NFL: THE BRONCOS & SEAHAWKS, THEIR RACE TO THE FINISH LINE // YES, WE'RE SERIOUS, "THE RETURN OF ROLLER DERBY."

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: THE BRONCOS & SEAHAWKS, THEIR RACE TO THE FINISH LINE // YES, WE’RE SERIOUS, “THE RETURN OF ROLLER DERBY!” . . . NFL---FORGET the NFL pre-season, it was disconnects from a true ranking of the league’s 32 teams. All 32 were behind starting gates, the result entertainment and a trimming of the roster trees. The real thing kicks in on Thursday night, Seahawks versus the Packers. The lion’s share of NFL franchises will follow with games on Sunday, and Monday night will include a Chargers/Cardinals match. On Sunday, the Denver Broncos, last season’s AFC championship team that lost to the Seahawk’s at February’s Super Bowl, will be challenged by the Indianapolis Colts. Presently, and as written and spoken of, pundits have the Broncos and Seahawks returning to the 2014/15 Super Bowl from records similar to those that the two teams achieved last year, and pundits have argued that the Colts and the Packers could be teams getting in their way. Will this week’s outcomes begin to underscore this prediction that is being tagged as conventional wisdom? The upside for the Broncos leans in that direction, though no team that has lost a Super Bowl has returned the following year to win it since the Dolphins pulled it off in 1977 (Yikes! 37 years ago). From 2011 on, this team has, under head coach, John Fox, finished a regular season nicely above .500---eight, 13 and 13. Fox’s 107/85 win/loss record is impressive enough to suggest his steerage of the Broncos to another conference championship and a Super Bowl berth. Broncos QB Peyton Manning, well, he’s Peyton Manning, 2013’s MVP (fifth time for this), largely from his 55 touchdown passes. If there’s an offense downside, it’s slight. WR Eric Decker has gone to the N.Y. Jets and his highly regarded replacement, Emmanuel Sanders, will be for regular season plays regarding the QB-receiver links that Manning prefers, that fast spreading outward of multiple receiver options and sudden turns inward for line-of-sight throws, the effective “redirect.” But the possible uneasiness and awkwardness that can exist in a first time NFL regular season dual effort can be offset easily by seasoned Broncos receiver, Demaryius Thomas, and tight end, Julius Thomas. The same came be said for new Broncos WR, Cody Latimer, and re. Montee Ball replacing RB Knowshon Moreno. Ball will be relied upon greatly for those TD rushes from within the red zone. Of course, much will ride on the already demonstrated competence shown by the Broncos pass protection unit, key to Manning’s success when the Broncos are up against a franchise that can boast of owning the NFL’s more dynamic pass rush (read: Seahawks). As for the Broncos defense, on paper it’s much improved with regard to speed of thrust and fast readings of opposition tactics. Credit is expected to go to Von Miller once more re. the pass rush, and will likely be matched re. number of sacks by free agent from the Cowboys, the experienced D.E. DeMarcus Ware. In training, the Broncos defense line has seemed closer to seamlessness and power than in the past three years. . . On Sunday, the Broncos will begin their season vs. a Colts team led again by HC, Chuck Pagano, and QB, Andrew Luck, who pulled the Colts back from a pathetic 2/14 finish for year 2011 (the season that QB Peyton Manning was unable to QB the Colts due to a neck injury). Subsequent finishes were 11/5 (2012) and 11/5 (2013). Presently, Luck holds the record for more yards completed by a QB in his first two years as an NFL QB, yet was sacked more than 70 times during 2013 (Not entirely Luck’s fault, the Colts offense has needed faster and stronger pass protection). Meanwhile, Colts receivers Reggie Wayne, T.Y. Hilton and Hakeem Nicks, and TE, Dwayne Allen, are above the margin and can enact the right timing and positioning for the Luck throw, as can Colt’s RB Trent Richardson for the short pass and handoff. Regarding defense, last season the Colts D was ranked back end, 26th, a standing difficult to climb up from significantly in a single year, but like the Broncos the Colts used the off-season to beef up the D, less so with new personnel and more from reliance on top pass rusher, Robert Mathis, and cornerback, Vontae Davis. A safe bet is that the Broncos will overtake the Colts from the more canny QB Manning enacting economy of drives into the red zone and an offensive line freeing an RB (M. Ball?) for the TD rush. . . SEAHAWKS & PACKERS--- MOST military commanders will tell you that a very good offense can defeat the very good defense because the good offense initiates the battle with mobility and can sustain that initiative from having decoded the defense, knowing its vulnerabilities. The very good defense has to steal that initiative and convert to the offense quickly, if it is to win the battle. Football is similar, and the Seahawks were that very good defense at last February’s Super Bowl when it defeated the not up to its best Broncos, also having the good fortune to have an offense versus a less good Broncos defense. In fact, the Seahawks led primarily from the D throughout the 2013 season, and rarely failed having a very good offense, led afield by QB Russell Wilson, supported by the more than competent receiver, Percy Harvin. But the best defense is eventually de-coded, though it may take a few seasons for this to happen, and more if you can’t tell if the defense is playbook dominant, that is, if it is an almost by the numbers exercise, or if it is mostly improvisational under few but proper guidelines. Right now, the Broncos and other teams know some of the code, it’s how the code is configured for action that confuses---you only have to observe Seahawks cornerback, Richard Sherman, to get it that there’s mystery to the Seahawks defense (How’d he know to get there?”), but there’s a full season of watching the Seahawks. Nor have the Packers broken the Seahawks defense code, the Packers are anyway for the offense-dominant game as long as they can read a defense well enough for a passing-dominant offense to occur enough times to add points on the board, which Packers QB Aaron Rodgers can pull off most weeks with fast and skilled receivers like Jordy Nelson and Randall Cobb, Rodgers hoping this year to outsmart defense-dominant teams like the Seahawks with unexpected receiver routes and wide angle passing, also via better pass protection and increased post-flip speed, distrusting the rush when up against a defense such as that of the Seahawks. If the Seahawks defense is comparable to that of last season’s Super Bowl, on Thursday the Packers will probably be staying behind from first period on. . . ROLLER DERBY---THIS was once akin to TV wrestling, more like a circus act, and brutal. People watched it regularly on TV in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, and maybe it was the violence of the Vietnam War seen on TV screens that supplanted Roller Derby hair pulling, jabs to the jaw and teeth, the elbows to the groin---the sport disappeared from general viewing faster than the clunky Stallone pics of recent years. Does a Roller Derby revival make sense, should it shift from its current fourth echelon sports membership today, to perhaps second tier, in other words, from maybe where midgets play water polo to, well, up to where American soccer was around twenty years ago, an again up-and-coming sport? Heck, yes, now that Roller Derby has transformed, now that it has dropped all of the phoniness and unnecessary violence of years past and also updated rules to become competition worth watching. After seeing a Roller Derby team from Portland, Oregon, and a team from Denver, Colorado, execute skating and defense and offense skills superbly during a Sunday match held at Denver, Colorado, we decided on more RD reports for this page about its transformation, starting with how the game now works, its goals, required skills and maneuvers. END/ml