NFL: BRONCOS DEFEAT OF THE COLTS // THE RAY RICE EPISODE

sports-notebook.blogspot.com . . . 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: BRONCOS DEFEAT OF THE COLTS // THE RAY RICE EPISODE . . . IT was a near-perfect series of attacks with increasing momentum, that first half during which the Peyton Manning-led Denver Broncos offense put 24 points on the board over the Indianapolis Colts seven. At the end of the first period of that initial NFL-2014 regular season game for both teams, the Colts were zip, zero, Nada! The Broncos reconstructed defense looked like the punch that QB Manning needed last February at the Super Bowl, when the Seattle Seahawks gave their best lesson in NFL defense strategy and sent the Broncos packing. But in the second half of Sunday’s match, against a reinvigorated and smarter Andrew Luck-directed Colts offense the revised Broncos D was no longer seamless: QB Luck’s passes and improvised rushes raised the Colts numbers dramatically, still behind the Broncos at endgame, 31-24. In the game’s second half, the Broncos couldn’t surpass seven points, while the Colts put up 17. Humiliation denied, the Colts demonstrated to Broncos HC John Fox and QB Manning that linked to the team’s new defense strengths are vulnerabilities that could keep the Broncos from another conference championship and from a 2014/15 SB appearance, and surely a lesson for QB Manning was that his offense isn’t to where it could always offset weaknesses in a Broncos defense and win easily against an opposing team’s double-digit scoring. But---a win is a win, and the Broncos are 1-0 and second in the NFL as they head into Week Two to face the K.C. Chiefs on Sunday, then the Seahawks on September 21. If the Colts learned anything Sunday night, it had to be about its defense being unable to read an opposing offense quickly enough for handing that football to its offense early on, and on Sunday the Colts offense needed to seek a first down more conservatively, incrementally instead of via the extraordinary distance-grab via passing and the long run, this to achieve some game control and own more time to read an opposing defense correctly for red zone occupation. As for the Broncos second half, the big question is why the sudden lapse in quality of the D? One answer is QB Luck advantaging what he learned during the first and second quarters about the Broncos pass rush tactics and the Broncos deep and wide field coverage, notably cornerbacks spoiling crossover attempts for the Luck pass. Figuring out where the holes for a breakthrough will be is key to offense success, and that seems to be what Luck had going for him in the second half---in this context, Luck became Peyton Manning. And probably contributing to the Broncos defense losing seamlessness were downward spirals in speed and within the intuitiveness that puts defenders between a football and chosen receivers. By endgame, the Colts had accrued as many first downs as the Broncos—24. Luck passed for 370 yards and two TD’s, Manning for 269 but for three TD’s . . . RICE EPISODE---TAKE morality out of a sport and there’s sudden suspicion that what’s been good will unravel, that from around the corner will be rot and stink. Abuse of a child, wife or girl friend are behaviors that no sports team, no league commissioner, should ever tolerate. Yes, the perpetrator of such conduct may need therapy, rehab, he may deserve a second chance at some later point in his life, but for the moment the football player, Ray Rice, is the dog with rabies that cannot be allowed in the village. Unfortunately, there isn’t an honor code in the NFL that encourages a wrongdoer to ‘fess up and resign from his job. That the NFL has dumped Rice after release of a video showing him beating up his fiancé is appropriate and should be the standard NFL response whenever a member is discovered to have abused another person unlawfully. But accusations of the Rice firing taking too long, of some tolerance of Rice’s violent action lasting for many months, of a mere two game suspension, such is cause for alarm and certainly needs looking into and fixing. END/ml.