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Posts Tagged ‘Tatum Bell’

Bell and Boyd Ready for Chargers

December 22nd, 2008 - 4:57pm by Jake GrilleyOther posts by

Last time the Broncos and the Chargers met, Cory Boyd and Tatum Bell were watching NFL football from their couches. In this Sunday’s rematch against San Diego, the two are the only healthy tailbacks remaining on the Denver roster.

During his Monday press conference, Head Coach Mike Shanahan announcement that P.J. Pope and Selvin Young will be placed on injured reserve, joining an already long list of rushers lost for the season — Anthony Alridge, Andre Hall, Peyton Hillis, Michael Pittman and Ryan Torain.

“I have never been a part of this or heard of anything like this at all,” Bell said. “Having seven running backs on IR — it is shocking.”

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Posted in DenverBroncos.com | 87 Comments »

Clady and Cutler Honored, Injury Updates

December 12th, 2008 - 3:17pm by Jake GrilleyOther posts by

AWARD UPDATES:
The Broncos Ryan Clady and Jay Cutler were each honored with NFL awards for their performances in Week 14.

Clady was named Diet Pepsi Rookie of the Week, the first time an offensive lineman has won the award since it started in 2004. Clady led an offensive line that allowed Cutler to pass for 286 yards and two touchdowns, prevented Kansas City from recording a sack and allowed Denver to total 139 rushing yards in the team’s 24 -17 win over the Chiefs.

Clady is the fourth Bronco to have won the award this season. Eddie Royal has been voted Diet Pepsi Rookie of the Week twice. It is the fourth time in the last five weeks that a Denver Rookie has taken home the award.

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Posted in DenverBroncos.com | 42 Comments »

Stepping Up and Filling In

November 17th, 2008 - 5:47pm by Jake GrilleyOther posts by

With the Broncos recent injury woes the team has had to rely on first-year players and free agent acquisitions to step in and contribute. Both the rookies and the free agents have ran with their opportunities.

A CLASS ABOVE

The members of Broncos 2008 draft class knew that they were talented — they just didn’t think the team would be utilizing their talents so soon.

Spencer Larsen for one thought he would have to cut his teeth on special teams and that eventually down the road his chance would come. But the heart and drive demonstrated by Larsen and his peers coupled with the recent wave of injuries has been enough for the Broncos coaching staff to give the rookies a shot at serious minutes. They have responded by playing key roles at various times during the season.

Brandon Stokley said the rookies have been thrown into the fire and have held up well.

“It is hard to do for a young guy coming straight out of college (to adjust to) 16 games,” he said. “Usually they are winding down right about now and we are just getting cranked up. It is hard, but that is the business that we are in so they have had to grow up quick.”

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Posted in DenverBroncos.com | 16 Comments »

Tatum’s Second Chance and Nate Jackson Jokes

November 12th, 2008 - 5:09pm by Jake GrilleyOther posts by

FROM CELL PHONE CARRIER TO BALL CARRIER

When the Broncos signed free-agent running Tatum Bell on Tuesday, they not only gave him a second chance as a Bronco — they gave him a second shot at football.

Bell had been out of football since September when he was released by the Detroit Lions. After his release he moved back to Denver and tried to find work.

That work came in the form of manager of a cell phone store in a Denver-area mall.

Bell said going from a 1,000-yard rusher in the National Football League to retail manager was a humbling experience but not one that he was ashamed of.

“I was like, man, this is the real world – 9-5 everyday,” Bell said of his first “real” job. “I held my head up high going to work each day. I didn’t have a problem with it at all. That is what I had to do to feed my family and that is what I was doing.”

Whenever Broncos fans would walk by the store, Bell said he would stop them so they could talk about football and see if they might be interested in a new cell phone. Bell, who had to wear a collared shirt and tie to work each day, said he has a newfound reverence for people who work 9-5.

“I sold a couple (of phones),” Bell said. “It is actually is pretty hard.”

It was Bell’s phone that rang on Tuesday when the Broncos invited him in for a workout and another chance at football. And he looks to make the most of his opportunity.

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Posted in DenverBroncos.com | 42 Comments »

Bell Back in Denver

November 11th, 2008 - 4:13pm by Adam ZinserOther posts by

Though it had been reported by various sources earlier in the day, the Broncos have now officially signed Tatum Bell, Head Coach Mike Shanahan announced.

To make room for Bell on the roster, the team has waived Glenn Martinez.

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Posted in DenverBroncos.com | 89 Comments »

Broncos-Lions: Pregame Notes

November 4th, 2007 - 10:06am by AndrewOther posts by

The Broncos will have to make do without safety John Lynch.

After being limited in practice on Thursday and Friday as he recovered from the pinched nerve he incurred against Green Bay last Monday, Lynch was one of the eight players scratched for today’s game against the Detroit Lions.

