NFL (National Football League) US Football

[ledoux]

w00t my 9ers pulled it off

[ptownstompin]

Jags were lackluster to say the least, and the Chargers should be pissed

[Oofty Goofty]

Chargers got screwed - twice!

[TheLancinator]

Originally Posted by ptownstompin

Jags were lackluster to say the least, and the Chargers should be pissed

Originally Posted by Oofty Goofty

Chargers got screwed - twice!

Maybe they should learn to defend the 2 pt conversion better

[Oofty Goofty]

Originally Posted by TheLancinator

Maybe they should learn to defend the 2 pt conversion better

Maybe the refs should watch the game

[TheLancinator]

Pffffft....if the 2 point conversion had failed, nobody would be saying anything at all about the game

[PorkChopSandwiches]

The call was bullshit, and the call to make a 2 point conversion was bullshit, and to allow the 2 point conversion to be made was bullshit.

[TheLancinator]

But the Broncos are 2-0 and in first place averaging 40 points a game

[PorkChopSandwiches]

Broncos should not be proud

[TheLancinator]

Shanahan makes return as 'Gambling man'
By Michael Silver, Yahoo! Sports


DENVER – Brandon Stokley came running off the field toward the Broncos' bench, holding up a single finger and pleading for sanity. He felt like the little kid in the back of the station wagon whose mom was about to drive her unsuspecting family off a pier.

"What are we doing?" Denver's No. 3 receiver screamed in the direction of coach Mike Shanahan. "We're only down 1. We're not down two! Can't you see the scoreboard?"

Jay Cutler's four-yard, fourth-down touchdown pass to rookie wideout Eddie Royal had just pulled the Broncos to within 38-37 of the San Diego Chargers with 24 seconds remaining in a wild battle for early season AFC West supremacy Sunday. Stokley, like virtually every one of the 75,915 fans at Invesco Field, expected Shanahan to do as all coaches do in that situation – kick the extra point and gear up for overtime.

Shanahan wasn't listening to Stokley. He looked right through him, relaying the two-point conversion call to Cutler that would decide this game, then and there, on his terms. Adding to the boldness of it all, Shanahan sent in the exact same play that had just produced the touchdown. Only the formation (the receivers lined up on opposite ends, with Royal motioning into the left slot) was different; the result, despite tighter coverage, would be identical.

Forget, for a moment, the terrific pass made by Cutler that Royal seized between three San Diego defenders and the delirious celebration that followed. Blow off the blown call by referee Ed Hochuli that kept Denver's dramatic comeback from derailing. Put aside the implications of the Broncos' 39-38 victory over a team that embarrassed them twice in '07 – and the two-game gap in the AFC West that now separates the rivals.

The true significance of Sunday's game was Shanahan's gutsy decision to go all in and play for the win – a course that he and Cutler plotted as the Chargers went up by 7 with 4:22 remaining.

Strip it all away, and this was an "I'm Back" statement from a coach nearly a decade removed from his last Super Bowl victory who is coming off a losing season he found untenable.

It was a power move by a play-calling savant who knows he finally has the quarterback who can help the Mile High City get over its collective post-John Elway hangover.

And, let's be honest, it was the act of a man who, despite recent rumblings to the contrary, is secure in his environment. Now in his 14th season, the league's second-longest-tenured head coach was willing to risk the backlash that would have accompanied a failed conversion. Given that only six other coaches had pulled a similarly risky move (going for two while down a point in the final two minutes) since the advent of the rule in 1994 – and only two of those six had been successful – Shanahan had to be feeling mighty exposed.

Let's be honest: He's been waiting for a chance to expose himself in good conscience for a long time. And even in those tense moments before he knew how the outcome would play out, Shanahan loved every second of it.

"I think so," said Cutler, who completed 36 of 50 passes for 350 yards and four touchdowns in a performance that we may remember as the day he became a big-time NFL passer. "I think he's comfortable being aggressive. We're attacking a lot more this year. We've got so many weapons. Our receivers are stepping up, our tight ends are exciting and our backs are so versatile. And with the way our line's playing, we feel like we can attack you any way you want."

Most of all Cutler, in his third season, has progressed to a point where Shanahan wants nothing more than the ball in his quarterback's right hand with the game on the line.

"That's why you go for it," Shanahan said afterward as he sat in the coaches' locker room at Invesco, his face still flushed from the excitement. "I've always believed you get a good feel for a quarterback in his third year, and I knew going into this offseason that Jay was capable of doing what he's done these first two games. If he keeps on playing at this level, good things will happen."

Before the Broncos drafted Cutler with the 11th overall pick of the '06 draft, they knew all about his robust right arm. Yet USC's Matt Leinart, a former Heisman Trophy winner, and Texas's Vince Young, who led the Longhorns to a stunning upset of the Trojans for the 2005 national championship, were considered to be better prepared to handle big-time pressure than Cutler, who played for SEC bottom-feeder Vanderbilt.

