Denver Broncos: Peyton Manning to Face his Biggest Foe

Sunday’s AFC title game is being billed as “Peyton Manning vs. Tom Brady, Part 17”. It’s a pretty simple goal, that will be extremely hard to accomplish.

If the Broncos run the football and don’t give it to Brady and his offense, they will win on Sunday. But these are the Denver Broncos and New England Patriots – two franchises built to overcome problems. We love the narrative, but the narrative is just a story.

Belichick focused on stopping the run at practice all week, with padded practice.

The Broncos allowed just 199.6 passing yards per game. “The reason I love Peyton Manning is because he doesn’t have the luxuries that Tom Brady has”. This isn’t the old Manning who could put a team on his back.

A case can be made for Denver, with the No. 1 defense in the National Football League, to stifle the Tom Brady-led offense and to slow the game down and control the clock.

The AFC Championship between the New England Patriots and the Denver Broncos continues to get the buzz as the two teams are just hours away for the monumental encounter. In this game, however, the stakes are much higher than they were last time, as the victor of this game will get a chance to compete in Super Bowl 50. While Belichick has instilled strong mindsets in all of his players, this will certainly be one of the greatest tests that they have faced so far this season. They’ll advance to the Super Bowl in a classic Brady-Manning duel.

It’s possible that Denver’s defensive line terrorizes the Patriots’ offensive line and forces several turnovers, in which case the Pats wouldn’t technically have beaten themselves, but would have lost because they were outplayed up front. Among those who have left for other teams after helping the Patriots to the Super Bowl: Randy Moss, Ty Law, Wes Welker, Asante Samuel, Adam Vinatieri. I’ve got a ton of respect for them. Denver’s defense may be less sexy than a superstar quarterback, but there are some killer players on that side of the ball that have won many games for this season. “As long as you try to be better and continue to try to improve, that’s usually when you play your best ball, so we’ve got to learn from the good things, the bad things and bring it over to this Denver game”. Peyton Manning was unspectacular last week completing 56.8 percent of his passes with no touchdowns and an interception.

Kubiak said Harris “had a really good week and I think he’s doing a lot better than he was going into last week’s game”.

Manning’s backup, Brock Osweiler, is outperforming him in all categories, as Osweiler ranks 28th (22.83), 22nd (0.08), and 13th (47.99%), respectively. I think that speaks for itself. That a “transition” year has the Broncos a game from the Super Bowl speaks to the roster he built.

The Panthers are favorites by a measly three points against the Cardinals, in their first meeting since the Panthers won their first-round playoff a year ago when the Cardinals were racked by injuries. “Hope we’re not one of them”.

Although the Patriots were not in the top 10 among defenses this year, they barely missed it, ranking 12th in Adjusted Defensive NEP (39.55).