SB Nation User Blog: Claus Vestergaard

Am I the only one noticing that...

Claus Vestergaard — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:03:20 -0000

... the last touchdown of the Charger-game and the 2-pointer was the exact same play?! I haven't been able to find confirmation anywhere in the media. If thats true - the move to go for 2 goes from bold to absolutely I-N-S-A-N-E!

Check it out, and check if you agree... (obviously at the end of the clip).

The only difference i can see is that Eddie Pinetti (extra point for getting the reference in the comments - i don't know whether its hard at all over there) motions in from the left on the conversion-play.The formations are the same. Marshalls route is hard to tell - he runs it outside the picture, Stokely breaks an out-ish-route and Sheffler runs in somewhat a straight line - and of course Royal makes the catch in basically the same spot.

How to make an European blue and orange

Claus Vestergaard — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 19:48:27 -0000

Mike Clark asked me a question . He (for those who didn’t click the link) asked me how I became a fan of the Denver Broncos. I can see why my “story” could be interesting, being a soccer-dominated-European and all, so here goes. Warning: This will be a long one – if you get bored, then stop reading. I find it kind of meditative to write stuff like this, so I won’t quit half way through. :)

I’m actually a real nutcase or freak or whatever superlative you prefer. 1. I’m an avid Metal-fan (my non-football-devoted weekends are spend in a dark basement with beers and a handful of other, longhaired devotees of this magnificent genre.). 2. I’m physically disabled – or a guy in need of special assistance (for those of you who don’t get the reference, click here and wait for 3 minutes – you won’t regret.). Those are two of many weirdnesses I have, and then there, obviously, is the football-fandom. That's perfectly normal where you are reading this (except for you Alleycat), but here in Denmark I would guess around 1 percent of the population knows what a touchdown means. So let me start ‘splainin’ how I became a football fan.

The first football game ever broadcasted I Denmark was actually Broncos vs. Falcons – mainly because of that kicker who kicked the Dirty Birds into the big dance. I didn’t see that one though (too young – born I july ‘89). In my childhood I saw everything that was remotely related to sports. I’m a very competitive person and because of my need of assistance I needed somewhere to discharge myself from saved up competitiveness. Therefore this “Super Bowl” thing was interesting – too bad it was aired from midnight to 4 am on a school-night. So I saw some of the epic battle between the Rams and Titans (except for the last quarter – my VHS tape wasn’t long enough. Not until sufficient bandwidth became common did I see the ending of that game). Anyway the first game I really remember seeing was the Tampa-faders bowl of one-sidedness… It was only super bowls the Danish audience got to see back then, so my football-education went slow. The fader-game was the first I saw where the game really made sense. I had the 3-downs-system covered and could see when a play was particularly good or bad. I actually rooted for the raiders (goosebumps) – back then I hated defense-oriented soccerteams, which I translated to rooting for the raider fire-power as opposed to the tampa-two/WCO Bucs.

I was simply amazed by the complexity of the game and, I’ll admit, the brutality. It also triggered my very well-developed “Geek-tumor” in the back of my head – there was so much to explore.

Very well, so you became a footballfan because of competitiveness and a boring Super Bowl – but what with the Broncos?

Pretty simple actually. What saved me from being enslaved in raider-fandom was the Danish halftime show. For some reason we didn’t get to see the halftime show from the stadium. Instead they, thank god, showed highlights from the previous super bowls. They also had a series (during timeouts and 2-minutewarnings) about the all-time greats of Football. In there was the “helicopter-scramble”. It’s sooo corny, but that play made me a Bronco (and I thought the Bronco logo looked the nicest). That scramble as the redemption of a fantastic career with so many unsuccessful SB appearances – how couldn’t you get struck by that? My Bronco fandom intensified along with my bandwidth, English skills and computer savvy – and have culminated (so far) here at MHR, and has now reached the level of me ordering my new car in Bronco-Blue and using NikeID for designing the perfect bronco-shoe.

That was my saga (to use a Scandinavian term). I really enjoy these stories, so I encourage you guys to write your story – may it be here in the comments or in a separate fanpost.

Questions from another continent! II

Claus Vestergaard — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 12:36:46 -0000

As promised I return with more questions. This might turn out to be a bit debative, but we’ll see.

Is this the reason for cutting Hackney?

As I went to bed (far too late) yesterday I came to think of a scenario: Maybe Denver cut Hackney because they haven’t figured out who they like the best. Hackney is more likely to clear waivers and sign to PS, than former-first-rounder-Patrick Ramsey. Inbuilt in this question, is obviously: Is Hackney even PS eligible. Also: would it help the least bit to have more in-season-training samples of the two QB’s in question? I mean if you don’t know after camp, you will never know.

Will a Rudi Johnson signing be worthwhile?

