Restricted Free Agent Period Ends

On Friday, the restricted free agent period ended with Dominique Foxworth, Karl Paymah, and Hamzah Abdulla still wearing Broncos uniforms. Paymah and Abdulla are going to need solid training-camp performances to keep their jobs. Foxworth is a lock to make the team. As you may recall, I'm a card-carrying member of the Dominique Foxworth fan club. He'd be a huge loss to the team, both on the field and in the locker room. I'm glad we managed to keep him for at least another season.

Its worth noting that only 4 out of over 100 restricted free agents switched teams this year. Among them: Center Chris Myers in a trade from Denver to Houston.

CORRECTION! Kyle from BroncoTalk.net kindly informed me that I missed the boat on this article! Apparently the RFA period ends this Friday rather than last Friday. Let's hope my article is prescient rather than just plain incompetent!

Cowboys Looking Past Pacman

The Dallas Morning News is reporting that the Cowboys appear to have moved on after a failed bid to acquire suspended Titan's CB Pacman Jones. According to the article, the Cowboys are targeting a cornerback or a wide receiver in the first round of April's draft. They have also expressed interest in putting together a trade for a top-shelf receiver such as Arizona's Anquan Boldin, Cincinnati's Chad Johnson, or Detroit's Roy Williams.

Jerry Jones looks like hes on tilt a little bit with draft day fast approaching and no audacious maneuvers to his credit. The probability that he does something stupid increases with each passing day.

Could this be a serendipitous development for the Broncos? Dallas makes a likely trade suitor given Shanahan's long history with Wade Phillips. At #12 in the draft, big names like Devin Thomas, Limas Sweed, Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, and Mike Jenkins are still on the board. Minnesota, Chicago, Tampa Bay, Washington and Philly figure to be in the market for a wide receiver; Houston, Arizona, Minnesota, and Tampa Bay are in the market for help at cornerback. All of these teams stand between Dallas the top CB/WR's in this year's draft. Don't be surprised to see Denver move to 22nd overall for an extra first-day pick.

Broncos Evaluating Several Free Agents

According to the Denver Post (here and here), the Broncos are considering a number of free agents to fill roster needs. Here's a list:

• Mike Vanderjagt, K: The infamous choke artist and locker room cancer from the Colts who also happens to be the most accurate of all time is seeking employment. After being unceremoniously dumped by the Colts, Vanderjagt couldn't last one season with the Cowboys. I doubt you'll find a more enigmatic player at a more mundane position in NFL history. I've made no secret about my disdain for Vanderjagt in the past. At 38, why deal with this guy? I'd rather take my chances with the 23-year-old Prater.
  
  
• Darrell Jackson, WR: Set to turn 30 this season, Darrell Jackson is perhaps a hamstring injury shy of putting together a dominant NFL Career. After finally playing to his potential in 2003 and 2004, Jackson has missed 30% of his games to injury the last 3 years. After 2 injury plagued seasons, Seattle finally gave up on Darrell Jackson who then journeyed to division rival San Francisco. Despite appearing in 15 games last year, Jackson narrowly ousted RB Frank Gore for the teams 3rd leading receiver, behind Arnaz Battle and Vernon Davis. In his defense, San Francisco was awful last season; however, I'm unconvinced that Jackson's asking price will be commensurate with his value as a 4th receiver. My guess is that this doesn't happen and that we are better off as a result.
  
  
• Samie Parker, WR: In 2 years as a starter in Kansas City, Parker failed to log more than 72 receiving yards in any game and had only 3 touchdowns. He's a small receiver with great speed, but he never developed into an elite route runner and he doesn't have great ball skills. After 4 years in Kansas City, the Chiefs dumped him. To his credit, Herm has run every Vermeil-type speedy receiver out of down in favor of 6'3" behemoths. Parker doesn't strike me as a guy who makes any teams 53-man roster, but he's an inexpensive player who has some intriguing athletic capabilities. If he signed a near-minimum deal with nothing guaranteed, he'd add some competition at training camp with the possibility of making the team.
  
  
• Mitch Berger, P and Mike Barr, P: Both are journeyman punters; both are 30 or older; both played for the Cardinals last year; and both are decidedly average. This looks like some training camp competition for Paulescu. I don't expect either to be wearing a Broncos uniform in September.

That's everything!

