First, I just want to acknowledge the soldiers that have responded to the blog and let them know that our prayers are with them and we all appreciate what they are doing in all parts of the world.

It’s pretty cool to have the blog and the Internet. I guess I kind of make myself sound old, but I’m still amazed by the Internet sometimes and the fact that people can check out my blog from places like Japan and then respond to it. But anyway, just wanted to let them know that I read their responses and I appreciate their support and definitely know that we’re behind them.

Right now it’s probably going to be a rocky blog because I’m extremely tired. We had quite a last couple hours. We played the game in San Francisco and were able to win, which is always good, and did some promising things, and we left from there to the airport and got back to Denver at about 1:30, and I got back to my house around 2:30.

Then I unpacked my suitcase and repacked it for the next day’s trip, and now I’m here doing the blog at about 9-ish, because we have meetings coming up at 11, and from there we’re going to head to Dallas for a week and play them this coming Saturday.

So I think everybody in the organization is probably working off four hours of sleep or less. Some I’ve heard this morning have not gone to sleep at all. I think most of the players were able to get home and get about four or five hours, depending on what they had to do. So it’s going to be a rough one, but I guess we’ll get a lot of sleep on the plane.

This trip should be good for our team, especially for our offense to get to work against a 3-4 (defense) for the week and we get to go against another offense that runs the ball pretty well and has a talented quarterback and some pretty good receivers. So it’s a good measuring stick. It’s more fun than going up against ourselves.

And hopefully when we’re down in Dallas, which is pretty close to where D-Will is from, hopefully we’ll be able to see his mom and some of his family. I hope it’s not too soon, but I’m looking forward to that opportunity just as much as practicing against the Cowboys.

Speaking of D-Will, it was definitely kind of hard since it was our first game back, just being in the locker room and normally sitting next to him and talking to him and warming up, playing catch in the pregame, all those things were a little more difficult because it’s the first time since the last game that we had, and he’s not there. So it’s kind of tough.

I guess there’s no good transition from that into anything else, so we’ll just go to a little more lighthearted subject.

I really enjoy travel days around here, not so much because of the travel but because everybody gets dressed up and you really get to see everybody’s personality. Hamza (Abdullah) and I and some of the other defensive backs and people on the team in general really enjoy watching people try to get as fly as they possibly can. Some people do a good job and some people fall short, so we just have a good time making fun of everybody, as you guys know who read the blog regularly, that’s one of the things we enjoy is just picking on each other. It’s a lot of fun and most people don’t get too sensitive. Some people get their feelings hurt so those people are the most fun to pick on.

So we had a good time laughing at a lot of the outfits of people trying too hard for the trip, and we have another travel day today, so I’m looking forward to that also. Should be another day full of laughs.

I think one of the people who read the blog asked what do people make fun of me about. I try not to give them too much ammunition, but especially Hamza, he’s a pretty funny guy, he’ll find something to make fun of all the time. So a lot of times he’ll get me for having dry skin or not putting lotion on, being ashy, or needing a haircut, something like that. I guess those things are pretty easy to take care of, I just got to put some lotion on my legs and go to a barber shop regularly and I can get him off my back.

But it’s fun, because I can get back on Hamza because he has braces, or his hairline is kind of moon walking. I think I’m going to get in trouble for this, I’m sure someone will point this out to him and he’ll be mad, but oh well. It’s all in good fun.

Last week, before we headed out to San Francisco, we finished up camp and the last day of camp was a lot of fun to have the fans out there. They were really enthusiastic, and we were really excited also because we’re always happy when camp is over. I guess technically it’s not over because we’re going to have two-a-days in Dallas.

But anyway, last week was the fictional ending of camp. This year it’s been more of a ceremonial ending than an actual ending. But either way, any time camp draws to a close we’re excited.

Some of the highlights from last week in camp: One of the things I really enjoy is we spend a lot together and we spend a lot of time making fun of each other and joking around and having fun, but I actually stumbled into a pretty serious conversation in the locker room. Which is cool to get other people’s perspectives and one thing about the NFL is people come from many different walks of life and all over the country and you get so many different perspectives, it opens your eyes.

And we had a really good conversation that started about different cultures and moved on to race in America and the progress that we have and haven’t made in the country, and from there I don’t know how we got from race to children, but I didn’t have many tidbits to add to that, I was just taking notes because we have some really great fathers on this team.

One of the people I really enjoy listening to was Adam Meadows, and I really didn’t get the chance to know him much last year, but having the opportunity to sit down to talk to him last week, I gained a whole different respect for him. And Jeff Shoate talked about how he was raising his son, and Rod (Smith) always has a bunch of great tidbits. I’m sure that’s no surprise to anybody who’s a Broncos fan and knows that Rod is always willing to share his advice with anybody and share his time.

