Going on they can't make comments fair health hotline, bringing on the only Ryan
we stand on the show, Ryan Michael, Right, how you doing doing
well? Ben Nick? How are you guys doing pretty well? Man having
a good time? And I get a little loopy here. I think the
free agency has has broken us all. One of the things that we wanted
to do is we start delving in on this kind of doing inside the number
segment, talk with you a little bit our unofficial official statistician here at Brocos
Countries, and I always bring the good data. So even Mike Cliff went
out there and gave you the old euro great researcher comment the other day.
Good for yeah, good for getting that went in there, getting Mike Mike
to give the compliment. He's kind of like getting Vic Fangio to give a
compliment. You know, it's squeeze and juice from the stone. But uh,
you know, first of all, I wanted to get a chance.
We've had you on a couple times. I give a chance to introduce yourself
to the audience. What exactly do you do for the Pro Football Hall of
Fame? I write a quarterback retrospective series for the Pro Football Hall of Same
and that's really a historical and statistical dive into excellence of the quarterback position throughout
pro football history. So I try to take that same mentality in terms of
the Pro Football Hall of Fames mission statement, which is to honor the greatest
of the game, preserve its history, promote its values, and celebrate excellence
together and bring that over here to BCT. So as all of us are
kind of feeling the effects of this, whether you call it rebuilding or retooling,
I think we all be in agreement that this week has been a little
bit rougher than it's been even in recent years. So you know, I
connected with you last week thinking that this might be a good opportunity for us
when I'm popping in on Tuesday nights, to take a dive into excellence that,
again for Broncos have had historically. Because my mindset is is that if
we don't fully appreciate our past success, what's the sense in getting excited for
the future success that we're expecting, hoping, praying to have. So it
gives us a little bit of something positive to reflect upon during a week that's
otherwise been a little bit rough around the edges. Well, speaking of rough
round is that Broncos quarterback room is definitely need some smoothing out. So with
that being said, I mean, I know there's a lot of hypotheticals as
far as the direction that the Broncos could go in. I mean, Ben
talked a lot about Jimmy Garoppolo, his guy, George GMG, bobblehead over
there, not mine. Well, I brought this in especially for you.
You own one. I don't, yes, I do, but the idea
that Ben was high on Jimmy, he was high on Sam, Sam Darnell.
And then you look Jamis Winston, who I thought would have been a
great fit because he's playing in Sean Payton's offense. He's off to Cleveland.
So where does that leave Broncos Country. As far as the hypothetical quarterback carousel,
Stayden Manning still works Sundays. I mean it's tough. You know,
I'd love to go back in time to twenty twelve, and you know I
pitched the idea earlier this afternoon. I think the most practical fantasy situation.
I don't even like to use the word fantasy because I'm not particularly excited about
it, but I would say to go Jimmy g if we can get him
cheap because he does somewhat fit the style of Sean Payton's offense. He's going
to be facing a two game suspension, so give Jared said him a chance
during those first two weeks, and if he plays well, allow him to
continue to ride it out. But I think drafting a quarterback bo Nicks would
be that archetype. As Men has mentioned, you know more than once.
Is he the right choice at number twelve? I don't know if I would
draft him that high, but we are running out of options, So I
think that's the one that we get Broncos Country a little bit excited. But
I don't know if there's any perfect scenario coming our way with here. Yeah,
it's going to be a rebuild. Here's going to be in some tough
times in the middle of a rebuild, and I'm just trying to get everybody
buckled in for that. But we've you know, the Broncos have been through
glory years. You've got some stuff back two thousand and three, two thousand
and five where the Broncos were racking up wins over Tom Brady, Peyton,
Manning, Drew Brees. They sure were, and the Broncos of two thousand
and three to two thousand and five remind me a little bit of the Buffalo
Bills team from the nineteen nineties. Obviously, the Bill standalone is the only
team to ever go to four consecutive Super Bowls. But people have to realize
that the AFC was stacked during our two thousand and three to two thousand and
five run. You had Peyton Manning at the peak of his power. You
had Tom Brady during the first wave of the Patriots dynasty. You had Drew
Brees stepping into his own as a Pro Bowl quarterback in San Diego, Kansas
City was a perennial Pro Bowl team. And so when I look back to
that run, one of the things that gets me the most excited is the
balance that the Broncos had on both offense and defense. So you're looking at
three double digit win seasons, three seasons where both the offense and the defense
finished in the top ten in scoring. So in two thousand and three we
went ten and six, ty four, ten and six, and in two
thousand and five, thirteen and three, there was balance on the offensive side
of the ball. Jake Plumber and we'll touch on that in a few minutes.