Rating Denver's 5-Year Draft Performance

Pro Football Weekly just finished rating the draft performance of every NFL team from 2003 to 2007. The term "unmitigated disaster" is used to describe Denver's result. Over the 5-year stretch, Denver only has 5 starters to show for themselves--Marshall, Cutler, Dumervil, D.J. Williams, and Scheffler. All but Williams was drafted in 2006. By comparison, San Diego has fourteen starters from the last 5 drafts, including 6 pro bowlers. Sheesh! Ted Sundquist might have been just a fall guy, but there's no question that something needed to change in Denver. Our 2006 draft was arguably the best in Shanahan's tenure; let's hope we can build on this short-term success in two weeks.

Denver a Miserable Sports City?

According to Forbes Magazine, the answer is "yes." In a list of the top 10 most 'miserable sports cities,' Denver was ranked 7th. Contributing to this dubious distinction was our anemic post-season record and lack of championships. Losing the Rockies (NHL) was another blemish.

The Broncos--AFC Champs in 1 out of 6 seasons since 1977--are certainly a huge bright spot here, although they don't seem to get much credit in Forbes rating system.

Denver's Crowded Depth Chart

ESPN's John Clayton recently derided NFL owners for failing to increase the roster limit from 80 to 86 players. In it, he notes than Denver currently has 88 players on their roster, including our 9 draft picks later this month. The implication is simple: some pinks slips are going to get handed out before camp.

Mile High Report contributor MattR recently provided a great breakdown of our current roster. In it, he categorizes players as 'locks', 'probable', or 'on the bubble.' There are some interesting names on the list. In particular, if Denver adds some fresh faces at safety, cornerback, wide receiver, running back, or defensive end, there could be some surprise cuts when the rosters are trimmed in August.

Dissecting Denver's Pass Protection

Headed in to week 15 last season, Denver had a disappointing 6-7 record. In a road stretch against Houston (on TNF) and San Diego, getting back to .500 to dampen our disappointment weighed heavy on the minds of Broncos fans. Disaster struck. Denver was walloped in both games as Cutler constantly succumbed to pressure; sacked 9 times, Denver's offensive line seemed incapable of keeping our franchise quarterback upright. The timing of this traumatic stretch seems to have taken an inexorable toll on Broncos fans: offensive line is largely viewed as the principle need of the organization. Echoing the sentiment of many fans, one Rocky Mountain Fever commenter recently argued the following:

"I have to disagree with your false comfort regarding our O-line. They were absolutely dominated in multiple occasions (Texas, SD x2, Green Bay, Chiefs, Raiders and Detroit) and had Cutler throwing off of his back foot all season. We need to follow the success of past Super Bowl champion teams (ie Gary Zimmerman) and build around our franchise QB...I am not at all comfortable with our O-line situation when the most important position's current choices are a natural Guard, 3rd round pick with no playing experience and an undrafted Pears who failed at the RT spot last year." -the1one

With the most talented crop at offensive tackle the NFL has seen in years, it seems logical that we'd grab the top guy in the first round, right? Well, as I've argued many times, I don't think that's the solution. Far and away, the largest criticism of my opinion is that Denver's offensive line is an ineffective pass blocking unit. In this article, I'm going to evaluate the performance of our offensive line from a statistical standpoint and make some inferences about the strength of our unit.

There are some difficulties in evaluating the sacks a given quarterback suffered in a given season. First, not all quarterbacks play all 16 games. Second, some systems--like Philadelphia--will pass the ball 65% of the time; others--like Denver--tend to be a little more run heavy. Given these tendencies, there are fewer opportunities to sack a quarterback in the latter vs. the former. To normalize these concerns, I decided to focus on two statistics: sacks per game and attempts per sack (aka "sack rate"). Of these two, attempts per sack is perhaps the most useful because it is the closest thing to a sack rate we can decipher using simple statistics. To simplify the list, I only included Quarterbacks who made at least 8 starts and at least 200 pass attempts. Here's the data:


You can also download a .pdf version here and a spreadsheet with all regression results here.

Looking at these numbers, a couple of things become clear:

• Cutler's pass protection was not abysmal last year, as some have argued, but rather only very average. He ranked 15th in attempts/sack and 17th in sacks/game. I might point out, however, that when controlling for the horrendous meltdown in weeks 15 and 16, Cutler was sacked only 1.3 times per game or once every 22 pass attempts. These adjustment catapult Cutler into the top 10 in both categories.
  
