Game...Set...Match...

Blackop
[Reply]

We like to think our air is simply slender because it avoids all that fried shit it gets in Missouri.
[Reply]

Denver air is so thin it’s like it spent the war in Andersonville, motherfucker.
[Reply]

Karen Carpenter, official vocalist for the Denver Broncos.
[Reply]

We talkin’ this air here is emaciated, Chuck.
[Reply]

I like you..and your posts are funny....but trivializing what seems to be a deliberate action to give the Broncos an early season edge sucks. It appears to have been going on for years too...which is lame.

If Donko fans want to cherish that they really arent as good as they been led to believe...so be it.

Last season was pretty entertaining...watching them crash and burn once they hit the road.
[Reply]

Jesus, we are arguing air now? Air didn’t matter when we kicked Peyton’s ass in 2015. Hasn’t mattered the past couple season. Fact is it doesn’t matter when you have a QB that doesn’t shit his pants in Denver.
[Reply]

Question...

Why Denver? Seriously... are some of you under some delusion that there's really enough money to be slid under tables over the last few decades to actually push the league to give that ONE team in the rocky mountains a clearer path to success?

Really?

I'll be honest - I can't reasonably explain the scheduling oddity. But, I also can't reasonably explain why the league through good and bad seasons would purposefully prop up any one single team.

Why - why would the league do that, for Denver?

PGM says most of those teams were garbage and Denver would have terrible records if it weren't for these early scheduling oddities. Seriously?

I mean, sometimes you guys go so far off the rails of reality it's amazing.

There has to be a genunine reason behind a conspiracy, yeah? What is the benefit to the league for giving this lone team such a wild advantage?

I'll add that in 2015, they played 2 of their first 3 on the road and 4 of their first 6 on the road. But, then you'll counter with the Papa John's gifted SB... dangit. It always plays out well for the tinfoil crowd.

He's reasonable.
[Reply]

Like I said earlier in this thread, it really has to take the shine off your team's success when deep down you know you root for a team that has such a distinct unfair advantage.

It not only helps them get to the playoffs, it often helps them secure home field advantage throughout. I still contend this is why they've gone to so many Super Bowls only to suffer some the most embarrassing losses in the history of championship games. They were exposed as inferior teams that rode their thin air advantage to the AFC title.
[Reply]

That's one theory... another theory is those 3 teams in the 80s simply ran up against great teams, the AFC as a whole was in a long SB losing streak. The SEA SB ... their defense was meh and they ran up against a killer, young and balanced team.

Surely on one of these sites, there is a decade over decade comparison for teams and road wins. That's what I'd like to see. If Denver is riding this super home field advantage and would otherwise suck, surely they are in the bottom 1/4 of the league YOY on the road.
[Reply]

Well, the league really didn't do much when you won your first two championships by cheating the salary cap. It's too bad the NFL has a system where teams are rewarded for cheating. It would be nice to see teams that knowingly cheat in such a fundamental way have their championships ceremoniously stripped from them.

That said, I don't believe there is an overt conspiracy to ensure the Broncos have success no matter what. But there is no question they benefit from being league darlings. I'm sure the league is fully aware of how stark this particular advantage is for the Broncos. The NFL is not averse to giving their league darlings a step up whenever they can subtly do so.
[Reply]

I'm not saying your team has always sucked. The Peyton Manning reach-around championship team had one of the best defenses I've ever seen. But considering how horrible Peyton was all year, one has to wonder how many teams would have made it that far on the backs of its defense with that level of suck at quarterback.

The bottom line is that there is no question the thin air is a distinct advantage for the Broncos. The statistics don't lie. And the player anecdotes are more than just sour grapes. How much of a difference it has made in any given year is something we'll never know for certain.
[Reply]

Well said. This is the best way to look at it.
[Reply]

The late 90s salary cap thing was more about deferred payments and not so much cap infractions that allowed them to retain more players than legally allowed. But, we've been down that road and I'll you guys relive it if you choose.

Question... has there been a year when the team achieved something great that was not part of some conspiracy? The Tebow OT win vs PIT... that surely was manufactured by the league as well, no?

Did the league clear a path for Manning to sign in Denver over other clubs?

I mean, the 4 SB losses were legit ... league sanctioned and uninfluenced beatdowns of monumental order. We have no issues with those, but ... but, the 3 SB wins - were without a doubt and unmistakenly a league mandated code orange to ensure they won. Same with the scheduling oddities, for some reason - there's this desire to give Denver and just Denver that advantage in the first 2-3 weeks of every season.

Got it. Everything bad -- legitness. Everything good -- league manufactured.
[Reply]

Duh. Deferring payments is a way of subverting the salary cap to keep more players. Being able to retain more good players than the rest of the teams in the league is the single greatest advantage a team can have. That is why there is a salary cap. To cheat the salary cap is one of the most agregious forms of cheating in sports, if not the most.

Those two championships are tainted no matter how hard Broncos fans try to downplay those violations.
[Reply]