The Broncos have improved, but there’s still a little ways to go.
That was the overall takeaway from Broncos Head Coach John Fox, just hours after Denver lost a close game to the Oakland Raiders 23-20 in the season opener Monday night.
Fox talked with reporters on a conference call at noon Tuesday and said that the staff is already preparing for Cincinnati on Sunday, given that this is a short week. However, he had a chance to watch some film on last night’s game.
“We’re learning about our team, what we can do well and what we can’t do well,” Fox said. “There’s a need for improvement like all opening games — I’ve been a part of many of them. It’s your first step out of the blocks, and I don’t think I’ve been with one that it’s gone perfectly. Obviously we have some things to work on, and we will do that as we move forward.”
Fox mentioned the turnovers (two lost fumbles and one interception) and sacks (quarterback Kyle Orton was sacked five times) as areas that ultimately hurt the Broncos the most.
“When you lose the turnover battle, and the sack battle as well as the explosive-play battle, I think you end up on the short end,” Fox said. “It was a three-point game that we had our opportunities as far as the first game of the season, and we didn’t seize it.”
Denver also netted only 38 rushing yards Monday night — compared to Oakland’s 190 — and Fox said that while there is improvement to be made along the offensive line, he is confident in the unit’s ability to progress.
“Just like anything, nothing worth a darn comes easy, so it will take a lot of hard work,” Fox said. “We have one game under our belt, and tomorrow we will start preparing for Cincinnati.”
Fox didn’t address one specific area of the team that stood out — whether positive or negative. When asked about quarterback Kyle Orton, Fox said there was some bright spots, such as his solid passing night, going 24-for-46 for 304 yards and one touchdown, but also areas needing improvement, such as his interception and fumble.
Yet, Fox made it clear he has complete faith in Orton moving forward.
“I thought he had some good, some bad like everybody else on the team,” Fox said. “We came up a little short. There were plenty of reasons why. It wasn’t just a quarterback by any stretch. Kyle is our starting quarterback, and I don’t think too many guys are firing their whole teams if they happened to be part of half of the teams that lost in Week 1.”
Whether it was his press conference after the game, or the call the following day, that was a consistent theme in Fox’s message — it was the opening game and the Broncos are in the same position as half the teams in the league. He likes what he’s seen from his players in the last month and a half, and he believes in them.
“Our team played very hard and unfortunately came up a little short,” Fox said. “We’ve got good guys in that locker room. I think we’ve got a good blend of veteran leadership. I think the young guys we have showed up and played pretty well. I’ve been here for five games — four preseason and one regular season — I’ve not been disappointed with that aspect.”
-Kenny Legan
Tags: John Fox, Oakland Raiders, Week 1
I cant help but feel like he is going to be stubborn and not change a damn thing even if orton throws twice as many picks as he does TDs. Maybe Im over reacting to the loss BUT LOSING TO THE RAIDERS IS NEVER EVER OK SINCE THEY HAVE BEEN THE WORST TEAM OVER THE LAST DECADE!!!! Now they look at us and see an easy win like we did them for so many years.
Don’t worry that tune will change soon enough if Ortons play continues. No one likes to admit they are wrong until they have too … now im not saying EFX was wrong about starting Orton (yet) but I believe orton will prove he is who we thought he was and is no different from the past two years. Until that decision is made, I shall just kick back and wait for the revelation.
And we lost the sack battle because they didn’t pass … didn’t have to. I dunno if we have run blitz but all our blitz look like pass blitzes. Our Oline can’t get push, our Dline can’t get push. It was a frustrating night. Mix that with the lack of discipline and there ya go. I won’t be surprised when the raiders start losing games because they are not good, any other team worth their salt coulda beat em between all their shinnenigans. I can almost not speak to the rivalry anymore … how many times have they beat us in a row? Oh how the tables have turned. Either they figure it out … or finally admit its a rebuilding year and put in Tebow … cuz if this is our idea of playing to win … I doubt we could do worse with Tebow. Just my thoughts. TRB
Tebow chants don’t help anything, but they are happening for a reason and that reason is because he has not been given a chance. If he would have been given a real chance in preseason with the ones and didn’t perform I highly doubt the revolt against Orton would be as bad as it is. Nobody knows what Tebow can do, and that is because Fox didn’t give him the chance to show it. And I highly doubt Fox gives him the chance till we are buried deep beneath our 3 rivals in the AFC West.