But we had what Mike Shanahan was a staple of his offenses throughout the
year, a dominant ground game. In two thousand and three, we ran
for two thousand, six hundred and twenty nine yards, so that was forty
five yards short of Baltimore for first place, but we had thirteen fewer fumbles.
In two thousand and four, we finished fourth with twenty three hundred and
thirty three rushing yards. And in two thousand and five we ran for two
thousand, five hundred and thirty nine yards, which was just seven below Atlanta
at number one, and we had seven fewer fumbles. So the balance that
we had on offense, the dominance on both offense and defense, and like
you said, Ben, we picked up some pretty big wins along the way.
We had four wins over Drew Brees, two wins over Peyton Manning,
two wins over Tom Brady, and if you want to expand the window into
the beginning of the first half of the two thousand and sixties, and we
actually had three in a row. So that's a pretty dominant run of professional
football for team that. Yeah, sure we fell short of winning a Super
Bowl, we picked up some really really big wins against some great teams.
Well, oftentimes, when I have conversations with you know, Broncos fan fans
living here in Denver, obviously the two quarterback names that come up consistently,
that's Peyton Manning and as John Elway. But right between those two guys,
it's Jake Plumber, and we don't traditionally hear a lot about Jake and what
he was able to do with the Denver Broncos team at that time, and
you bring up something that's very interesting. I mean, on that five six
season, we had a great team. I think we went twelve and three,
but we didn't win. We didn't finish the deal, we didn't win
the Super Bowl. But when you look at Jake's performance statistically and you put
him against some of the other top quarterbacks either during that time, how does
he stack up statistically? He stacks up very favorably. I mean, adjusted
that yards per attempt is one of my favorite statistics. That accounts three yards
per passing attempt, touchdown passes, and interceptions. So during that two thousand
and three to two thousand and five run, he averaged six point seven to
seven and that was higher than Brady at six point five sixth, higher than
McNabb at six point four seven, higher than Steve mcmare, who was co
MVP in two thousand and three, at six point twenty four, and higher
than Drew Brees at five point ninety seven. His winning percentage, as we
had mentioned on Twitter a few days ago, was seventy one point nine percent,
and so he went thirty nine and fifteen during his entire run with the
Broncos. But that seventy one point nine percent winning percentage is higher than Peyton
Mannings was with the Colts. He was at sixty seven point eight percent.
That even higher than Joe Montana is with the forty nine ers seventy one point
nine ers. I'm sorry, I misspooked that was Montana's. Plumber was at
seventy two point two percent. So I'm not trying to say that Jake Plumber
was Joe Montana. I'm not trying to imply that if the sample size were
expanded a bit more that that number wouldn't have come down a little bit.
But Joe Montana was with the Niners from nineteen seventy nine to nineteen ninety two.
He won exactly one hundred games. Jake Plumber won thirty nine games in
about three and a half seasons. It's a discussion that we need to have
more often because I agree with you, Jig. Jake Plumber's name gets lost
in the discussion of great quarterbacks from the two thousands. Yeah, I've always
been been a fan of Plumbers. In fact, I mistakenly thought I was
gonna get a Bucks Plumber jersey when when Gruton came out to record him before
he decided to go hand handball and just hang it up. And it's funny
because I think everybody at that time he'll he'll totally come out of it.
