Roche: Thoughts From Denver On AFC Championship Game
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (CBS) - Day one of practice officially in the books for the Denver Broncos at their Training facility here in Englewood, Colorado. Certainly a beautiful area with lots of room for the Broncos for a training complex - complete with indoor and outdoor facilities.
Here's a few quick thoughts and observations as we get closer to Sunday's AFC Championship game:
--No matter what you read back home, out here, or nationally....can't really see the so-called trash talk of early in the week being that big of a deal. Antonio Smith was basically saying that Tom Brady does what any great competitor would do....he gets hit....yells at the ref to call it...and then moves on. Smith has a good deal of respect for Brady - you can see and hear it when he speaks of him. Now one can certainly argue that you should say - zero, nothing - but it wasn't a big deal to me. As for taking out Gronk by the knees? We've heard that time and time again. Even in listening to players here - they are perplexed as to how to bring him down because he's so big. Also, more than one player was amused by Gronk's Twitter response back. But - they all said bottom line....means nothing come Sunday.
Manning on Brady: "plays the position the way it's supposed to be played." - #Patriots #wbz #AFCChampionship pic.twitter.com/TMO2LjhN1U
— Dan Roche (@RochieWBZ) January 20, 2016
--Strange to watch Peyton Manning and think this is his 17th and final battle coming up with Tom Brady. As we know, if he has to win the game for Denver....don't see that happening. If you look at where the Pats are banged up (linebacker)....pretty easy to guess that Denver will run the ball (as they did to the tune if 179 yard and 3 TD's in first meeting) with CJ Anderson and Ronnie Hillman and have Peyton throw off of that. If it were me, I would start Brock Osweiler. But then again, if Manning falters then you have a good player coming off the bench.
Snapped this beauty of former #Patriot CB Aqib Talib at #Broncos practice Wednesday - #AFCChampionship @MikeGiardi pic.twitter.com/Z7UBTWqksw
— Dan Roche (@RochieWBZ) January 20, 2016
--The Broncos have everyone on the field and healthy according to HC Gary Kubiak. The biggest question mark is CB Chris Harris, Jr, who has a shoulder injury and basically played as much as he could vs Pittsburgh - with one arm. Kubiak said Harris was doing better this week heading into the game than he was last week. That will be something to keep an eye on because you talk to media folks out here and they all think the biggest problem the Broncos have going into the game is Brady vs the secondary.
--Nice of the Broncos PR staff to feed us out here Wednesday. For lunch we had......drumroll please......Papa John's pizza! Shocker with Peyton Manning as their spokesperson.
--Looking forward to Sunday...and WBZ has you covered. We have a special live All-Access Saturday night at 7pm from here in Denver. Sunday, we start with Patriots Gameday from Noon to 2pm...NFL Today from 2-3pm.....then the AFC Championship game at 3pm....and our 5th a Quarter post game show on MyTV38 right after the game. The weather is supposed to be fine.