Elway would have never become the great quarterback he did if they did not give him a chance. Orton has been given a chance for many years and obviously it isn’t going to happen. Time to give one of the new guys a start.
Playing almost even with the Raiders is not exactly confidence inspiring. Trying to put a positive spin on it doesn’t help. Call it what it was, downright ugly! Both teams were trying their level best to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and Denver finally managed it. The powers that be will have to face the fact at some point, Denver is attempting to recover from a man-made natural disaster of epic proportions and doing the same thing over and over isn’t helping. In fact, doing that an expecting different results every time is the definition of insanity. This is the year to experiment, tinker with the personnel and the play-calling, try different personnel packages in different situations and see what happens. Enough arm-chair quarter-backing by everybody and his cousin, give it a whirl and find out for sure. Hell, I’m all for lining up Decker in a wildcat and seeing what he can do! After all, what are you going to do, lose a game?
well, another year watching the same old stuff i guess is what we are in for this year. Pretty much see the majority of the posts from last season and they apply! Cant stop the run, cant score in the red zone, QB cant escape from pressure, blah… blah… blah!! What was disconcerting to me was how our O line was flat out man handled!! I know that its going to take a bit to gell there, but come on, 4 of those 5 guys have been together for a year now, and in pretty much the same scheme!! I also was a bit disappointed to see Eddie drop at least 2 passes. That being said, Orton was FAR from accurate yesterday. He consistently was off target forcing WR’s to come back, and make adjustments in order to make catches! How many balls did Orton throw at the feet of his reciever yesterday? Personally i would rather see the broncos lose 13 games with Tebow than win 3 games with Orton!! If we are really building for the future, then lets actually look to the future and see what we have with Tebow so we know if we need to draft a QB next year!!
My 2 cents
“Offense wins games, Defens wins championships”
GO BRONCOS!!!
Honestly I dont care for Orton, but i cannot blame our O-Line last night. if you watch the game replay you can see that orton held the ball for way to long. Even if the O-Line was giving up quick pressure you would think Neckbeard would more likly to get rid of the ball faster. Now if Tebow was playing he could have moved in the pocket or punish them for sending the DEs on Pure pass rushes. Orton maybe more accurate but Tebow gives us a better chance to win…think about it Orton fanboys….WHO WOULD YOU WANT TO BE QB ON 3RD AND GOAL FROM THE 5? Be honest with yourself. Even 3rd and 5 from the 25yd line backed up to our goal. They need to make a change.
I honestly feel like someone slapped me in my face and kicked me in the nuts. Once I woke up this morning and saw what happened and what didn’t happen… I felt sick all day. Here I was all over Facebook yesterday screaming go Broncos and I hate the Raiders. Only to have the Raiders handle us, and handle us at home of all places!! When will we ever get back to protecting our home field??! Can’t blame the stupid diamonds in the end zone bc we have our old logo back!!
Enough with the let Tebow play talk! One more game like this one and Orton will be on the IR and Tebow will get plenty of playing time, so just relax and wait.
By the way I am not upset that we lost. I am upset because the team looked exactly the same as it has over the past two seasons. Nothing has changed. There is almost nothing to be excited about moving forward, and we all knew that was coming based on the personal decisions in the draft and free agency. I don’t know why I am surprised….
Yup, all I needed to see was the first “drive” to realize 2011 will be the exact same as 2010.. that is if we stick with Orton. I’m thanking God for Decker though – he gives us some hope.
Rayjr took the words right out of my mouth:
“Personally i would rather see the broncos lose 13 games with Tebow than win 3 games with Orton!! If we are really building for the future, then lets actually look to the future and see what we have with Tebow so we know if we need to draft a QB next year!!”
