Denver Broncos
Love: A Completely Terrifying Defense
The 2015 Broncos defense was so dominant and deadly, it might as well be a new species in the Australian outback. Where we last left things, Denver pulled off one of the biggest Super Bowl upsets in the modern era purely on the back of its widow-making defense. In the Broncos' final two games last season, Von Miller turned MVP Cam Newton and runner up Tom Brady into mere chum for contract negotiations with some help from DeMarcus Ware and a stingy secondary. The two best quarterbacks in the league were sacked a combined ten times and had QB ratings on par with Dallas third-stringer Kellen Moore. And it really shouldn't have been that surprising. Over the course of the 2015 season, the Broncos defense was first in yards allowed, pass defense and sacks; third against the run and in defensive touchdowns; and fourth in points allowed. All of this is impressive in its own right, but given how impotent and turnover-prone Denver's offense was last season, this defense was downright extraordinary in its overall impact in our very offense-friendly era. And that really shouldn't change much this next season given that the Broncos are slated to bring back Miller, Ware, Aqib Talib, Chris Harris, Derek Wolfe and T.J. Ward. Completely terrifying indeed.
There is certainly a chance that this won't be true for the Broncos. Assuming Von Miller's current holdout doesn't spill over into the regular season, Denver will be returning an entire core defense that has proven more than sufficient to win a championship on its own. And there's virtually no way even Mark Sanchez or rookie Paxton Lynch will be worse under center than the zombie of Peyton Manning was last year. But a lot still had to go right for Denver to get to the top last season that will be very hard to repeat. For one, their first two wins of the season were brought on with miracle last-minute fumbles by the Ravens and Chiefs, and it took overtime against the Browns, Patriots and Bengals to get three other wins. There was even a weird moment in December where the Broncos could have gone from a #1 seed to out of the playoffs altogether, and you have to think playing the Patriots at Mile High helped out a whole lot in that down-to-the-wire AFC Championship. What's more, Denver's defensive stars got healthy and hot at just the right time. Who knows whether Demarcus Ware and Aqib Talib will be able to keep sustaining a top level of performance for much longer at this point in their careers? And if Miller gets paid the way he wants to (and deserves), Denver might have to cut ties with a key player or two to make room. So if it's still better to be lucky than good, the Broncos might have cashed in more than their fair share of luck for a few years to come.
Kansas City Chiefs
Love: The Rise of Marcus PetersWith a defensive cast that includes Eric Berry, Tamba Hali, Justin Houston, Dee Ford and Dontari Poe, it's hard to make a name for yourself in Kansas City, especially as a rookie. But then out of nowhere came cornerback Marcus Peters last season. The Chiefs took him in the first round in 2015, so clearly they saw potential, but who would have guessed he would end his first year with a league-leading eight interceptions, two defensive touchdowns, a Pro Bowl selection and second-team All Pro honors? He even contributed to one of the last Manning faces we'll ever see. With a resume like that, quarterbacks won't be picking on Peters nearly as much as they did when he was an unknown quantity, but that's a rich person's problem. Richard Sherman can relate.
Going into the divisional round against the Patriots, you would have thought Andy Reid might have had a flashback to the last time he should have gone no-huddle against this team in 2005. Or maybe pay attention to the literal thousands of internet memes about his terrible clock management that have arisen since that time. But instead, we were treated to another leisurely walk through the rose garden while the clock was winding down, the Chiefs' chances at an AFC Championship bid withering away like sand through an hourglass. Down by 14 points with six minutes to go, Reid dialed up a barn-burner of a 17-play, five-minute drive where the Chiefs spent six plays and 90 seconds inside the five-yardline. Yes, there were huddles involved. It's truly maddening that in the past twenty years, no one has figured out how to lure Reid away from his headset during the last two minutes of a game. It's like this big piece of spinach in his teeth that the entire world can see but we all just let it hang there on that incisor. Can this seemingly obvious problem ever be solved? Only time will tell... which in Andy Reid's case means "no."
Oakland Raiders
Love: Legit Dark Horse PotentialFor the first time since I started this blog, I can genuinely say the stars might just be aligning for the Oakland Raiders this season. They've got three young and very productive offensive workhorses in Derek Carr, Amari Cooper and Latavius Murray. And they've got an All Pro franchise stud in Khalil Mack, who put up five sacks in a single game last year - for the record, that's only been done 15 times since sacks have been tracked. With reasons to believe Denver could take a step back this year and some question marks for the Chiefs and Chargers, the Raiders may just be the next true heirs to the AFC West. Given that they haven't won the division, gone to the playoffs or even had a winning record in 13 years, it feels like the silver and black are due for a ride on the dark horse. If these young budding stars stay on their current trajectory, we might just be witnessing a changing of the guard that seemed laughable two years ago.
Fear this: If the Raiders end up being as good as they're projecting, expect Mark Davis to take a page from his Bay Area colleague Joe Lacob and give himself a big, undeserving public pat on the back for being such a franchise owner genius. Just as Lacob fell backwards into drafting Steph Curry and found a crazy salary cap glitch in the matrix for Kevin Durant, Mark Davis' Raiders have been bad enough for long enough to draft three seriously promising franchise stars. Even a broken clock that takes Jamarcus Russell #1 overall is right once in a while. Anyway, I'm still in the camp that the Black Hole faithful deserve a little good fortune now and then, but I'm not looking forward to seeing this smug Tommy Boy grin in the luxury box if the Raiders rattle off 10+ wins this season.
San Diego Chargers
Love: (Likely) Nowhere to Go But UpAnd now for the flip side of the Broncos' situation, which actually isn't all that different from what I said about the Ravens last week. After it seemed like Mike McCoy had figured some things out with this team during a respectable 9 - 7 run in 2014, the Chargers plummeted to a miserable four-win season last year. Eight of those losses were by one possession, and San Diego got hit particularly hard by the injury bug throughout the year with Philip Rivers being reduced to throwing to Stevie Johnson and Dontrelle Inman by December. There was even an overtime game against the Raiders where WR Inman had to play safety because San Diego's secondary was so decimated. At the risk of a major jinx, that's a run of bad luck that will be hard for the Chargers to repeat. Plus, they've done a lot of work in the offseason to shore up a generous defense with the newly drafted Joey Bosa and former Seahawk Brandon Mebane and stabilize an offensive line that I'm hoping gives Melvin Gordon a much better chance of breaking out this year. In my mind, San Diego's looking like one of those teams that is just as likely to win seven games this season as they are to win twelve. In either case, it's still better than four.
In a somewhat surprising move, the Rams and the Rams alone came out the winners of the Los Angeles sweepstakes this offseason, leaving the Raiders and Chargers in the dust... sort of. Chargers owner Dean Spanos has held San Diego hostage for years by threatening the city to pay up for a new stadium or lose the team, and now he has another "bargaining" chip at his disposal with the option to stay put or move in with the Rams after the 2016 season. Given how little interest Spanos had in negotiating anything with San Diego before he lost out on having his own stadium in L.A., you'd think he would just walk away from these burned bridges and sign that lease with Sam Kroenke up north. But instead, Spanos is now doubling down on trying to squeeze more public funding into a new SoCal stadium project despite getting $300 million directly from the NFL and being worth nearly a billion dollars himself. So loyal Chargers fans now have a dilemma that's about as appealing as the upcoming presidential election: forgo hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue to save their franchise despite this owner's utter disregard for them, or relive the agony of losing the team they already thought was gone for good after 2015.
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