He had a horrible year last year, granted. But in 2004 through 6 he eclipsed 1300 (1454, 1458, 1309) yards and 12 touchdowns (12, 12, 12). His yards per carry was respectively 4.0, 4.3 and 3.8. That’s his biggest knock, but think about what he can do in Denvers notoriously phenomenal blocking scheme! I should add that he is not much of a recieving threat. The questions remain: Is this a good idea? Has he “one-cut”-ability? Will he take a paycut? Will he turn down starting guarantees from the Bears, Lions – in turn for great YPC numbers behind the stout O-line of Denver?

Something to worry about!

Denver got absolutely K-I-L-L-E-D by TE’s last year – the Dallas-Clarke show that was week 4 was horrifying! Footballoutsiders.com has an advanced metric for measuring this (DVOA – Defence-adjusted Value Over Average), and den got a value of 44.7% (0 being average and negative above average). This was 17 percentage points WORSE than the second worse team KC. I know we are in a tough division TE-wise, but still. Next are Giants, Rams and Falcons in the low twenties. Will this improve in 2008?! Maybe as long as Boss is on the field, but he is a durability concern.

That was all this time, folks - but I'll probably be back..

Questions from another continent!

Claus Vestergaard — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 20:11:02 -0000

As I've stated before I'm just an ignorant Dane (football-wise at least). Therefore I accumulate a lot of questions regarding football. As i have no friends who are as football-geeky on my side of the Atlantic, I have no choice but to spam MHR with my completely ramdom questions. I hope you can (will?) answer some of them. If not, heck - I might survive!

Here goes - in no particular order:

Super Bowl ring?
When a team wins the Super Bowl the members of the team gets a specially designed ring. But what are the criterias for actually getting a ring? To have played a down in the SB/Playoffs/regularseason or simply be on the roster during SB/Playoffs/regularseason? Do coaches get one? Owners?
I mean, if you just have to have been on the roster at some point it can, i'm guessing, easily be up to 60-70 rings a year? But if you have to have played a down, in the SB it's kind of unfair for a player like, let's say, Shockey who were important for NYG in the regular season, but got injured.

Playbook "stealing"?
Let's say I'm the thirdstring QB in an complex offense - lets say a Mike Martz offense. I'm no good as a starter. I can hardly get my contract renewed when it expires this summer.
But I'm clever. I assume that teams would kill for insight in a Martz-offense. So to raise my free angency value, i xerox the playbook - who's gonna stop me? (This, of course, also goes for every other position).

Would the example above be considered cheating? If yes who's ever going to find out? Can the information in an enemys playbook be used for anything? Is the scenario probable?

What does a "packer" mean?
You know a Green Bay Packer... I have looked it up a bazillion times - no luck..

What on Shanahans green earth shall we nickname Selvin Young??
I've thought about this for quite some time, and now that he's our primary back, he should definetily have a nick name. All i can come up with is these, and i don't really like any of them:

Lucky number Slevin (too lang and movie-geeky... GREAT movie, though)

Young-gun (Allthough this is true, "young-gun" has gotten pretty old.. a bit corny (not a great movie, BTW))

Elvis Unsung (I'm just moving letters around here... Sort of... I know, i know, this stinks)

Psycho/Superior/Supersonic etc. Selvin (mostly because of the consecutive s-sounds) Supersonic assosiates a bit too much to Seattle though.

Am I missing an obvious nickname?! Please help me out!

This might be a returning feature here in the Fanposts during the season - There's a lot of stuff I don't know - with your help, i might be able to ad a "yet" to that!

Bonus raider-Bashing TidBit:

In the last 5 years the raiders have won 19 games. Thats a game per year I've lived. Now the Broncos have won 49 - the age of my dad. Just a reminder to how superior we are!

More feel-good stats on Cutler!

Claus Vestergaard — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 12:42:15 -0000

The statisticians over at Pro-football-reference.com have a better way of comparing quarterbacks than the mainstream media. They call it Adjusted Yards per Attempt. This is brilliant because it is adjusted for interceptions and touchdowns, giving the QB 10 more passing yards pr. touchdown and taking 45 yards away pr. interception. Their method also accounts for negative plays (sacks).

The reason why I post this is that Cutler comes out pretty well, when you use this method based on the 2007-QB-stats. Here is the top-15 among passers with a minimum of 214 pass attempts :

# Quarterback Att PYds TD INT AY/A

1 Tom Brady 578 4806 50 8 8.56

2 David Garrard 325 2509 18 3 7.86

3 Ben Roethlisberger 404 3154 32 11 7.37

4 Jeff Garcia 327 2440 13 4 7.31

5 Peyton Manning 515 4040 31 14 7.22

6 Tony Romo 520 4211 36 19 7.15

7 Brett Favre 535 4155 28 15 7.03

8 Donovan McNabb 473 3324 19 7 6.76

9 Matt Schaub 289 2241 9 9 6.66

10 Matt Hasselbeck 562 3966 28 12 6.59

11 Jay Cutler 467 3497 20 14 6.57

12 Kurt Warner 451 3417 27 17 6.48

13 Derek Anderson 527 3787 29 19 6.11

14 Carson Palmer 575 4131 26 20 6.07

15 Drew Brees 652 4423 28 18 5.97

Cutler at 11. Pretty much what I expected, but certainly not what he is given credit for in (your) national media! The highly touted playoff-monster Phyllis Rivers is at 17. River huh? Sounds more like a creek to me. Of course, to be fair, this is based on regular season, I suppose. The bottom of the list is pretty telling. Here are the five WORST passers with more than 214 attempts:

