NFL:  WEEK 10 RESULTS; BRONCOS, PANTHERS // NBA:  WINNERS, LOSERS; DENVER NUGGETS vs. MIAMI HEAT.

For more analysis, go to Mile High Sports Radio AM1510 or FM93.7, and to Denver’s best sports blogging team, milehighsports.com

“SPORTS NOTEBOOK” will continue to post its columns Tuesday and Friday of each week---Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone.

NFL:    NO longer is the current NFL season led by a franchise waving the flag of a perfect record, for the NFL National Conference South’s Atlanta Falcons are now 8-1, having lost to the New Orleans Saints (NC South), Sunday, November 11, a day when five of the eight division-leading franchises could boast two or more wins over second place teams.

Facing NFL Week 11, the Falcons are three up from 5-4 Tampa Bay (NC South), while ahead by two games are the 6-3 Denver Broncos (American Conference West), the 6-1 New England Patriots (AC East), the 8-1 Houston Texans (AC South), and the 6-4 New York Giants (NC East).

Threatened by the 1GB second place teams are the 7-2 Baltimore Ravens (AC North), chased by the 6-3 Pittsburgh Steelers (AC North), the 6-2 San Francisco 49ers (NC West) by the 6-4 Seattle Seahawks (NC West), and the 7-2 Chicago Bears (NC North) by the 6-3 Green Bay Packers (NC North).

Only one division third place franchise has more than four wins, the 6-4 Minnesota Vikings (NC North), and only one last place division team has four wins, the 4-5 Detroit Lions (NC North).

Still at the very bottom of the pile are the 1-8 Kansas City Chiefs (AC West), the 1-8 Jacksonville Jaguars (AC South), and the 2-7 Cleveland Browns (AC North) and the 2-7 Carolina Panthers (NC South).

As predicted, the playing field for upper echelon teams has leveled some, and the gap between top and bottom has widened. Yet the largest collective of teams within the NFL as Week 11 approaches consists of eight franchises with but four wins, and four with only three wins, which portrays the league’s mean average franchise as roughly a 4-6 organization, "which advises that the NFL competing against another league of similar size today would be approaching Week 11 as a losing enterprise."

As for a take on potential dark horses, thus a broad shift in the league’s standings, such could occur for the now 4-5 New Orleans Saints and the 6-3 Indianapolis Colts, teams that have risen swiftly from their bad season starts and seem to be coalescing for balanced offense/defense surprises within their schedules of only three of seven remaining challenges capable of causing them grief.

Broncos vs. Panthers.  The Broncos 36-14 win over the Panthers on Sunday reflected a value that the Denver franchise has needed to know could exist by the current NFL season’s final set of games and possibly maintain, “Consistency of positive attributes displayed across the board,” in effect, the team being able to stay at a high level of play within the offense, the defense and among special teams, starting from kickoff until endgame, “game after game.” If this value continues, we could see the Broncos vying for that Super Bowl billet.

In other words, the Broncos win vs. the Panthers wasn’t a fourth quarter leap ahead, as were previous Broncos wins, the Broncos making a comeback after failing to score well in previous periods, as if quarterback Peyton Manning needed to be behind in order to thrust forward and prevail by two or three points after the two minute warning. Against the Panthers, the Broncos scored during each quarter, one of its touchdowns a kick return event, two others from intercepts.

The Denver win wasn’t a mostly Manning event, it was a full team activity, and though the Panthers are but a 2-7 franchise it wasn’t an easy victory. The Panthers QB Cam Newton threw for more than 240 yards, his offense achieved more first downs than the Broncos had, and the Panthers possessed the football longer than the Broncos were able to, and Newton completed passes to Wide Receiver Greg Olsen for two TD’s.

Still, Broncos QB Manning completed 27 of 38 passes, throwing for a total of 301 yards, most of his drives reaching TD and field goal range, enough for a WR Brandon Stokley TD and Matt Prater’s kick expertise.

Noteworthy is that the Broncos average gain in yards per pass play vs. the Panthers was 7.5, and gains per rush, 3.0 yards. Should this be a norm for the Broncos in the games left for them to play, they can reach the team’s 12-4 end-of- season goal and ease into post-season play. Next up for the Broncos—the San Diego Chargers, now 2GB Denver within the AC West, a win for Denver to maintain a commanding division lead.

NBA:   IT’s only been six to eight games gone for most of the NBA’s 30 teams, and here and there it’s starting to look almost like the last few of the past NBA season, with the 6-2 Oklahoma City Thunder leading the Western Conference’s Northwest Division, the 6-1 San Antonio Spurs now atop the WC’s Southwest Division, the 5-2 L.A. Clippers numero uno of the WC’s Pacific Division, and the 3-4 L.A. Lakers closing on them while awaiting a new coach, leaping up from the team’s bad start.

And within the Eastern Conference, the 4-0 New York Knicks are leading the Atlantic Division, the 6-2 Miami Heat the EC’s Southeast Division. Big differences from the last days of the 2011/12 season include the 4-3 Boston Celtics, fourth place within the EC’s Atlantic Division, and the 4-4 Dallas Mavericks, fourth within the WC’s SW Division.

Of course, as many as eight games played is nowhere near enough to determine which NBA teams will be out front by the 2013 All Star break and then afterward, though an 0-8 and 0-5 record is fair indication of teams that will be struggling to find their way past .500, as it seems now for the Detroit Pistons and the Washington Wizards respectively. But then, more than half of the NBA franchises are today below .500, and only one team has a perfect record---the N.Y. Knicks are a 1,000 team, not having lost a game yet. Comparisons show that the next best teams are far behind the Knicks when it comes to overarching win/loss averaging, the Thunder, the Spurs and the Heat, with their six wins apiece.

Denver Nuggets.  Right now, the Nuggets are among eight NBA franchises with four wins, and they are a .500 team having lost four. We could argue safely that compared with the Thunder, the Knicks and the Heat, and bunched in with the seven other teams near or at the .500 mark, the Nuggets reflect the total capabilities of the entire NBA. In other words, when it comes to numerical tallies, the Nuggets are a mean average middle-of-the-pack franchise, a team that can win four straight, which they just have, and then lose a few, barely squeezing into a post-season, gone after the first or second round. But there is something else about the Nuggets, and it’s that which causes them to stand apart, to be different than many other NBA franchises, “head coach George Karl’s insistence on a playbook that’s liberal,” on strategies and tactics that primarily allow for broad adjustments based on each challenging team’s capabilities and limitations and on situational factors, i.e., those critical floor factors that appear within the moment. Karl’s players train perhaps more than others to expect the unexpected, but also to minimize the appearance of the unexpected with rehearsed but flexible schemes, and this demands “hardwood trust,” players habituated to teamwork and avoiding temptations to always serve the basketball to a particular guard or forward who is perhaps the better shooter. Karl doesn’t care for complete implementation of the star player strategy, he sees flaws in the two or three players dominating a game minute-after-minute, which is why Thursday’s Nuggets vs. Heat game will be interesting to watch for more than the fast breaks, the pick-and-roll and bucketed balls. The contest will be between two distinct styles, the adherence to speed and teamwork that leaves space and time for improvisations (Nuggets) vs. a star game’s mostly pre-set, yes, hard-to-detect plays. As to which style is best, we may never know for sure, though the Heat has made theirs work more often than not. Yet Karl probably wouldn’t want a team any different than the team that won four straight this month---about a Nuggets team like the 0-3 starters that appeared earlier in the season, well, that’s another story.

END/ml