C.J. Anderson's harshest coach isn't on the Broncos' staff

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ENGLEWOOD, Colo – The Denver Broncos coaching staff is certainly not soft. Spend a couple days at training camp and you’ll quickly learn they are a no-nonsense bunch. If it’s not head coach Gary Kubiak getting on his team for inconsistent effort, it’s position coaches lashing players when they don’t like what they see.

Broncos running back C.J. Anderson appreciates constructive criticism, he often says you have to focus on the negatives rather than resting on the positives. On Wednesday afternoon, when Anderson was asked how he manages to not get caught up in positive hype, he talked about one of his hard-nosed coaches, a coach that has known C.J. far longer than anyone in the Broncos’ organization. A coach by the name of Neva Craig.

“My mother,” he said with a laugh. “You should hear my mom after games, one day I’m going to record the conversation. That’s how you know what’s going on. That, and I’ve got a bunch of family and friends who’s been watching me play since I was very young so they always let me know what I could’ve done better and what I could have done better to help the team in certain situations. It’s good to have that background football family that I have.”

So what exactly does she say?

“I’m not going to tell you that because it’s not all rated PG for kids,” Anderson said.

It’s not always football criticism from Craig, last season she told C.J. he didn’t look happy enough. On Thursday night, as Anderson amassed 139 total yards and two touchdowns, he passed the smile test, but that was far from enough.

“She definitely said on a couple runs I should have went here or I should have went there which is true,” he said, slightly amazed. “When you watch the tape, I don’t know how she sees it when it’s live TV, but she’s been doing this with my older brother for a very long time and now through me, she’s been around the game for a while.”

It was one of the best games of his NFL career, but even when he was tearing up defenses on his way to a 4,000-yard career at Bethel High School in California, C.J. has never had a perfect game in mom’s eyes.

“Oh no. The coaches haven’t even given me a game where they said I did everything right and it was great,” Anderson said, implying even if his coaches said it was perfect she would find something.

“That’s the goal, though,” he concluded. “If I can get one day where my mom says, ‘Hey, you were 100-percent on my sheet,’ I might retire.”

Apparently, Broncos fans will simply have to cheer for more near-perfect performances.