The roller coaster season of 2011 is finally over for the Denver Broncos, and Tebowmania will now hopefully take a break for some months. If anything, the loss to the New England Patriots showed the Broncos just how much work they had to do to get to their level.
Defense
They got very little pressure on Tom Brady last night, who got the ball out of his hands pretty quickly. They only hit him twice, and never sacked him. They also only got two tackles for loss. If you can't hit Brady a lot more often, he will do just what he did last night. The defensive tackles have got to be upgraded, and the depth overall in the front seven must improve.
The Broncos just don't have a defensive answer for Gronkowski, who is one of the biggest, most athletic tight ends that they will see. Not having Dawkins hurt, but I'm not sure how much he could have done. The Broncos need to get better in the secondary, specifically at safety. If they could find another excellent corner, perhaps they could move Champ to safety. He was isolated out of the game last night, with anyone he wasn't covering having a big game. When your best defensive player is pretty much out of every play by design of the other team, you have a problem.
Offense
The offensive line needs to get better and get more depth. They were primarily responsible for the five sacks and the 10 tackles for loss that the Patriots (worst defense in the NFL) got. How can you explain nose tackle Gerald Warren charging through the line untouched to grab Tebow two seconds after the snap?
Broncos need more wide receiver depth, and a better option at tight end. I know a lot of it was Tebow, as an incomplete and inexperienced quarterback, constantly looked only at Demaryius Thomas as a receiver, but we need to upgrade speed and size.
At quarterback...oh, where to start. Tebow clearly has a great deal of work to do. I'd give him a couple weeks off to heal, bring him back and go over every single play of the season first with him. Then I'd spend several weeks simply drilling him on footwork and technique. After that, he should spend weeks working with receivers knowing exactly when you can pull the trigger. Tebow simply doesn't seem to trust that the half-step the receiver has on his defender is enough of a space to toss the ball.
In any case, no matter how hard Tebow works in the off-season, the Broncos need to bring in a few more quarterbacks. I believe Brady Quinn will be gone, primarily because he knows he's never going to get a shot in Denver. You're gonna need a veteran, and you're going to need to draft another guy. Now, the key here is that the veteran needs to be capable of playing right away, and the rookie needs to be taken high enough that he could have the skills to supplant Tebow if needed.
I dislike the idea that Tebow needs the quarterback competition in order to improve. If that's his case, he's going to suck most of his career. You have to be able to motivate yourself enough to succeed. Tebow knows that, but there's some switch in his brain that has a hard time flipping until he really, really needs it. He needs to figure out how to flip it a lot faster.
Ultimately, it's going to be a very busy off-season in Dove Valley.
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