My thoughts exactly man. I don’t understand how EFX can’t see the logic in it… Are they blind? Stubborn? Honestly, I’m confused. Orton will not win us anything. The only thing he’s good at is putting our offense to sleep (including me – when I’m not screaming at the TV, haha) and padding his stats when there is no pressure within 100 miles of him. Maybe they just need to see it for themselves a bit longer… hopefully it won’t be too late before they realize what they’ve done. Tebow needs to prove himself so we know where we are at for next year! It’s that simple.
(our lines need work too)
Somehow most of the posts on this blog so far make pretty good sense, specially henryac’s, maybe it’s because since we were not given freedom of speech on the last one all the frustrated bloggers flocked over to this one, haha, keep telling it like it is, this is not satisfactory to Bronco fans, long ways to go, Fox is correct, but the way he goes at it does not open up many doors, like bloggers keep saying, little has changed on the field from last season, maybe the worse decision Fox made was to keep McCoy at the helm on O, for continuation he said, and yeah, it’s working, it’s exactly the same thing, we are continuing in the same direction allright. Not good enough for many of us obviously and I don’t blame any of the bloggers for stating the obvious, been there done that for over two years now, time for a fresh approach on O. The D, well it’s doing as well as can be until Fox figures out we do indeed need help up front in the middle, but our voices are so strained from having repeated that all off season it seems like nothing is getting through Fox in that regard, so here we are, manhandled in the trenches yet again.
Can we some how get Houston’s offensive scheme along with a few of their RB’s. Man we couldn’t even beat the Colts if we played them this year!! I was sooooo excited about our D if nothing else, but same old song! If practice was actually worth wins and losses then we would be Practice Superbowl Champion every year!
LMAO@melloo
different year same story. problem with this team is it has been horribly coached for the last three years. this year the broncos go out and hire a below average nfl coach who is not poster child for winning teams. the broncos should have put all thier effort in getting a proven winner at coach like gruden, cower,mora or the like rather than settle for fox. until they addresss this major problem what you see is what you get. another two or three years wasted experiment.
bay I’m sooooo glad my son won’t be born until Nov 28th and will be too young to even know what is going on. It’s gonna be a very tough season. Good thing I go to church every Sunday, but I might also have to go after the Broncos games.
Dolph you act like any of those coaches wanted to come and coach the Broncos McD destroyed the team. Just look around the league and see how many former Broncos are playing on other teams because of an over inflated ego. The management doesn’t want to say it but this is a total rebuild of this team. Right now the players need to get over what happened to them for the past 2 years, their psyche is destroyed. Fox is trying to coach damaged players and trying to get them to believe in themselves again; that’s why you saw so many penalties and scraps and fights, this team is up against it because the players on other teams know what they been thru. So they are trying to prove themselves to them and not concentrating on playing football. That’s why they tried to trade Orton this off season, but it didn’t workout and it is a distraction because people are howling for Tebow. First the Broncos need to look in the mirror and then look in the locker room and state man for man, that it’s them against the world. Then get to basic fundamentals and then start kicking some ass. Fox is the coach that can and should be able to do that, that’s why he’s there because he did it in Carolina; but it is up too the players.
Basically, it looks like nothing’s changed from last year. It was deja vu, last night’s game was the same as all 16 last year. Offense can’t run the ball, pass protect, execute on 3rd down and too many holding penalties. Defense can’t stop the run, rush the passer, get off the field on 3rd down and too many stupid, unnecessary penalties.
We blew the game right before halftime….2 major mistakes. First, we were driving, should have got a FG, but Orton gets picked. The Raiders were actually content with the lead and weren’t going to try to score. They were at their own 24 yard line and ran the ball with 23 seconds left. They lost 2 yards and were walking off the field going to the locker room. But Vickerson committed a stupid facemask 15 yard penalty, THEN they decided to try to get points. They completed a 16 yard pass play and kicked a 63 yard FG. So instead of being down 13-6 or 13-3, we were down 16-3 at the half…Big Difference!
New VP, New HC… same old crap. Can’t run, can’t stop the run and terrible execution overall. Orton displayed all the faults that his critics have been harping on over the past few seasons.