# Quarterback Att PYds TD INT AY/A

30 Vince Young 382 2546 9 17 4.90

31 Marc Bulger 378 2392 11 15 4.83

32 Brodie Croyle 224 1227 6 6 4.54

33 Kellen Clemens 250 1529 5 10 4.52

34 Trent Dilfer 219 1166 7 12 3.18

Croyle cracks me up. Huard is, by the way, to be found ten slots higher up the list. How many millions was it Bulger was given? Kellen Clemens’ rival for the starting job for the Jets, Chad Pennington, is ranked 18th. While this is fun, it really tells us nothing. Example: In all fairness of Vince Young: He played the Jax and the Colts twice. Good thing pfr.com adjusts the numbers above for strength of the opposing defense. They rank the defenses by some pretty complicated math . Here are the stats for the passing-defenses of the AFC west:

# Team Rat Raw SOS

1 San Diego Chargers 1.92 1.28 0.64

12 Kansas City Chiefs 0.37 -0.20 0.56

13 Oakland Raiders 0.26 -0.08 0.34

25 Denver Broncos -0.62 -0.54 -0.09

To understand these numbers here’s an example: The 2007 Denver Broncos allowed 0.54 MORE adjusted yards per pass-attempt than the average team. The QB’s Denver faced were 0.09 adjusted yards per attempt under the average QB. When adding those to numbers you get the relative rating of -0.62. Needless to say that our rush-D held Champ and Dre back a bit (lot).

Now, in some advanced math (explained in the same link as before), pfr.com adjusts the above QB-rankings for the strength of pass-defense each QB faced in 2007. Top-15 for passers with more than 214 att:

# Name Rate Raw SOS

1 Tom Brady 2.90 2.71 0.19

2 David Garrard 2.57 2.01 0.56

3 Peyton Manning 1.67 1.38 0.30

4 Jay Cutler 1.31 0.72 0.59

5 Jeff Garcia 1.29 1.46 -0.17

6 Tony Romo 1.26 1.30 -0.04

7 Ben Roethlisberger 1.26 1.52 -0.26

8 Brett Favre 1.26 1.18 0.08

9 Donovan McNabb 0.93 0.92 0.01

10 Matt Schaub 0.89 0.82 0.08

11 Sage Rosenfels 0.57 -0.46 1.03

12 Matt Hasselbeck 0.21 0.75 -0.54

13 Jon Kitna 0.19 0.02 0.18

14 Drew Brees 0.18 0.10 0.08

15 Philip Rivers 0.17 -0.01 0.18

19 Derek Anderson -0.01 0.27 -0.27

27 Eli Manning -0.82 -0.80 -0.02

30 Brodie Croyle -1.00 -1.31 0.31

Kapow! Oh boy does this bode well!! I’ll leave it to Stuart Chase of pfr to analyse this:

The first thing that jumps off the page to me there is Derek Anderson [Below average, hence the negative rate]. We all know he threw a ton of TDs and made the Pro Bowl, but in perhaps the most telling stat — adjusted yards per pass attempt, adjusted for strength of schedule — he was below average. Only five of his opponents had above average defenses — Buffalo, Pittsburgh (twice), New England and Oakland.

Who had the hardest schedules? Sage Rosenfels had a brutal schedule, but that doesn’t have much implication for 2008. Jay Cutler faced a really difficult schedule, too. He had only three games against a below average pass defense — Chicago, Houston and a four pass game against Detroit. To rank top five in his second year is very impressive, and bodes well for the future. Obviously Garrard looks even better, and he had a really hard schedule, too. Both of those guys could cause nightmares for AFC defenses for the next few years. Garrard won’t throw for six times as many TDs as INTs this year, but he’s got an awfully high perch from which to fall. He was incredibly valuable last year.

This sounds good. Remember, he will be healthy next year! I don't think Cutlers health will have that big an impact, but it absolutely has to have some! And when adding he is going into his 3rd season with Shanahan , which seems to be the year of truth for a Denver QB, and 2008 becomes extremely exciting.

Also, take a look at how bad Eli sucked in the regular season…

Btw, the success of JaMarcus Russels 66 attempts, would rank him second on the above list. That’s right second. From the bottom that is.

Name Rate Raw SOS ATT.

JaMarcus Russell -1.44 -2.62 1.19 66

Don’t go to your nearest raider-message-board and trash ‘em – 66 atts. is a very small sample size.

I apologize for the wobbly stats. I’m not a computer-wiz and those tabulators has always confused me!

All this content can be found on www.pro-football-reference.com! I urge you to read it, and bookmark the site – it’s absolutely amazing!!