Originally posted by ckparrothead
BTW there's no truth to the statement that the Denver offense ran perfectly in 2000 when Griese got injured.
Gus Frerotte stepped in for Griese and threw 59% with 238 attempts and 1776 yards, with 9 TDs and 8 INTs. His QB rating was 82. Overall the performance, forgive me for saying this, looked very Fiedler-esque. Good, but not excellent....which is what Griese's numbers were that season, excellent.
The season that Griese catches the most flack for, even by people that dont realize that they are giving him flack for this particular reason, is 2001. Cuz since his sophomore season when he was tossed into the fire to replace Elway, Griese had a 19/4 TD/INT ratio in 2000 with like 270 yards per game average. And in 2002 he had a QB rating of 85.6 which, you guessed it, is a shade higher than Fiedler's QB rating this year..
But in 2001, he had a rating of 78.5 with 23 TDs and 19 INTs but only 188 yards per game with a pretty poor 6.3 ypa. Why? I'll tell you why. Take a guess who their receivers were that season. Easy Ed McCaffrey went down right at the start, and Shanny was caught with his pants down in terms of WR depth. The WRs who attempted to replace Ed were KaRon Coleman, and Chris Cole I believe. And probably toss in one more scrubalicious guy like Scott Montgomery or John Capel or someone like that anyway. We're talking here about the reason Ashley Lelie was drafted by the Broncos in 2002.
I guess this wasn't a good year to say goodbye in the offseason to Griese's safety valve Shannon Sharpe after all.
The passing game was a mess. I remember this year well. Rod Smith was being so over-used it was ridiculous and he kept battling injuries throughout the year that limited him, or outright held him out of games. And teams knew they could basically double team Rod Smith and get away with having like half a cornerback on whatever scrub got the chance to start that particular week.
I saw their offense in operation more than a couple of times that year and let me tell you what it consisted of. Rod Smith, Rod Smith, Tight End, Tight End, Tight End. Rod Smith had a whopping 113 grabs, and folks, he's no Marvin Harrison...Desmond Clark had 51 grabs, Dwayne Carswell had 34 grabs, Patrick Hape had 15 grabs. Yes thats 100 passes to the TEs, and 113 passes to one receiver. Griese only completed 275 passes.
So its pretty obvious why his yards per game and yards per attempt were really really low that year, dragging his QB rating way down even though he had a 23/19 TD to INT ratio which is better than a lot of QBs. Oh yeah, and the running game, not hot that year...as Anderson, Gary, and TD all shared time....prompting Shanny to draft Portis. Offensive line was also not like it was in 2000.
This year? He completed 2/3rds of his passes, had over 3200 yards in 13 games, 15 TDs and 15 INTs with a 7.4 yard per attempt...his yards per game popped back up to 247 yards. Easy Ed was nothing like he was in 2000, their best TE was Dwayne Carswell, and Trey Teague was guarding Griese's blindside so well that they told him not to let the door hit him in the @ss on the way out...and then went ahead and drafted a LT in round 1 about 10 spots ahead of where everyone thought he was going to go. Beurlein by the way came in for Griese and had DECIDEDLY worst numbers.
Griese's being benched, and being kicked out of Denver, has everything to do with what his teammates and coaches think of him from off-field incidents, and very little to do with his on-field talent.
So keep this all in mind next time you want to take the easy route and say "Griese failed in Denver where he had a lot more weapons than he'll have anywhere else" Because, lets be honest now, its just not true if you really look at it.