Never did. Stuck to his guns, and it's you know, one of
the things about Jake is, you know, you ever talked to him,
he's he's a person of conviction. You'll unless you come around on that,
you know. I I've talked Nick and I talked earlier in the show,
and I said, you know, if the Broncos are doing this rebuild thing,
let's let's rebuild the idea. Let's build a bully, you know,
let's let's do that. And you go back and you look, the Broncos
traditionally have been a dominant defensive team going all the way back to the to
the Orange Crush, and you go through those years. I mean even the
nineties said good defenses, and you get to you know, like two thousand
and five, they had a suffocating defense, and I one member of this
show. I can't put a finger on which one was on that defense,
you know, in all of his gate ray flipping glory. Uh and and
you know, I think that he should be appreciative and should be on board
with the Broncos building a bully. He should be And I'll actually say I
hold Nick Ferguson partially responsible for that two thousand and three playoff loss to Peyton
Manning and the Colts, but not for the reason that you would think,
because if you go back a year before, Nick, you were part of
that Jets secondary that shut out Manning and the Colts forty one to zero,
completed forty five percent of his passes through for a buck thirty seven, no
touchdowns, two kicks, a thirty one point two passer rating, the lowest
of his postseason career. You pissed that man off and he came back,
and I don't know if Peyton Manning becomes the quarterback that he becomes if he
didn't suffer that humiliation against the Jets in two thousand and two, and so
wrapping it back into what you guys were able to do in two thousand and
five, he gave Tom Brady similar trouble. That the Broncos cass defense ranked
number one in the AFC and passer rating surrendered that year at seventy two point
two. You rank number one in the AFC and completion percentage surrendered at fifty
six point one, So nearly half of all of your opponents' passes were hitting
the ground. And so that season, champ Bailey had a picks. Nick
had five picks, and that's not even accounting for the safety blitz that forced
the one hundred yard interception return against Brady in the postseason. So I guess
disrupting Hall of Fame quarterback is kind of your thing. Well, you know
what's interesting that you mentioned the fact of maybe that Jets team probably pissed Peyton
off. I can attest to that because he was pretty upset. Because if
I go back and think about it, that had to be Peyton's worst loss
in his entire career. And every player needs a little motivation. So yeah,
I guess that Jets team kind of led to that, which is which
is crazy. But you bring up once again that played with Champ Bailey,
and I think about the Broncos team now and having impact players, and now
we're talking about this a little off air when you look at where the Broncos
are now and I know the draft is not hasn't taken place, and we're
still the second day in the free agency, do you think that the Broncos
will have enough of what it takes to add more impact players to their roster.
It's going to be a tremendous challenge troubleshooting the salary cap situation, and
so I've always been a big believer in hoping for the best but preparing for
the worst. It's going to be a tough season, as you and Ben
had alluded to before I hoped on the show. But I think as we
lower the expectations and as the spotlight kind of removes itself from Denver, it
will give us an opportunity to perhaps be a little bit more competitive than anybody
sees coming. It's really the best that we can hope for, And I
don't want to focus too much on who we can sign until we actually get
some names signed and we get some new guys in the building, because right
now what we're seeing is the development of a Sean I'm Peyton roster. He's
re signing his guys. Now what that's going to mean for our future,
which means to be seen. I don't want to say I'm pessimistic. I
don't want to be a contributor to the pessimistic show DCT. I'll just leave
it as I'm hopeful for seeing what Sean Payton's able to put together this year.
That's truly where I'm at with this. Like Sean Payton had not been
my choice for head coach, but I'm not one of these people that sits
there and just begrudges that forever afterwards. Like I'm going to be the same.
I'm going to levy the same criticism on anybody for everything. The lipmus
test would apply. If Dan Quinn were here, I'd be critical of what,
you know, what the mess was, if if it was a mess.
So I I you know, in that regard, I think it's good
to be equitable across the board. I think the next thing that I want
to do, like when we do this segment next week. The thing that
I'm interested in is that. And I don't know if you're able to do
this or not, but I'm interested in rebuilds. How long it takes.
You look at Miami, you look at Cleveland, they could strip it down,
rebuilds, how long? How bad they were for how long? And
how long get took to turn it all the way around. You look at
the Niners, the Browns, the Lions, the uh, the Dolphins.
I'm just trying to think of recent examples. We can definitely do that.
Let's let's do that next week. I'm genuinely curious to see you know how
how lengthy the rebuilds are on things like that, and how how successful teams
are when we know they're stripping it down and doing that. I'm right on
board with you. Let's do it. Sweet. Well, now we got
something to look forward to with the inside. The numbers say, we'll get
a little We're gonna a little headliner. We'll get downroach to do a little
liner for this for this segment. Everything we've we've we've been build this thing
on the flight, Ryan. We we always appreciate you, Uh. The
time always goes too fast. We love that you're able to bring some data
to contextualize everything here and looking forward to this discussion next week by Rebuilds.
All Right, sounds good man, Nick, appreciate your time as always,
you guys have a great night. Absolutely take care. Ryan Michael d Ryan
Michael on Twitter