So we just had a great time talking about those things and then we moved on into politics, which I had some things to say about that. The state of politics today is a little upsetting to me, but you still got to vote because if you don’t vote then I guess you don’t really count. But political parties have run so much together it’s a little hard to differentiate, but this coming election should be interesting to see where this country goes.

But this is getting really boring now. Let’s get back to football, which is why most people log on. Everybody logs on to the blog for football talk.

So there were some really encouraging things in the game, and defensively we still have some things to work on. But one of the most encouraging things was we had things to work on, but we still held the 49ers to 13 points. Even without the first unit in there our second unit played well against their first unit. Throughout the game our third unit played well, I think everybody defensively played well when it mattered. They moved the ball but they didn’t score many points. We held them to a bunch of field goals and even had some red zone interceptions which can demoralize a team.

It was really good to see Hamza get an interception. He had another great interception last year in preseason. He’s had some great ones. Last year it was a diving one against Tennessee and this year he had an interception that pretty much took points off the board and allowed us to have that win. And Steve Cargile had a great interception in the end zone, which you can’t say enough about interceptions in the end zone. That’s another taking points off the board type of thing, which pretty much guarantees a win if you can take two scoring opportunities away from an offense.

I think as a defensive player we were really encouraged by what we saw from the first-team offense. Just the way Travis (Henry) was running and breaking tackles and moving the ball, Jay (Cutler) consistently making good decisions. Which none of us are surprised by Travis or Jay’s play because we see it every day and we like to think that we’re the best defense that they’re going to go against all year so if they can do things against us then it should be easy come Sunday.

But I would like to see Jay slide. I understand you get close to the end zone and you get a little excited, but it is the preseason. And we all want to win, and even if it’s not the preseason, get down and let Travis bang into the end zone or something and tuck the ball.

I’m sure all the coaches have their own tidbits for Jay. I would never say anything to him because I’m not an offensive coach, but maybe he reads the blog just like you guys and maybe next time he’ll slide and tuck the ball nice and tight.

So we’re headed to spend the week in Dallas. The opportunity to practice against some talented veteran receivers like T.O. (Terrell Owens) and Terry Glenn should be good experience for our corners. T.O. is a great player and no matter what people think about his off-the-field antics, the few times I’ve met him he seemed like a good guy. I look forward to that opportunity.

Terry Glenn has been around this league a long time. He’s had a lot less hype, but he’s a talented player. I think he’s a little nicked up right now, but it’s all going to be good for our defense. I think they have a pretty good offensive line which will be a great test for our new defensive linemen and our new scheme to be able to be tough against the run.

I read all the responses this week as I do every week, and we broke last week’s all-time blog response record, which is encouraging. It makes you feel like more and more people are reading, which is good motivation for me to get up a little earlier and sit down and knock this blog out.

I’m sorry I can’t respond to everybody, especially people who write in and ask for a shout-out. I mean, if you ask a good question or have a good story, then I can respond to it. But if you’re blog response is just, “Can you say my name?” I can’t fulfill that in the blog.

And people who asked to see pictures of Cash, my dog, who I introduced you guys to last week, I think he’s a little camera-shy. I’ll work on that for the future.

And I had some people ask questions about the hockey team. It’s not us the players playing hockey, it’s a lot of the support staff, the equipment guys and the people who work upstairs at the Denver Broncos facility and the people who work down at Dove Valley, they’ve put together a hockey team that I try to support. I talked about it in some earlier blogs, but for the new people just joining us, when I talk about the Broncos hockey team, I’m not talking about us putting on skates and playing hockey.

I’m talking about the Broncos employees who are not football players or coaches who play hockey. They ended up having a really good season, especially in comparison to last year’s no wins. They had a lot more wins this year.

But now our season is starting to get in the swing, so a lot of them are going to Dallas with us this week and are going to miss their playoff game, so their season comes to an end, unfortunately, because they have other engagements. But it was a great season. It was really productive and a great improvement. I enjoyed going to the games, and now I hope they enjoy coming to my games. It’s time for us to focus on Broncos football and not Broncos hockey.

Thanks again everybody for reading, see you next Tuesday.

Tags: Adam Meadows, Dallas Cowboys, Darrent Williams, Hamza Abdullah, Hockey, Jay Cutler, Jeff Shoate, Preseason, Rod Smith, Steve Cargile, Travis Henry

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at 11:24 am and is filed under Archives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.