Two-and-a-half years later, that perception has changed dramatically. Partly because of what coaches believed was a lack of maturity, Leinart lost a competition with 37-year-old Kurt Warner and is now an Arizona Cardinals second-stringer. Young, too, has struggled with the transition to life as a professional and will likely be a backup to Kerry Collins after he recovers from a sprained knee.

Conversely Cutler, who became a starter late in his rookie season, gutted out the second half of the '07 campaign under physical duress without a significant dropoff in his play. It turned out he was suffering from Type I diabetes, a condition he has since had to manage on a constant basis.

On Sunday he was happy to report that, during that three-and-a-half hour stretch at Invesco, his blood sugars were under control. So, too, was Shanahan's game plan. Isn't it amazing how much smarter the man once dubbed 'The Mastermind' (a line from a feature story I wrote for Sports Illustrated that was later used against him in mocking tones) looks when a quarterback with Cutler's abilities is running the offense, as opposed to predecessors and failed Elway-followers Jake Plummer and Brian Griese?

"You've got to run an offense that fits your personnel," was Shanahan's way of putting it. "Jay can do so many things."

Against the Chargers, who stayed in the game thanks to the equally outstanding Philip Rivers (21 of 33, 377 yards, three touchdowns and no trace of debilitation from the torn ACL he suffered last January), Cutler did it all. For one thing, he connected 18 times for 166 yards with wideout Brandon Marshall, returning from a one-game suspension for having violated the NFL's personal-conduct policy.

Let's repeat that: Marshall caught 18 passes, two short of Terrell Owens's single-game league record, many of them while allegedly being covered by utterly frustrated Pro Bowl corner Antonio Cromartie, reprising the role played by the Raiders' DeAngelo Hall against Royal in Denver's season-opening 41-14 victory in Oakland. Included in Marshall's haul was a six-yard touchdown pass off a gorgeous fade to the left corner from Cutler with two seconds left in the first half, giving the Broncos a 31-17 lead.

Earlier Cutler, sliding and stepping up in the pocket with tremendous presence, gunned a pair of scoring tosses to tight end Tony Scheffler (six catches, 64 yards). He was best of all on the game-deciding two-point conversion, coolly buying time before finding Royal wedged between defenders Eric Weddle, Steve Gregory and Clinton Hart and firing a strike that the young wideout simply assimilated into his being.

Even more telling was the way Cutler shook off the mistake that seemed to turn the game in the Chargers' favor. Up 31-30 with 5:41 remaining, on third-and-3 from the San Diego 4, Cutler rolled to his right and lobbed a meatball to Chargers corner Antoine Cason, who intercepted it in the end zone, ran it out and fumbled after being hit by Stokley. After Hart recovered and ran forward, a frustrated Cutler took him down at the 9 before heading back to the bench with a knot in his stomach.

"I was sick," Cutler said. "I don't even think the ball had left my hand before I was already cursing myself. I knew it was a disaster when I released it, and I was running after the guy as soon as I made the throw. It turned out the best thing that happened for us was that they scored quickly."

At the time, Rivers' short screen to Darren Sproles that the diminutive halfback turned into a 66-yard touchdown – and the two-point conversion that followed – didn't seem like a positive development for the home team. But Shanahan was already spinning it forward, undoubtedly influenced by an aversion to the possibility of seeing his reeling defense take the field again. When the coach broached the idea of going for two if the Broncos were to score in the final 80 or 90 seconds, Cutler was all for it, and he excitedly told his teammates of the plan in the huddle.

Stokley, who was on the bench at the time, never got the memo, but now he and everyone else knows the score. For once Cutler made his coach's gamble pay off, the league-wide perception of him and the Broncos had changed, perhaps irrevocably.

Shanahan, of course, had long ago envisioned the day on which he would place the full measure of his faith in the kid from Vanderbilt. "We felt that from Day One he was someone who could wipe bad plays away very quickly," Shanahan said. "That's what most great quarterbacks do – just like great cornerbacks who get burned but have to have those short memories. Even in college, you could see his toughness on film. He would stay in the pocket and get hit in the jaw, but he'd still wait 'till the last second and throw it 60 yards downfield."

Shanahan rose from his chair in the coaches' locker room and flashed a knowing smile. He didn't have to state the obvious: His quarterback has the right stuff, and now that the kid has arrived, it changes everything.

When you see it from that vantage point, perhaps going for two isn't such a risky decision after all.

[ptownstompin]

i liked the decision personally, even though i wished badly that they would miss it. it seems like this weekend had an extremely high number of good games that i hated the ending to

[TheLancinator]

How about DeSean Jackson and his moron play last night

He couldn't wait the extra .001 seconds till he crossed the goal line to start his celebration dance?

[Legmann]

Originally Posted by TheLancinator

How about DeSean Jackson and his moron play last night

He couldn't wait the extra .001 seconds till he crossed the goal line to start his celebration dance?

Yeah! I'm sure the coaches had a good talk to the rookie!

[ptownstompin]

i dont know what you're talking about, that was perfect, Westbrook had to run it in, giving me more fantasy points

[Elviswind]

Cripes . . . I thought Madden annoyed me before . . . he's even worse with a sore throat.