  I suspect the reflexive reaction of naysayers will be to claim that the poor performance coincides with the injuries sustained to the offensive line (and by extension that we can expect to get worse, without upgrading in the draft). That's simply not true. Lepsis, Nalen, and Hamilton were all long gone by mid-October. Over the next 10 weeks, Denver faced 8 of the top 15 pass rushes (5 of them top 10) in the NFL. In all but those two games, the offensive line play was exceptional, allowing no more than 2 sacks in any game.
  
  
• While the list of sack rate leaders is top heavy with pro bowlers, there certainly are some exceptions to this trend. By far worst on the list, Ben Roethlisberger was sacked once every 6.8 pass attempts (more than thrice a game) despite boasting the leagues second-best QB rating. Despite having Walter Jones pass blocking, Matt Hasselbeck hit the turf more than his 28 touchdowns and 91.4 passer rating might suggest. David Garrard, despite throwing only 3 interceptions and boasting a 102.2 passer rating, was also sacked at a higher rate than Cutler.
  
  Thus, being average in these metrics is arguably not an unmanageable situation. As the1one points out, however, in a division with Jared Allen, Sean Merriman, and perhaps Vernon Gholston, Denver might have to take the left tackle position a little more seriously than the "average" team. That's fair criticism; but I'm not sure that convinces me we should spend 12th-pick money on an answer--or that the answer isn't necessarily on our roster.

Next, I want to take a look at some qualitative data on the source of our sack totals. Let's start with some data; here's a list of every player that sacked Jay Cutler in 2008:

BUF DT James McCargo: 1.0 sacks
OAK DT Gerrard Warren: 1.0 sacks
OAK S Michael Huff: 1.0 sacks
JAC DRE Reggie Hayward: 1.0 sacks
IND DRE Dwight Freeney: 1.0 sacks
PIT ILB Jerome Harrison: 1.0 sacks
PIT LOLB Lamar Woodley: 1.0 sacks
GNB DLE Aaron Kampman: 3.0 sacks
DET DT Shaun Rogers: 1.0 sacks
DET LOLB Ernie Sims: 0.5 sacks
DET DLE Jared Devries: 0.5 sacks
KAN RDE Jared Allen: 1.0 sacks
TEN FS V. Fuller: 1.0 sacks
CHI DRE Adwale Ogunleye: 2.0 sacks
OAK DLE Jay Richardson: 1.0 sacks
KAN DT Tambia Hali: 1.0 sacks
HOU DRE Mario Williams: 3.5 sacks
HOU DRE N.D. Kalu: 1.5 sacks
SDG LOLB Shaun Phillips: 1.0 sacks
SDG DLE Igor Olshansky: 1.0 sacks
SDG DRE Luis Castillo: 1.0 sacks
SDG SS Clinton Hart: 1.0 sacks
MIN ROLB Ben Leber: 1.0 sacks
(bold-type players faced Denver after Lepsis's season-ending injury)

Players in bold are those that logged sacks after Lepsis was lost against Jacksonville. Again a couple of things stand out:

• Only 9 of Cutler's 27 sacks were allowed to defensive right ends. 5 of these were delivered by Mario Williams and his backup N.D. Kalu. Clearly that game was an abomination; however, don't discount the possibility that it was also an anomaly. Denver faced 11 of the top 15 pass rushes in the league last season. Despite this, our sack totals are pretty average. The list of right ends that managed to bring Cutler down:
  
  Dwight Freeney (1)
  Adwale Ogunleye (1)
  Mario Williams (3.5)
  Luis Castillo (1)
  N.D. Kalu (1.5)
  Jared Allen (1)
  
  It's hard to get upset about that list. Some of these guys are going to get their sacks no matter who you have back there.
  
  
• Here's a breakdown of sacks allowed by DT, LRE, and SS/LB/CB:
  
  DT: 4 sacks
  LRE: 5.5 sacks (3.0 by Aaron Kampman)
  SS/LB/CB: 8.5 sacks (nobody has more than 1.0 sack)
  
  This data seems to argue that we were most susceptible against the blitz. To me, this is a gleaming endorsement of our need to draft a capable pass-blocker at running back, not at tackle. Travis Henry was supposed to be that guy; when he's healthy, maybe he is, but I certainly didn't see it last year and have considerable doubts about his durability headed into 2008.

There's no doubt that Denver will address their need for offensive line depth on draft day. The popular assertion that Denver will reach for a tackle in the first round based on a perceived positional need lacks historical, statistical, or qualitative credibility. A bigger need may ultimately be the selection of a third-down back with the versatility to serve as a potent offensive weapon and a capable pass protector.

In two weeks, we shall see...