The “half the teams lost in week 1″ mantra seems to be coming from the team doesn’t work for me. We’ve seen this act before and I’m tired of it. If the team plays poorly against Cincy, it’s going to get very, very ugly.
Alright yeah it sucks we lost. I agree, but c’mon Bronco nation. We can’t let one game destroy the season and let are voices get into the head of are own quarterback. Were supposed to do that to the opposing team. Yeah they couldn’t run the ball. Knowshon didn’t show up again. The O-line looked like crap they were out of sink and out of breath, but it was a short off season let’s not forget. If it wouldn’t have been for the 6 or whatever holding calls it could have been a different game. Defense showed a lot of improvement let’s not forget that screw job McDaniel’s did against the raiders. So it could have been worst. The blocked punt and missed field goal by prater also would have changed the game if they didn’t happen. The defense I thought was good, we were missing Dumervil, Bailey and Williams. They make a big difference. We only gave up 90yds. passing. Yeah we gave up 150yds. to McCfadden but when the defense is on the field because the offense can’t stay on the field you can’t really expect them to make every tackle being tired. Orton looked his worst since being a starter for us, but if the whole team played their absolute worst and only lost by 3 we can’t be mad. Let’s hope this was all first game jitters and they can come out against a weak Bengals team and do what they did in pre-season, I mean the whole team hadn’t played a game since week 3 of the pre-season, so give the team a moment to get on all cylinders before we abandon ship…LETS GO BRONCOS!!!!
It looked like the same ol same ol because it was, Mike McCoy is still the Offensive Co. and when ever the running game doesn’t go well early He gives up on calling running play’s. 42 passing attempts in the rain is stupid!
Granted the OLine was terrible, Fanklin looked like a rookie agianst an NFL pass rush, and the whole line looked like they were standing up before they pushed forward on the running plays. Poor execution.
It looked more of the same because it was.
TIME OF POSSESSION, YA RIGHT.
GO BRONCOS! ! !
Kevin Vickerson is just as much to blame as the lack of running game, lack of run defense, and Kyle Orton. The facemask penalty as stated by 77BRONCOFAN was the biggest killer of the game and changed the entire outcome and second half gameplan
I bet we trade for a big DT here soon. If we get help in the middle and get the butterflies out soon, I still see this as a potential playoff team. We played poorly monday but still had many chances to win even though they put up 180+ rushing yards. No teams usually contend with a stat like that, but somehow we were in it the whole time and thats sayin this team has heart. We just couldnt get stable on either sides of the ball, especially when it mattered most. I see us getting stable and focused on both sides of the ball real soon. Let’s get the WIN on sunday!!
We looked so bad monday, I had high expectations for us and got disappointed badly I dont even wanna watch espn or nfl network. I see us having another top 3 pick unless we stop the run, pass block improve, run game improve, and stop the stupid penalties. I really thought we would look better but I was shocked I know its only 1 game but how we looked hurt my heart.
i wish my fellow bronco bloggers would stop crying TEBOW couldn’t handle a preason game. ALL yall want to do is win. So when kyle start producing W’s all of the crying will stop atleast i hope. Our OLINE was the problem we couldn’t even run the ball but its all KYLE fought. YEAH RIGHT… STOP CRYING OVA SPILL MILK
Funny how some bloggers choose a back door to post, like an old blog, come through the front door guys so we can discuss things, everyone is welcome on the latest current blog, that’s where the action is, this is like closet blogging.
closet blogging…. laughing, for the first time since monday afternoon.
I don’t like Fox as HC, but it really does look like, McCoy is the bigger issue coming in. I know I put a lot on opening weekend. Most weeks gets what 3 maybe 4 days of preparation. First week, you have just a wee bit longer, even in a shortened off season. And game planning against the Raiders, hmmm, tough one, run, run, and hmmm run. Dennis Allen is right on par with schemes, and over all vision. Not worried about him or Fox improving the D. They got tired, can’t blame them.
at the whole posting on blogs late. It really makes a difference on how you get to the blog. I use the Broncos toolbar, it is behind a lot. Going through the main page is also kind of a pain for me, so i jump to a blog and have to look up top to know if its truly current.
