11-26-24 Ryan Michael with Broncos Country Tonight

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Check it in with our guy Ryan Michael at the
Ryan Michael on Twitter? Ryan, how you doing this evening?

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Doing well? Then? Nick? How are you guys doing pretty well? Guys?
Bon Nicks has.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Done basically a complete one eighty from the first four
weeks of the season what looked like a bust to
some people after a couple of games to possible offensive
Rookie of the Year candidate now through twelve games are Listen,
are you ready to apologize with Sean Payton hate that's
been sizzling out of your Twitter account?

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (00:33):
My goodness, listen. I am the biggest Sean Payton fan
in the world and nothing would make me happier than
to continue to see us winning football games, scoring points.
And yeah, I try to be fair and everything that
I do. So we're a team that's trending upwards. Certainly,
seven and five is well above expectations. I think the

(00:53):
overunder before the season started with five and a half.
So doing well, super and is quickly developed into a
player showing signs of becoming a franchise quarterback. Even better,
he was the guy who I had second on my
draft board coming into the season. I think he's had
one of the most impressive college football resumes of any
quarterback prospect we've seen over the last decade. So he's

(01:17):
trending in the right direction, so much so that if
we shrink the windows that since Week three, he took
his per game average and put it over a seventeen
game pace, you'd be looking at four thou ninety total yards,
thirty four total touchdowns, only three picks, zero loss fumbles
all season. So sure it was spectacular the offense, though,

(01:41):
Ben still ranks nineteenth in Portsberg game scored. And you
want to guess where we ranked last year.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
I know the answer to this would already, but I'll
let you dazzle us.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
In ranked nineteenth in points per game scored last year.
So you know, if you look at what we're doing
this year with flooring points in very different ways. Both
accounted for twenty one of our twenty five offensive touchdowns
and for the four supportive Russian touchdowns on the ground,
one was one yard, another was five, another was eight.
Three of those four were you know, close in the

(02:10):
red area. So we're doing it a bit differently. And
I was talking on Twitter earlier today a little bit
about this. Russell Wilson was very underappreciated for what he
was able to accomplish our structure. Last year, he led
the AFC touchdown pass percentage of five point eight. That's
very high, and he produced just one fewer touchdown pass
and one hundred and fifty fewer attempts than Patrick Mahomes

(02:33):
to trade off as I feel like we talked about
this third week, he finished twenty seventh in sack percentage,
so Bow is the antithesis of that. He's seventh in
the league right now. He's technically third if you narrow
down the quarterbacks who started ten or more games, but
he's twenty first in the league in sack percentage. So
bo style is death by a thousand paper cuts, right timing,
rhythm efficiency, a Sean Payton offense, perhaps without the weapons

(02:58):
that we saw in New Orleans, and b Nix isn't
quite true abreziate. So he's showing great development. We're doing
the best we can in salary cap held, but yet
was still nineteen from the league in scoring. Now.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
Coaches like people are creatures of habit, and what I
mean by that is when they live and die by
their system and they have players or they look for
players to kind of fit their previous system with their
current system. Now when you look at Courtland Sutton and
you look at Devon Belay, those two are now emerging,

(03:32):
in my opinion, as wide receiver number one and why
receiver number two. Do you see how they're being deployed
similar to maybe what Sean Payton has done in the
past with other receivers.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
Sure, I mean we're right now New Orleans Saints light
and they mean that effextionllently. So you could say that
Courtland Sutton is a poor man's Michael Thomas and Devon
you know, the comparisons this week from Marcus Coulston, I
could see that. You know what, we could used Nick As,
we could use Jimmy Graham, because right now, amongst the
tight end position, Lucas called the team of ten receptions

(04:06):
Troutman just one hundred and fifty eight yards Nate Adkins,
who hadn't scored a touchdown even in college football and
longer than I can remember most touchdowns by a tight
end on Broncos this year with too So yeah, I mean,
there's this similar deployment and they're cut of the same
mold of Sean Payton kind of eyes. We're certainly seeing
a roster that built in his image this year. So

(04:26):
I like what I'm saying so far, and I believe
I said this last week. We have arguably, if not
the best rooky quarterback in the NFL, arguably the best
offensive line in the NFL, and arguably the best defense
in the NFL. So in salary cap hell, we're not
going to necessarily have assassins at the skill position. I
like what I'm seeing with what.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
We have with Ryan Michael at the Ryan Michael on Twitter.
The offense has been steadily growing, but the defense has
been consistently elite. How much credit do we give Sean
Bayton for the fact that the defense is elite and
carrying this team.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
I think that, you know, we have to give him
credit for the change of culture beyond that this is
really vanced justice defense. And I think we have to
be fair then, because Sean Payton was also the overlord
of New Orleans Sames teams that produced defenses that finished
thirty to thirty first and thirty second in points per
game surrendered, And if you think back to that time,

(05:22):
nobody was typically critical of him for those awful defensive
finishes because on the offensive side of the ball, they
were top ten, often top five. So if we were
going to be leaning on him when the defenses weren't
bad under his botch, can we really give him more
credit relative to the criticism that we gave him when
they were bad in New Orleans? I don't think so.