Joining Lynch on the sidelines will be fullback/running back Mike Bell, safety Curome Cox, defensive tackle Amon Gordon, guard Isaac Snell, tight end Chad Mustard, wide receiver Javon Walker and defensive end Jarvis Moss, whose season ended last Thursday when he fractured his fibula and tore ankle ligaments in practice. However, he has not yet been moved to injured reserve.

Hamza Abdullah, meanwhile, will make his return to the lineup after missing the last five games with a strained hip flexor. With Cox inactive, Abdullah is one of three pure safeties active for the game, joining Nick Ferguson and Steve Cargile. Cornerback Domonique Foxworth, however, is expected to see substantial action back at safety, as he did last week following Lynch’s injury and back in December 2006 when Ferguson was lost for the season.

Detroit’s inactives players included running back Tatum Bell, whom the Lions acquired from Denver in the Dre’ Bly trade eight months ago. Joining him are cornerbacks Dovonte Edwards and Tony Beckham, guards Blaine Saipia and Manny Ramirez, defensive ends Ikaika Alama-Francis and Kalimba Edwards and quarterback Dan Orlovsky, who is in uniform per the NFL’s rules regarding third quarterbacks.

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Cobbs’ Road Ends

May 1st, 2007 - 1:12pm by AndrewOther posts by

Sometimes a sprained ankle can be as pricey to a man’s career as a torn anterior cruciate ligament or a compound fracture.

For running back Cedric Cobbs, the beginning of his end in Denver came when he lost the handle on the overtime-opening kickoff return against Kansas City in Week 2 last year, and then suffered an ankle sprain in the ensuing scrum around the 20-yard-line at the south end of INVESCO Field at Mile High. The Broncos recovered the loose football, but Cobbs left the stadium on crutches and could never recover his previous stature with the team.

The sprain kept him inactive for the next four games, and although he would carry the ball three times for nine yards at Pittsburgh, that represented the extent of his on-field work; he spent the season’s final eight games watching in warmups from the bench as one of the Broncos’ game-day deactivations.

Meanwhile, the team promoted Damien Nash from the practice squad, kept feeding the football to Mike and Tatum Bell and signed rookie Andre Hall to the practice squad.

Now, two days after the NFL Draft, Cobbs’ career as a Bronco is done. Tatum Bell’s place at the top of the tailback tree now belongs to March street-free-agent signee Travis Henry. Nash passed away in February. Cecil Sapp is being placed in a hybrid fullback-tailback role that could get him the football more — which might not be a bad thing, seeing that he averaged 8.0 yards per carry in ’06. Hall possesses practice-squad eligibility and could find himself showcased in the preseason as the team attempts to learn what the two-time 1,300-yard runner at South Florida can do on the pro level. And the kickoff-return duties Cobbs so briefly handled will be settled in a scrum that will likely include names like Quincy Morgan, Brian Clark, Domenik Hixon and Brandon Marshall, among others.

Cobbs’ opportunity in Denver proved to be as brief as his flashes of preseason success last summer — flashes that left Head Coach Mike Shanahan speculating after the August finale at Arizona that carries could be divided three ways. That didn’t come to pass, and now, Cobbs and the Broncos pass into each other’s respective rear-view mirrors.

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Season Review: Tatum Bell

January 17th, 2007 - 11:29pm by AndrewOther posts by

Tatum Bell’s third NFL season was a lot like the Broncos’ as a whole, with peaks scaled, but valleys traversed.

The good? Tatum Bell stretched the Broncos’ run of consecutive seasons with a 1,000-yard rusher to five, became the sixth different Bronco to rush for 1,000 yards in the Mike Shanahan era and helped the team average 134.5 yards per game on the ground, good for eighth in the league.

But Bell also suffered fumbles in the last three games and endured lingering turf-toe problems.

Bell managed to recover from the turf-toe problems to notch back-to-back 100-yard games in December that put him on track for 1,000 yards. But a second-quarter fumble at Arizona that was a returned for a touchdown seemed to mark a demarcation point; from that point forward, Mike Bell had the majority of the Broncos’ rushing yards and would score thrice in Weeks 15-17, while Tatum Bell’s season-ending hat-trick would be of the worst kind a tailback can endure.

Nevertheless, he got enough chances and opportunities to break the 1,000-yard milestone. He remained in the starting lineup, and by early in the San Francisco game on New Year’s Eve, he seemed to have reversed his struggles.

“After (the Cincinnati) game, (Head Coach Mike Shanahan) told me, ‘It’s all good; put it behind you; you’ve got to learn to get over that stuff,’” Tatum Bell said before the Broncos’ season finale. “(That’s) stuff (that) I already know. I know if I fumble I won’t be in there for a series or two.

“Especially if I fumble and Mike goes in there and does well — (then) I sure won’t be in there.”

