Melvin was in tears during press conference after the game yesterday to the point he needed to walk off the podium. He is a good RB with the ball in his hands who has lost confidence in himself. If we as fans want the best for this team we need to get behind him and help him get his confidence back to push through this season. He has said multiple times over that last few years that he knows all the fans don’t like him.

We’re arguably 4-0 without Melvin. It’s inexcusable because by the nature of the sport, that doesn’t get put on him, but the team, while being an individual effort. I realize we have to keep him on the team now, but he can’t redeem himself Thursday. He can’t redeem himself at all in my eyes unless he is directly responsible for two wins that we otherwise wouldn’t have gotten, and that burden for a running back is high if we’re talking about a whole career, much less one season from a player with 25 career fumbies.

Football is a notoriously fickle sport from a job turnover perspective, but THIS EXACT SITUATION is why there is an “addition by subtraction” mentality in the sport when it comes to giving a player, coach, whomever their walking papers. Ask Karl Dorrell about it. Ask the twitter Kizla enthusiasts who think they can reasonably suggest a coach should be dismissed after 2 hours of game-time.

On the flip side of that coin, we have people still laying the Broncos woes at Coach Hackett’s feet. We’ve gone from 12 and 13 penalties in the first two games to 5 and 7 penalties. Not the goal, but trend in the right direction.

Here’s a stance I’m hammering until the wild horses come home to roost, or until I am forced to issue a formal apology; We’re going to keep seeing trends like this until this team is top tier, because this staff is about learning from issues and improving and not having the arrogance of assuming they are always right. They are triaging what is wrong, and not afraid to admit mistakes, exactly what we needed and exactly why it is so frustrating that people keep trying to dunk on them.

I hate the idea that some fans apparently expect the primary qualification of a head coach to be “prior head coach experience”, such a backwards mentality in any profession. Like that meme of grade schoolers in hard hats that says “when the entry level job asks for 20 years experience”. If this sport didn’t require adaptation and a humble attitude in order to succeed, every coach would be 60 years old and come from one coaching tree, and the same handful of teams would be in the playoffs every year. And, more importantly, we would like the sport a lot less.

Reminding Broncos Country, all the fun rides are fast, and bumpy, and scary, and make us barf or pee, but that is part of what makes them fun. Sometimes we just have to take a moment and remember to enjoy them while they’re happening, because all rides eventually come to an end.

Cheers,
Arvada Luke

Hey guys, please help talk me off the cliff here. I currently have plans to go to the Sofi game and then come to Denver for the Jets game. I haven’t booked the game tickets yet, but have everything else. At this point I am strongly considering canceling though. Would be real excited to meet you all and hang out at the bar, but this is already feeling like another lost season! Losing Javonte just makes me feel sick, and I just can’t stand Melvin Gordon! It’s so painful for me to constantly watch him destroy the chances of this team I love so much! This is why my only offseason wish list after getting Russ was just to not have Gordon resigned! I truly believe if he wasn’t, our Broncos would be 4-0! He has fumbled 5 times in his last 44 touches! That’s a fumble every 8.8 touches! Rewatching these games it doesn’t even appear that the defenses are putting effort into stripping the ball from him. It just turns into a pinball in his arms when he is hit. Drives me crazy! So should I save the money and hope we actually are competitive next year or come anyway?

Was really hoping I wasn’t going to have to drop this knowledge this season, but:

When people refer to a “knee scope” they aren’t referring to just poking a camera in. Scope is shorthand for arthroscopic surgery (If Zac is reading this, sorry for the tongue twister).

Joint surgeries are done by making as small and as few of holes as possible, to get a few instruments (one of which being a camera, aka scope) into the surgical site. It is really undesirable from a medical perspective to do anything more than the bare minimum on joints because it is SUPER hard for the body to repair damage to joint capsules.

In fact, it is often better from a recovery perspective to break a bone than have anything go on in joints or with tendons, because of blood supply. Blood has all the goodies that helps the body heal, and bones are literally where blood is made. Joints on the other hand are very enclosed and are not exposed to blood. The fluid in joints is essentially just a lubricant fluid with relatively little in the way of healing factors. We see this demonstrated in how long it takes to come back from a broken bone vs an ACL in football.

Unfortunately, no amount of adaptogens will speed things along for Pookie, in all likelihood, but they might help Broncos Country adapt to the adversity.

Not that kind of doctor, I just play one on TV,
A.L.