(05:42):
I think at the end of the day, we need
to give a lot more credit to Vance Joseph. And
what I'm seeing on that side of the ball is
an exotic aggressive defensive schemes were blitz heavy. I think
around forty five percent of the staffs or blitzes, and
our guys get to the quarterback even when we're not
sending experments of the personnel. This year has been very strong,

(06:03):
and the unique thing about the Broncos pass defense is
they're winning in other ways, you know, compared to other
defenses that have been good. Take the Texans, for example,
they lead the league with seventy passes defended. We're down
to twentieth with only forty two. What we are are
the NFL's leader in sacks. We have forty four. We're
sacking the quarterback on nine point six percent of the play,

(06:25):
so one out of every ten plays results in a sack.
You know that we're doing well. We're second only to
Baltimore and quarterback hits we already have ninety, so we're
doing it in a very different way. We're second in
the league in yards per attempt allowed on the positive
end of it, so we're only allowing six point four
yards per attempt. Our dbs aren't swatting down a lot

(06:45):
of houses. We're allowing completions. We're around league average. I
think we allow roughly sixty five percent completion percentage. But
they're tackling machines and they're not traveling very far distances.
And at the end of the day, we can bend
a little bit. We're not breaking. We're not giving up
points short of the league points per game surrendered. I
love what I'm seeing from the defense.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
Well, you may love what you're seeing from the defense
as much as I love what I'm seeing for the defense.
But my counterpart, you know, Benjamin Albright, he has this
thing for clock management, and we've spent you know, some
time at nauseum talking about this, but I'll allow to
get you your take on the situation. Is three minutes

(07:27):
thirty eight seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, and the
Broncos throw three passes. Do you feel the same way
about clock management as one Benjamin Albright?

Speaker 2 (07:38):
I do? And at this level, Nick, it really is
a beautiful There are season Madden players better. So you
have three minutes thirty eight seconds on the clock, you
hear us three times in a row, so you shaved
a few seconds. That got him down to three minutes
twenty three seconds. So the fact that we won the
game means that we're going to overlook that kind of

(08:00):
clock management completely. But it's the kind of decision making
and a competitive, somewhat competitive game, at least towards the end,
they shot that could cost you a football game. So
just because we win doesn't mean that we should overlook
bad clock management. It makes my head, well.

Speaker 3 (08:17):
You know what, It's very interesting because not often do
you come on and you agree with Ben on end.
Because Ben was celebrating, he threw his hands up like
he's on the steps of Philadelphia and he was Rocky Balboa.
And then you mentioned, you know, Madden Football, all the
things that Ben loves to play. And I told him

(08:38):
immediately when he had his comments, he was reverting back
to his Madden days where he just loves to run
the ball. But here's what I would say. I said
this to Band, and you tell me what you think.
Do you think that coach Payton did what he did
knowing is though he has one of the top defensive
units in the league, you can.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Take more chances when you have an elite defense on
the other end of the football. But this kind of
brings me back Nick to Ben's question a few minutes ago.
How much credit do we give Sean Payton for the
elite defensive performance if you are now taking irresponsible shots
on offense, the kind of chances that could lead you
to losing a football game that shouldn't have even been

(09:19):
as close as it was. And if your excuse for
that is that vance Joseph from the defensive side of
the ball has us lockdown, I still think that that's inexcusable.
I understand the personnel that we have to work with
in the ground game, it's not strong, but you've got
to at least give it to a running back on
one of those three plays.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, to me, And at the end of the day,
it's not about gaining yardage or anything. You want to
get a first down, but even three negative rushes would
have been better than three incompletions. Agreed, at least you're
taking time off the clock or taking time outs away
from your opponent. I do want to give Sean Baks
some credit, though we can't just sit here a bag
on that, especially after a win. We can all see
the offense approving what specifically has impressed you about what

(09:59):
Sean has done the let's sell the ball.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
You know what I'm seeing with bone Nicks is we're
continuing to tailor the offense to his strength, so that
would be quick, complete, structured yards after the catch. And
as he's becoming more comfortable, he's opening up the playbooks.
He's been able to more efficiently attack the middle of
the field. These are the kind of things that we
saw at Oregon, and we knew that we weren't going

