‘Tis the season of disappointment. It coincided with a season of change.
The Broncos have made an abundance of changes since the AFC championship game of 2005. They changed quarterbacks and defensive systems. They changed assistant coaches and running backs and middle linebackers and changed back to their old defensive system. They changed safeties and changed defensive linemen darn near every week.
And, yes, the Broncos even had a changing of the guards.
Once all the changes were made, the Broncos went backward. The record says so.
“What we’re doing now is totally different from what we were doing in camp,” Broncos defensive back Domonique Foxworth said. “I think familiarity will help us to be a little more consistent.”
Don’t misunderstand. Many changes brought upgrade, particularly at quarterback. Maybe the changes will assure better days in the future.
But the here and now? Mike Shanahan is going to miss the playoffs in back-to-back years for only the second time since he took control of the Broncos in 1995.
The problem with too many changes is that cohesion has no shot. A safety needs to make an innate, split-second movement opposite his middle linebacker. Strangers, though, are forever bumping into each other.
The Broncos made only a few, if in retrospect, significant changes after going 14-4 in 2005. Trevor Pryce, Mike Anderson, Gary Kubiak and Troy Calhoun left, and Jake Plummer was replaced at quarterback by Jay Cutler.
They went 9-7 and missed the playoffs in 2006. The failure led to arguably the most tumultuous offseason in Broncos history. Some change was out of necessity following the deaths of Darrent Williams and Damien Nash. Other change was the result of unfortunate injuries to Al Wilson, Ebenezer Ekuban, Tom Nalen, Javon Walker, Rod Smith, Jarvis Moss and Ben Hamilton. No one at Dove Valley can deny the quantity of change was precipitated by the near-missing draft years from 2001-04.
The result is 6-8 with the final two games to be played against difficult opponents, San Diego and Minnesota. The Broncos’ season could well get worse, especially if the team reports back to work Monday knowing their slim playoff chances have been officially buried.
“We are going to figure out a way to get this thing going back to the old Broncos’ days,” rookie running back Selvin Young said.
Before the good old days get older, the Broncos should become acquainted with the redeeming values of sitting still. Ordinarily, when a season goes wrong, the impulse is to cry for change. Fire the coach. Hire the coach’s former offensive coordinator. Blow up the roster.
I say the Broncos make as few changes as possible. Too much change, in such a short period, was the Broncos’ No. 1 problem this season. Send the kids back out there with another year of experience, get Nalen back healthy and start over in 2008.
Not that the Broncos aren’t in need of some tinkering, particularly on defense. And the NFL’s economic structure that merges free agency with a salary cap forces teams to make financial cuts.
But the Broncos’ collection of first-, second- and third-year players — Cutler, Young, Brandon Marshall, Tony Scheffler, Chris Myers and Chris Kuper on offense; Marcus Thomas, Elvis Dumervil, Tim Crowder, Moss, Hamza Abdullah, Karl Paymah and Foxworth on defense — is their best young nucleus in years.
Maybe there was a little too much youth for success to be reasonable in 2007. Maybe there was too much age in 2006. And maybe the Broncos will forever regret blowing the opportunity to win a third Super Bowl in 2005.
None of this matters anymore. Stick with the kids, hope Tom Brady and Peyton Manning grow old, and the Broncos will be back in the playoffs in 2008 and legit Super Bowl contenders in 2009.
That’s my prediction. And I’m sticking to it.