His third fumble in as many games to close the year bore that out.

Before he fumbled early in the fourth quarter against San Francisco on Dec. 31, he’d touched the football 14 times, while Mike Bell had handled it on three occasions. From that point forward, Bell got the football 11 times via runs or receptions, while Tatum Bell only saw the football once.

Three years have taught Tatum Bell one lesson above all others for Broncos runners — that ball protection is priority No. 1. Ensuring that he doesn’t ever endure another spate of fumbles like he had last month could determine how much he’ll see the football in the future.

FINAL ANALYSIS: Before injuring a toe against Cleveland on Oct. 22, Bell ranked third in the league with 97.5 rushing yards per game … In that same span from Weeks 1 through 7, Bell averaged 4.7 yards per carry, which was third-best in the league among backs with at least 100 rushes to that point, only bettered by the New York Giants’ Tiki Barber (5.0 yards per carry) and Atlanta’s Warrick Dunn (4.8 yards per rush) … Denver went 1-3 in games in which he broke the 100-yard milestone, but 8-5 overall in the 13 games in which he started and played.

NEXT: Safety Sam Brandon.

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Tatum Bell: Hoping for a Grand Finish

December 28th, 2006 - 1:53am by AndrewOther posts by

Tatum BellTatum Bell is just 23 yards from becoming the sixth different tailback to notch a 1,000-yard season in Mike Shanahan’s 12 seasons as Broncos head coach. He’s found these final yards before hitting the milestone to be the hardest to attain.

“I’ve got to be the slowest back to get to 1,000,” the third-year back said Wednesday.

A year earlier, he went into the season finale at San Diego needing 131 yards for a 1,000-yard season that would have made the ’05 Broncos the first team in 20 years with a pair of 1,000-yard runners. Bell scored three times but ultimately fell 79 yards short.

Coming close last year has only made this year’s pursuit of a grand that much more frustrating.

“It means a lot, man, because I felt I should have had it last year,” Bell saud. “Right now I’m right around the corner with (about) 20-30 yards. I’ve got to get 30 yards. I don’t care, man. There’s no excuse if I don’t get 30 yards.”

It’s been a roller-coaster season for the 2004 second-round pick, who has started every one of the 12 games in which he’s played this year. At times, he’s been dominant, notching five 100-yard games so far this year, including back-to-back triple-digit tallies against Seattle and San Diego earlier this month. They were his first games back from turf-toe problems that had dogged him since the Week 7 win at Cleveland on Oct. 22, and all signs pointed to a dominant December after his post-injury efforts.

But a pair of fumbles in the last two games has helped send Bell reeling into the season’s final game. The one at Arizona was scooped up and returned for a touchdown; his giveaway against Cincinnati on Christmas Eve led to a Bengals score that gave them a halftime edge over the Broncos.

As he struggled, rookie Mike Bell took up the slack and flourished, gaining 61 yards against Arizona and 69 more against Cincinnati while scoring three times in those two games.

But Tatum Bell knows this: More fumbling and he could be headed for the bench — whether he’s broken 1,000 or not.

“After this game, (Shanahan) told me, ‘It’s all good; put it behind you; you’ve got to learn to get over that stuff,’” Tatum Bell said. “(That’s) stuff I already know. I know if I fumble I won’t be in there for a series or two.

“Especially if I fumble and Mike goes in there and does well — (then) I sure won’t be in there.”

Other notes:

  • A statistical change: Elvis Dumervil was credited with a sack Sunday, giving him a team-leading total of eight heading into the regular-season finale.
  • ESPN ranked Alaska No. 51 among states when it comes to football. Broncoland would respectfully disagree with that assessment, considering that a Pro Bowl offensive lineman (Mark Schlereth) and a current rookie on the line (Chris Kuper) came from out of the 49th State.
  • The Denver area is now under a winter storm warning that goes into effect at noon on Thursday … or right when the Broncos are scheduled to be practicing.

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    Offensive Remedy: Not Just the QB

    November 28th, 2006 - 3:54am by AndrewOther posts by

    Offense was not built on the passer alone, and Jay Cutler’s immediate success or struggle as the Broncos’ starting quarterback may well rest as much upon the legs of the men lining up behind him as the prodigious right arm the rookie has only been able to brandish in practice the last three months.

    In two of the Broncos’ last three games, Denver’s running game has failed to amass 65 yards. The team hasn’t had a 100-yard rusher since Mike Bell went over the milestone against Indianapolis on Oct. 29.

    That’s just five games ago, so it might not seem like very long in the grand scheme of things, but for the Broncos and their historically prodigious running game, it seems like an eternity — particularly when their tailbacks have struggled to find running room in the weeks since, collectively averaging 64.5 yards a game in November — with more than half of their 258 yards for the month coming in the 35-27 loss to San Diego.

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    Posted in Archives | 35 Comments »

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