(10:22):
to see instant success. I believe I said before the
season even started, the twenty twenty four should be about
getting bone Nicks acclimated to the system. So here we
are two thirds through the season and he's already playing
the position at an elite level, hitting some highs. We
put up one hundred and forty five passer riding the
week before last second highest in the history of the
franchise higher than John Elway ever hit, although we've got

(10:44):
to adjust for eras, so take it with a grand salt.
I love what I'm seeing and as bone, it's a
quarterback driven offense, and I don't say that to take
any credit away from what Sean Payton is doing. We
understand that he doesn't have Campa Bay twenty twenty roster,
he doesn't have the two thousand and seven Patriots, so
none of us should have or have expectations for the

(11:06):
offense to be a top three, top five offense. We
still want to produce more points, and slowly but surely
we're doing that. We have to be patient. We're rooting
for him every week again and not trying to sell
short the progress that he's made with bo Nicks. But
at the same time, guys, when you see these issues
with clock management and you see the lack of points
produced over the grand sample size of here we are

(11:29):
at seven and five, twelve games in, there's still plenty
of room for improvement.

Speaker 3 (11:34):
When you look at the Broncos run game, and we
haven't really talked about it in great detail because it
hasn't really been that explosive. Now we're moving into the
back half of the season, colder months. What can we
anticipate from the Broncos offense from a run game standpoint,
You think.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
Channing out so far through twelve games, like Toronte Williams,
who is at one hundred and twenty carries only averaging
three point seven yards per rush, that's not great success percentage,
which is an efficiency metric for Pro Football Reference, very
six point seven percent not tremendous. I do like what
I'm seeing out of all your estimains, averaging four point
seven yards per carry equal to that of Bonix, and

(12:17):
I believe I said this a few weeks ago when
we were trying to predict what the second half of
the season would look like for Bonnicks, I had a
feeling they would take him out of harms when we
wouldn't see as much of the quarterback design runs as
we saw in the first half of the season. I
think that's smart. We need to keep Bonius healthy. But
you know, the more that we can rotate these running
backs in and generate momentum, I feel frustrated saying the

(12:39):
same thing week after week after we because we don't
have Derrick Henry in the backfield. We don't have shake
on bar play in the backfield. If we did with
the offensive line that we have, you'd be saying much
better games. So I don't think the objective should be
for us to become a run first team or to
have any crazy sort of expectations. We just want to
get better, and slowly, but surely we're getting inner. Tyler R.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
Michael at the Ryan Michael on Twitter, Ryan, Pat Mahomes
didn't look like a scrub versus Carolina. Are you ready
to eat some crow on your Mahomes criticism from a
couple of weeks back.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
I mean he played Carolina, the second to loss in
the league. They give up one hundred and five point
six passer rating nearly seventy percent completion percentage, their second
to last in the league and SAT League fifteen sixteen
seventeen something like that, and their last in the NFC
in terms of touchdown passes surrendered was twenty one. So

(13:31):
Pat Mahomes is trending upward as bo Nicks has been.
But at the end of the day here he is.
Eleven games in his season, he ranked twenty first in
the league in the just Vate yards per tenth after
last year he was fifteen in the league, so right
around league average, from the moment he started his first
game against less than twenty seventeen. All the way through

(13:52):
the end of twenty twenty two Hiss MVP campaign, he
ranked number one in the NFL. So when you look
at one of the best overall efficiency metrics to go
from it half decade running number one in the league,
dropping down the fifteenth last year, and he's twenty first
this year despite playing really well against Carolina. Well, I
love Pat mahons, he's the future first ballot Hall of Famber.
But if we're pretending that the totality of his value

(14:14):
of work our last two season is gonna comparable to
just do the best runs we've seen in the history
of the position from twenty eighteen twenty twenty two, I
think what we're doing is we're unintentionally selling short how
great he was for that first half decade. Don't do that.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, right, we don't want Understell. We've got Cleveland Browns
coming up on Monday night.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
What do you think?

Speaker 1 (14:34):
What's your prediction?

Speaker 2 (14:35):
Real quick? Twenty eight to seventeen Denver.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
Oh wow, Okay, I'm a little concerned about this one.
He's he's confident though he comes out to twenty eight
to seventeen. Well, we'll certainly I'll hold you to that,
and if it doesn't happen, we'll weill mercilessly roast you
for twenty minutes next week immediately following the game. For
those are the rules, so I don't make that much
as follow I'm here for brother. Take care, Ryan Michael
let the Ryan Michael on