Maybe the same with others? idk
They the coaching staff say the Broncos have improved but have alittle ways to go. Well what I saw on Monday night they have along way to go to become a good football team. Arch4662: All coaches are stubborn. They don’t want the fans to think they are giving in to fans. They don’t want anyone to know that we just might know more than them. They want a running game, then they should get some real running backs.
a closet blogger come on baylin i read these blogs everyday including the summer i see you on every blog thats cool but when i read this blog all i seen where people crying about spilled milk and how bad we are i thought we where BRONCO FANS not CRY BABIES
elwayallday,
life is different in the blogosphere. I am a huge Orton defender in person, but happen to post nothing but pro-Tebow comments here. Reasoning behind that, is Orton is our Qb1 and to the outside, (non Bronco fans) I will always present a pro Broncos outlook. No matter what. win/loss do or die.
Bay, was probably hoping that the lesser # posting individuals would join the same group of bloggers, like myself, that he reads day in and day out. He must be bored of reading me going off the handle and everyone repeating themselves and everyone else (as myself obviously) regurgitating the same thing day in and day out.
Need a QB that can inspire.
With Orton at QB the offense was lack luster. When Elway was playing the offense knew they could come back and win. He would not throw the ball in the dirt in front of the receiver the way Orton does in the red zone and when pressure is on. Other teams know this and they then play 8 men in the box knowing Orton will choke. Until they have to worry about our passing game we will not have a running game and with Orton playing QB we will not have a running game. It starts and ends with the ability of the QB to make plays period.
Well I hate to always be the one disagreeing with everyone, but I’m gonna do it again. This is a very young team and everyone is sort of learning on the fly. I agree that Orton’s performance was far from good, I’ll even say it was dreadful. But doesn’t anyone else think that it might actually make sense to let Tim sit for one more year as long as Orton’s still under contract? I mean, let the whole team get better throughout the season and let Timmy take over next year when the supporting cast is stronger. It worked for Rodgers and Rivers just to name a couple. I think that may be the plan for Tebow too. I know it sucks because that means we’ll have to sit through another uninspiring season, but this may be better for the team in the long run.
I don’t know, it just seems like when Elway jumped on board everyone was excited and said they’d be willing to wait while he rebuilt this franchise. Now after one game everyone is totally disgusted. I’m sorry but that really bums me out. I think we all just need to practice some patience. Rebuilding doesn’t come to fruition after one week. It’s going to take at least two years.
Just my two cents on the subject…
And yes, during the preseason I was saying this team could have a great season. But I was also concerned that it could be a horrible season. For that reason I didn’t even partake in the predictions contest… I can really see this season going in any direction. But whatever happens I still say we need to be patient. EFX is building for the long haul, they’re not going to put all their eggs in one basket in the first year, just saying.
I hate when the Broncos lose. I hate it more when they lose a game that they should have won. We played very bad & still only lost by 3 pts., why because we had Orton at QB. I think we could have won even if we had Quinn in at QB. Maybe even Weber. Orton is a bad QB & I don’t care what anybody says.
Marlin Briscoe was a better QB than Orton & he was only 5’7″ tall. Can anyone remember him besides Bay.
kyle orton in his last 3 games 52-114 one touchdown 4 turnovers
everybody saying orton orton orton but what about the running game 30 yards man please orton is ok he needs some help
Orton was forced to throw nearly 50 passes because we couldn’t get a run going. The raiders knew that we had to pass, that gives them the upper hand. SO it’s no wonder the pass game had a hard time.
And as much as I hate to say it…who ever is upset because the lose was to the raiders, unfortunately the Raiders have turned into a good football team when they are playing divisional rivals and they looked good on Monday outside of all of the penalties.
Gooby2shoes: Orton didn’t seem to need help when he threw the INT & when he fumbled the ball. I watched the whole game & did not see anything good about the way Orton played. The raiders went after Orton because they know he can’t get away from the rush. Expect to see it more often because every team in the league knows he can’t scramble or run.
sniper…
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