship form.

Who dat say we gonna lose another Bowl?

Did he and other Broncos naysayers have justifiable cause for the ridicule they level on this team?

In reality, my Denver Broncos are the most justifiably ridiculed champion that ever competed on the highest stage.  What we are known for is what most hate us for in the end.

We Are Over Achievers By Choice.

In Colorado, we climb 16'ers just because they are there.  No, really.

We hurt our muscles and blister our hands to reach the summit of a mountain, only to imagine in our minds the next mountain top.

Before the Broncos won, the Avs showed
them how to get it done.  Parade and all.

In Colorado, we've seen mountain tops on many occassions.  A few times, we got there only to discover that someone else reached the summit first.  Does that take away from our ability to climb or our thirst to be first?  On the contrary.  Our experiences- good, bad and ugly- have made us into the great state that we are.

We've won championship titles in every sport from lacrosse to soccer to hockey. Olympians live here just to chase after thin-aired mountain tops like we do for hobby.  We bike, we hike, we run, ski and golf all year round in this blessed state.  And though our cost of living has risen commiserate to the population boom that comes from being us, we complain and keep on moving because somewhere in that mountainous western backdrop is a spirit that inspires our passions, watches over our region, and occassionally appoints us to trials that only climbers can endure.

Columbine and the Aurora Theater were traumatic missions for a state that has now established the blueprint on terror mitigation, but our Superbowl blowouts at the hands of black quarterbacks were trauma of another, unrelated sort.   Did the butt kicking from those last two brothers set the third one up to take us for granted?  It certainly helped to remove the stigma on the black quarterback, making Cam the first black quarterback favored to win the Bowl.  We played an important role in each of those episodes. Were these traumas simply divine burdens of being us?

Hard to know for certain. What I do know is that I am Colorado, which means I am chissled and shaped by the impact of all of it.  I am Colorado, which means I ski in the morning and golf in the afternoon so that I can sooth the pain of loss and terror while remembering the importance of being diligent and aware of both.

Losing wasn't really too scary for me and those of my kind. We've seen the mountain top even when we've arrived too late.  In our NFL journey, we've summitted as many times as any team in the league, along with losing more times, losing with the biggest point deficits, and now we even have the worst quarterback rating EVER for a team that won the game.

On the other hand, we might have also won it with the best defensive performance in the history of the final game while using the best regular season quarterback in the history of the game,  backed by the best front office guy who remains in the conversation as the best quarterback to ever win as well.

You may not appreciate the results that we've achieved given the wealth of chances that we have had to do it, but you have to respect the wealth of chances.  The Denver Broncos are often in the mix and are threatening to remain in the mix for years to come.  Some might choose to focus on the failures, but even they can't deny the chances.

In Broncos nation,  we reveled in the moment for the first few hours of victory

By morning time, the only post Superbowl posts I could consistently find were "When will the Rockies and the Nuggets" do the same?

Yep.  You got it.

In Colorado, we are already seeking new mountains to climb and new parades to plan, because We Are Colorado.  That's just what we do.

I Miss The Days Of Just Being A Denver Broncos Fan

I wish I could go back to being just another Denver  Broncos fan, born and raised in the Denver Metro area.

Now I am a black American male Denver Broncos fan- born and raised in the Denver Metro area.  I never really wanted to become black, but I wasn't really given much of a choice.

I might have known that I was black long before I was forced into accepting it, but I didn't really appreciate the separation of me and my multi-cultural friends who all rooted for the Broncos the same way as kids.  We lost our ever loving, multi-racial minds when Lyle Alzado and Jon Keyworth and them boys went out and made those miracles happen. Even when they lost, Denver Broncos fans remained united with pride and appreciation for our team.

My particular North Denver neighborhood in the 70's made me an unaware minority among the posse of kids my age that included two Mexicans, one white kid and one mixed race kid whose black dad we seldom saw. Moving 10 up the road to North Aurora offered me and my siblings more of the same racial integration'ary ignorance, until those days that we played against the South Aurora white kids in sporting events and started to understand that poverty created a race of people that many whites attempted (and still do) to avoid like the plague.

It would be years before I discovered that "The Jones's" were also middle class white families that hated the white trash label and would live with the same empty refrigerator poverty and hunger that poor folks endure except for the sake of social segregation and stature.  It would also be years before I discovered that  I was no longer just a young man who loved the Denver Broncos like most born and raised Denver kids do, but I was a black man who had grown too tall too fast to remain non-threatening to the public at large.

Mike Brown Jr. had no real control over the body that he was
born into, and the fear that it would invokes in other people.
Neither does Cam Newton. 

Apparently, my really smart black friend who grew faster, stronger and quicker than I did, evoked similar responses when walking in his own neighborhood that just so happened to be a little too South Aurora for two dark skinned, North Aurora looking boys.  I am not sure if my mother warned me about the challenge of dating one of those white girls that kept calling the house before or after that time we got pulled over by the cops for walking the street while black around the corner from my homey's way too nice house, but each occurance shook my identity and innocence. I was forever altered from that time- from that mirror that I never had a reason or a desire to see in that way before.

The image of me that made people afraid probably had me running to the comforts of an Historically Black College.  And yes- it was comforting to go an entire week without seeing any white people except that one white guy on campus who loved him some black foke.

But it wasn't reality.

In reality, I wanted to go back to my Mexican and white people, my white snow, and to being just a Denver Broncos fan and not a black male Denver Broncos fan.  I wanted to hate the hell out of being in college in super black Atlanta, GA when my Broncos lost to that first black quarterback, Doug Williams; but he killed my team, and it was undeniably easy to feel happy for the opportunity that he was creating for so many young black men that play football, but just want to be MEN.

Was Russell Wilson more accepted  than Cam because he is not
 so black looking or because he isn't so brash......or both?

I am not proud of those days when I celebrated OJ's guilty ass getting found not guilty.  By that time, I was made fully aware of my blackness and the retributive fear associated with being black, and at the time, it felt like the triumph of the underdog. With this upcoming football game, there is a similar guilt that this 47 year old black male, Denver native, Broncos fan can't actually lose this upcoming Superbowl because I am  fully represented by the underdogs I'm supporting on both sides of the field.


I am not at all proud that a really small part of me (I was a Broncos fan long before I became black) is rooting for a win by virtue of a loss. But it's real and it's true.

From the day we first met him, Cam Newton has remained the same unabashedly proud black man who just so happens to love the game of football, but refuses to conform himself to the comforts of critics.  Cam has done Cam since the very beginning.  Most of his critics said that he needed to win like Gronk and Brady before he behaved like Gronk and Brady. Now they just don't like him.

I appreciate the example that Cam gives all of us to be unashamedly YOU.  The fact that he happens to be black is something that he and I wish didn't matter so much for NFL quarterbacks, coaches or American presidents. On his team, they refer to him as Obama.  Is he similarly paving the way for a generation of hopeful black men?

What Cam is doing might revive Tim Tebow's career as well as making my young black daughter feel a little more comfortably with being an unashamedly young black woman- even at work.  Life is too short and too full of critics to allow racial, or any criticism, to limit or define you. Cam is not only teaching the world how an athletic quarterback- who might also be black- can succeed in the role, he is showing the masses how to stay true to yourself in whatever you're doing.

Regardless of the games outcome, there is simply no way for this black male Denver  Broncos fan to hate on Cam, or lose this game.