NFL: The Pre-Season, OUCH!! // MLB: NL & AL, Comparisons; Colorado Rockies & That "Up-Down Escalator."

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 posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of each week. Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone; Copy & Mng. Ed., Gail Kleiner) . . . // . . . NFL---Pre-season NFL games can be a lot of things to a lot of different head coaches and key front office staff, and what no head coach or front office exec wants the pre-season to be is a series of humiliations + multiple injuries to players. For the most part, an embarrassing pre-season score is rare for most of the 32 NFL franchises, and nearly all of the hard bumps and tackles received by NFL players in the pre-season are forgotten immediately after contact. Still, that wide-apart scoring occurs for some teams, and some key players are injured. But---it’s the pre-season tactical lessons that begin haunting an NFL franchise more than anything else, along with the hard truth that good as a team thought that it was last season, or good as it thought it was at training camp, it is still vulnerable and that vulnerability could keep it from rising above a 7/9 regular season. In other words, there’s lots more work to accomplish prior to that first regular season event in September, and not a lot of time for it between pre-season games. Almost inevitable in the four-game NFL pre-season is that quarterback and wide receiver connectivity will be viewed to be “off” in seconds relative to distance between the two offense actors, and pass rush protection won’t have the quick response needed to allow that near-perfect QB sighting + adjustment for the necessary throw. And, fear of injury before September results often in hesitancy among many a running back and also among defense linemen; and, cornerbacks get it that they are still not in good enough shape to track down and neutralize every opposing receiver in their narrow and always moving sphere of influence. We see fumbles that should never have been, and punts of less angle and distance than preferred, and repeated third and fourth down attempts failing to put up points. And, fans as well as coaches and execs will be reminded that during a pre-season the differences in strength and skills between worst and best teams in the NFL aren’t as great as indicated by previous or even current stats, or as they will be by, say, game four or five of the regular season, which means that a franchise of fewer power-points can during the pre-season pound against and ridicule a team thought to be best among the best, as in last Saturday’s Seattle Seahawks vs. Denver Broncos game, the favored Broncos losing, 40-10. Those analysts arguing that injuries are much to blame for the Broncos poor showing, they have a valid case---LT Ryan Clady, TE Joel Dreesen, CB Champ Bailey, WR Wes Welker, DT Derek Wolfe and RG Louis Vasquez and RCB Dominique Rogers-Cromartie, all injured. Then there’s Broncos sack-master, Von Miller, and his off-the-field troubles---he may not be playing in the Broncos next five or six games. Moreover, pre-season is a window during which a number two QB can be tested, which at Seattle kept Broncos number one QB, Peyton Manning, from more minutes afield. Still, effective depth of personnel is within the Broncos organization, suggesting that the disparity in the 40-10 loss could have been much lower for the Broncos if only that second wave of players had more time coordinating with each other, not something that’s possible in a brief training period and during half the pre-season. Other wins re. game two of the current pre-season were Green Bay against St. Louis, 19-7; San Francisco vs. Kansas City, 15-13; Arizona over Dallas, 12-7; New England vs. Tampa Bay, 25-21; Buffalo vs. Minnesota, 20-16; New Orleans against Oakland, 28-20; Cincinnati vs. Tennessee, 27-19; N.Y. Jets against Jacksonville, 37-13; Houston vs. Miami, 24-17. Around half of these wins were predictable. Of some interest is that except for the Seahawks win over the Broncos, there were no scores of as wide a gap as was the 40-10 Seahawks take. Of the 17 other teams listed here, the N.Y. Jets/Jacksonville difference in points was highest---24, while no other game showed a difference greater than 12 points between winner and loser, nearly all of the games having a less than nine point difference. Too, all of the above cited teams scored one or more touchdowns. Could be that none of these franchises will be deep-sixing this year in an embarrassing way. . . // . . .MLB---INSIDE the National League Central, the St. Louis Cardinals are now one instead of two games behind first place team, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the NL East’s Atlanta Braves increased its lead over second place franchise, the Washington Nationals, to 16 games from 14 on Friday, while the NL West’s Los Angeles Dodgers lead over second place club, the Arizona Diamondbacks, remains seven games up. Within the American League, the AL Central’s number one team, the Detroit Tigers, are seven games ahead of number two, the Cleveland Indians, up from Friday’s six game lead. The Al East’s leading club, the Texas Rangers, are still one game ahead of number two team, the Oakland Athletics, and the AL West’s Boston Red Sox Friday lead of two over the Tampa Bay Rays is now one game up. . . Within the greater NL, Atlanta leads with 76 wins, Pittsburgh next with 72, third the Dodgers also with 72 wins but one more loss than experienced by the Pirates. No second place NL team has more wins than the NL’s third place team, the Cardinals---72/52 losses. Inside the AL, Boston leads with 73 wins, Detroit next with 73, but two more losses than the Red Sox have accrued; third, the Rangers---72 wins. No other team in the AL has more than the 71 wins belonging to Tampa Bay. . . Within both the NL and AL, Atlanta leads with its 76 wins, the Detroit Tigers next with its 73 wins, 51 losses, the Red Sox at Detroit’s heels with 73 wins, 52 losses. . . As to total number of wins among the three division leading clubs within each league, the difference is but three games, the NL ahead with 220 wins over the AL’s 217. Go to the middle, to third place teams within each division of each league, again the difference in total number of wins is slight, the NL with 186, the AL, 182. If there’s a pulling down of any significance it’s among last place teams within each division of both leagues, the NL total being 157, the AL’s 147. However, the AL’s worst total number of wins, and the worst number of wins re. both leagues is from the Houston Astros 41 wins, seven fewer than the next lowest, the NL West Miami Marlins total of 48 wins. . . A point to be taken here, then, is that the two leagues as competing aggregates are roughly equal, and that both leagues together are in proper enough balance . . . // . . . COLORADO ROCKIES---AGAINST the Philadelphia Phillies yesterday, the now 58-68 Colorado Rockies lost 5-4, and the day before they dropped to the Baltimore Orioles, 7-2, after losing to the Orioles on Saturday, 8-4, all this after a Rockies 6-3 win over the Orioles and before that wins vs. the Pittsburgh Pirates and the San Diego Padres. Signaled again is that the Rockies cannot win consistently enough to rise from third place in the NL West and compete from being fewer than, say, four games behind first place club, the 72-52 Los Angeles Dodgers. The Rockies are now 15 wins back of the Dodgers, and six behind second place team, the Arizona Diamondbacks, and only one win ahead of fourth place franchise, the Padres---this is the worst games-behind record among third place teams today within either league. Yet we’re not watching second rate baseball when we watch the Rockies. In spite of coming off two won series, that is, five wins of six games played plus an additional road win, going suddenly into successive losses, the Rockies anyway amassed a respectful number of runs, more than 15 since the team’s win over the Padres on August 14. The team hasn’t been without hits and runs in any of its losses since then; it just can’t seem to go all the way in enough games. And, it should be taken into account that, except for vs. the Boston Red Sox, the Rockies have won one or more games this season against current NL and AL division leading ball-clubs, three vs. the Pirates, two against the Dodgers, one vs. the Braves, and as of mid-August could boast of being a better than .500 franchise within its division, the NL West, 29 wins, 24 losses. Is this a sign of exaggerated optimism? Not so, this page believes that the Rockies can recover from losses and reach respectability before the MLB regular season ends, but not as a playoff-headed victor. END/ml