There's A Mouse In My Pants!

That doesn't have anything to do with anything. I just wanted to use that picture. Remember last week, when I said that the Broncos just aren't that good? Sometimes I hate being right.

BIG MONEY:

• Brandon Marshall. This list really should begin and end here. I'm not yet ready to anoint Marshall as the first decent receiver of the Mike Shanahan era, but he can already do things that Lelie never could, like "run routes" and "catch ball." A great effort, and hopefully his coming out party.
• Jay Cutler. Nothing mind blowing, but I thought he managed the game pretty efficiently, at least to the extent the game plan allowed. Jacksonville routinely swung Reggie Nelson to Javon Walker's side, which more or less eliminated his effectiveness, but Cutler forced things less than usual. He's still going to make some (wince) Favre-like throws, both good and bad.
• Elvis Dumervil. 4 tackles and 2 sacks, including one that forced a fumble.
• Nick Ferguson. Weird, huh? But he tallied 9 tackles and a huge fumble recovery, so for now he's not a whammy! It's not exactly ideal that our leading tackler comes from the secondary, but that's not really his fault. That said- I don't expect to see him back in this space much.

WHAMMIES OF THE WEEK:

• Daniel Graham. Since day one, I've been preaching to get the ball to your money guys in money situations. for once, we did that, and Graham dropped the ball, plain and simple. He's had little to no impact in the passing game thus far, but there's no excuse.
• Mike Shanahan. Challenged Hixon's fumble on a completely unwinable challenge (I'm not even arguing that the call was right or wrong. the fact is, there was zero percent chance that the call gets overturned). Shanahan has always had a penchant for doing this, whether it be something like this, or challenging the spot of the ball when it's still 3rd and 3. Then Denver came out on 4th down at the goal line, out of a time out, and ran a... QB sneak? Jacksonville has a huge front line, even without John Henderson. Denver has a quick offensive line. We responded by running into the teeth of that line with a QB. Brilliant. Once again, Shanahan was pretty much outcoached.
• Domenik Hixon. Man does this guy suck. He sucked before, when all he did is run in a straight line and get tackled at the 23, but now he's fumbling as well. Shanahan always drafts guys like this at receiver- small college guys who are around 6-2. He does it because he doesn't think the little guys can block in the run game. At least he still better than Darius Watts! Would it really hurt to throw a tryout at a guy like Jeremy Bloom for a week? give him the Stephen Alexander Memorial Rotating Roster Spot and see what happens. I doubt it could be much worse.

STOP!

You'll notice that I didn't rip into Shanahan for the 4th and 5 call. I actually kind of liked it. Graham should have caught the ball, we didn't have any timeouts, and our run defense was getting shredded by Taylor and Garrard. Given the circumstances, I didn't really see a downside.