Mark Cooper

Hey folks, sorry for the delay on my reply but my interface to this blog has been having technical issues. I’ve replied a bunch of times and they never show up as responses??? So I posted this. I’ll try to get it fixed for next week. Hopefully this helps.

Wow!! Broncohowie you get the prize for the longest blog … this week … I know you feel better after that …b ecause I do. I love the passion you guys and gals bring to the blog.

Let’s face it, I’ve never seen a perfect game and never will. I really like what I saw out of the offense and moving the pocket with Jay Cutler the pitch options to the running back.

We’re making a lot of headway and like most of you said, if we stay ahead of the “Bolts” we have a shot at the playoffs and that would be a great experience for this team.

Can we win the Super Bowl? I don’t think this year with the Patriots playing on another planet and if you watched the Green Bay-Cowboys game (even without Brett Favre) they looked good and the Cowboys and the Colts are all playing at another level.

Hey, it’s “RAIDER WEEK.” The hair on the back of my neck still stands up when I think of the rivalry we had with those guys.  Ted Hendricks, Howie Long, Lyle Alzado, Matt Millen, Lester Hayes, and the trash-talking and late hits. It was like going to a Halloween biker bar for a football game … fun stuff.

I have to tell you a funny story about RAIDERS week. We’re in Los Angeles – I forget the year,  ’85 or ‘86 – and we’re going into overtime. We’re on the sideline waiting to take the field and I forget who, but I think Paul Howard tells one of the rookies we get paid by the minute in overtime or something ridiculous and the rookie bites and is already thinking about what he can buy for Christmas.

So we end up beating them and it was a tough game and we forget about it until a day or two later when the rookie starts talking about all the stuff his wife bought with the overtime money he made and we all fell off our stools in the lockeroom rolling around on the floor laughing. You should have seen his face.

Coop

What a difference a week makes — not so good. The Broncos looked great into the second quarter and then the wheels started falling off one at a time.

The special teams got burned by Devin Hester twice. Man, can that guy run (from the U). I know what you’re saying — how do you kick to him? I wouldn’t either — or I’d try to pin him on one-half of the field.

Then the punt block. Even I was confused on the angle the punter took.

The defense looked good until late in the game. At that point the Bears only had two field goals and the two touchdown returns on the board. We went to bend-but-not-break and got snapped in half. I know how upsetting that was to watch, but the only bright side for me was they are getting there, just slowly.

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Broncos 34, Titans 20, and it was a lot of fun to watch. What do you think?

You have to take your hats off to a team that has as many injuries as they have. Guys being moved around and a few out the door and a few new faces coming into the locker room 10 games into the season.

Glenn Martinez had a nice punt return; Brandon Marshall seems to be taking command as the No. 1 receiver and a team leader. The “O”-line is working together and over the last two weeks looks pretty good.

Andre Hall, Selvin Young, Tony Scheffler and Brandon Stokley looked good and Jay Cutler looks better and better the more he plays. You have to be excited about our prospects with this guy. I am!!

Like someone mentioned in the paper, this team has maybe one or two players from a game it played a three or four years ago.

The defense is bending more than breaking and that’s a positive as they’ve made the adjustments and put the right guys in the right spots.

Like we discussed earlier in the year, ”PATIENCE” will be the name of the game and there’s still a lot of football to be played.

I had fun watching the Monday night game.  I hope you did too.

It’s funny how NFL seasons play out. One week it’s gloom and doom and the next week there’s hope.

The division is still up for grabs and the Chargers seem to be the team to beat after their game against the Colts, Sunday night.

Kind of reminds you of the Rockies during the summer. “Game by game” is the motto for this season as far as I’m concerned because that’s the way you have to take it regardless of how good or bad your playing.

The more time we get together, the better we’ll be. A few new faces at a few new spots is like moving chess pieces around the board until you find the right combination to win, right?

Tennessee Monday night will be another fun one that we can win to improve our postion, “One Game at a Time”.

By the way, I went to the last game in the Orange Bowl this past weekend. It was really weird seeing a stadium for the last time that I saw my first Professional game in and then played a few high school football games in and my entire college career.

It sent a chill up my spine walking off the field after the team ran on. One of those life-experiences…pretty cool.

Let’s keep the season in perspective. It’s tough to watch a game as lopsided as the Detroit game. It hurts because you want YOUR TEAM to win and if you didn’t want YOUR TEAM to win, you wouldn’t be a TRUE fan. If you didn’t get upset you wouldn’t be a true fan. If you didn’t care we wouldn’t be blogging. :o)

I like many of you get upset with the “L” word. I’ve never had that word programmed into my mind as I played sports my entire life and I still compete daily in my real estate business for new business.

Many of you do too, on a day to day basis, in some small way. We’re all competitors.

“L-ing” isn’t in my vocabulary and it shouldn’t be in yours. I use words like set-back or ran-out-of-time. Really though, the reason I went through the above drill, so-to-speak was because after I played for the Broncos, I went to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers where our record was as follows.

1987/4-11
1988/5-11
1989/5-11

Talk about tough, that’s tough, winning a total of 14 games in 3 seasons.

That’s why I’m having so much fun reading the papers and listening to the news and blogging this season because I know what it’s like and how different a town is (feels & thinks) that only wins 4 or 5 games in a season.

Just one or two injuries on a team can ruin a season for most NFL teams. We’ve had MANY more than our share and personally I was wondering if it was going to (or really when) would it show up. Well, it has.

We’re not firing anyone.  We’re playing with what we have and going to do the best we can under the conditions presented because you can’t change injuries or cry about them. It’s a violent game and unfortunately part of the game.

O.K. so I have this plan, right? I’m leaving the country for Fall Break with the family and kids last week to go to Mexico and I think I have all the latest and greatest technology…wrong.

Help me, I just flew back into the country and missed the game couldn’t get a score and couldn’t get access where I needed to so I was “DEAD IN THE WATER.” No score, no blog, I was lost.

I’ve been looking for SportsCenter or highlights, saw the score on my Palm 700 Treo handheld going through Customs in Dallas on the way back and got in trouble for having the phone on…

Help me, Jarvis is hurt now. WHAT HAPPENED to the fellas against Green Bay? Looked so close.