Broncos-Cardinals: Pregame Notes
6:07 P.M. MDT: Just now, I was handed a sheet of paper bearing the header “Gameday Roster & Lineup Changes.” Besides indicating that tackles Adam Meadows and Ryan Harris would remain sidelined, it offered one sentence that summed up the night perfectly:
“There will be numerous changes to the Denver Broncos’ starting lineups tonight.”
6:25 P.M. MDT: As the Broncos’ units go through their pre-game paces, many starters already are sans pads. Position-by-position, they include:
QUARTERBACKS: Jay Cutler, Patrick Ramsey
RUNNING BACK: Travis Henry
FULLBACK: Kyle Johnson
WIDE RECEIVERS: Brandon Marshall, Brandon Stokley, Javon Walker
OFFENSIVE LINEMEN: Ben Hamilton (who was not in uniform at practice this week), Montrae Holland, Matt Lepsis, Tom Nalen, Erik Pears
DEFENSIVE LINEMEN: Sam Adams, Elvis Dumervil, John Engelberger, Amon Gordon
LINEBACKERS: Ian Gold, Nate Webster, D.J. Williams
CORNERBACKS: Champ Bailey, Dre’ Bly, Domonique Foxworth
SAFETIES: Nick Ferguson, John Lynch
Counting Harris and Meadows, that’s 26 players who will sit out tonight.
6:31 P.M. MDT: If you visited our site last year — and we hope you did — you might remember the byline of Don Schwartz, one of our season-long interns. I’m giving him a shout-out now because of a missive from him that landed in my e-mail box just now, reminding me that this is the first Broncos-Cardinals game in their last three meetings without his presence.
Schwartz is now the community-relations coordinator for the Wayne Gretzky-owned Phoenix Coyotes, meaning that he closes each of his e-mails with the sign-off, “Have a Great One!”
You, too, have a great one, Don … and get thyself a username and password so you can post your puns here in blog-land.
6:47 P.M. MDT: Since tonight will probably see its share of irrelevant references befitting the less-than-weighty value of the game, I’m taking a food interlude to discuss tonight’s press box meal — salad, hamburgers and fried chicken. The salad was solid, but the meat on the burgers tasted a little funny; perhaps it was the fetid juice in which it lay in the steam tray. But the fried chicken … I don’t know if the caterers broke into Col. Harland Sanders’ vault and stole his vaunted recipe of 11 herbs and spices, but the stuff tasted exactly like what you get at KFC, which is not a bad thing at all.
6:48 P.M. MDT: At the insistence of season-long media-relations interns Zach Williams and Jason Taylor, I’m mentioning the fact that tonight’s game is just the second pro football game Williams has ever witnessed and the first for Taylor, who had to miss last week’s game. I have urged Taylor not to judge the NFL based on tonight’s proceedings.
6:58 P.M. MDT: National anthem time. First-quarter blog going on-line momentarily.
August 31st, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Hey Andrew,
I know you are the Managing editor so I thought I would offer an opinion (witch you know what they say about those) “They are like >>> everyone has one and they all stink”. Anyway I just got done reading a Story Called “Secondary Crunches Cardinals” by Christopher Smith. I didn’t find this story very appealing for the targeted audience. Although the parallelism used was semi creative I don’t really think football fans care about artistic expression in the form of words (well that’s not completely true). My mind just zoned off once I hit his part about a gem… Sorry if this comes off as me being a critical jerk and I am sure you can tell I’m not a writer myself, but I mean for this to come off more like a quick tip. Take it or leave it.