Monthly Archives: January 2017

Time To Let the Nuggets Back Into Your Lives

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More than any other sport, being a fan of a basketball team is a lot like being in a relationship. Relevance in the NBA is predicated upon individual star power, so if your team has a star you tend to grow a lot more attached to him than you would for a football or baseball player. Don’t believe me? Just look at how Lebron James turned the entire city of Cleveland into a legion of jealous ex-wives when he bolted for South Beach. They burned his jersey, cursed his name and only granted him visitation rights a couple of times a season (and only because that was out of their control). Ultimately, the pain wasn’t alleviated until Lebron wanted to come back, and Cleveland was more than ready to get back together with him. Oklahoma City may say they’ll never forgive Kevin Durant, but I bet they would too if given the chance.

It sounds weird, I know, but let’s look at Denver’s last basketball marriage. Carmelo Anthony broke all of our hearts very much in the same manner, except instead of chasing a title like Lebron did, Melo just wanted to be another rich guy in New York. I was texting Kevin yesterday and we found ourselves talking about this very subject (no, there’s nothing strange about that!), then he summed up our seven-year relationship with Melo in two sentences: “It was just a marriage with one sided love. We are still recovering from that.”

If you used to follow the Nuggets but have largely ignored them for the past few years, that’s probably why in a nutshell. When Melo packed up all his shit and left in the dead of night, we carried on as best we could afterward. Even had a couple of pretty entertaining seasons while we tried to forget about him. But things bottomed out. The Nuggets faded back into irrelevance and we looked on in envy at all the other happy cities with their own superstars. There hasn’t been much hope that we would ever truly recover.

Until now.

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Vance Joseph Could Be the Coach We Need, and the One We Deserve

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The announcement of Vance Joseph as the next head coach of the Denver Broncos was met largely with anger and confusion. I’ve described this process as a search for the best bad option, because there was so much unknown and risk involved to truly feel good about any of the available candidates.

And yet, the more I let this marinate, the better I started to feel. If you’re still pissed off or puzzled as to why Joseph ultimately wound up being the choice, maybe this will help bring you around. If Kyle Shanahan represents the coach that Broncos fans wanted, the flashy X’s and O’s guy whose offense may catapult Atlanta to its first Super Bowl victory, then Joseph teeters at the other end of that spectrum. He’s the coach we deserve, not for his ability to coordinate a defense, but for his knack at getting players to fall in line and do whatever it takes to win. If need be, they will go down kicking and screaming, as John Elway demands.

There are coaches who are better suited as coordinators instead of running an entire team. Why can’t the same be true of men who are fit to lead the entire 53-man roster, more so than designing gameplans for one side of the ball? Is that such a crazy idea?

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Telltale’s The Walking Dead: Season 2 Review

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“We’ve all made mistakes. Done things that we regret. It may not be perfect, but we look out for each other.” 

I had intended to be finished with both seasons of Telltale’s Walking Dead game, as well as the Michonne spin-off entry, before the first two episodes of season 3 were released. You know what they say: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

I mean, hopefully I’m not going to hell just because I took too long to beat a video game. That would be an embarrassing reason to be subjected to eternal damnation. Anyway, I finally got through my playthrough of season 2 on the Playstation 4, so now it’s time to talk about it. It wasn’t as well-received as season 1, but it was still SO much better than the TV show.

How much better? Well, pull up a chair, hit the jump and I’ll explain it to you. There will be no spoilers for season 2, but if you haven’t played season 1, I would tread lightly here. Spoilers are hard to avoid.

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Game of Thrones: Season 1 Review

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When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.

There has probably never been a quote in the history of television that laid a path for an entire series like that zinger from Cersei did. For all of its complexity, depth and shocking turns, Thrones is a pretty basic show at heart. Those who play the game either wind up victorious or six feet under. Or burned alive. Or flayed. Or killed only to be brought back as a mindless husk. People are very particular about the way that they like to kill in this world.

I have done reviews for Thrones in the past, but they are very much a mirror of Pegboards’ activity level (and by result, my level as a writer). Now that we are heading into the final two seasons of this sprawling, epic saga, I am running out of opportunities to write about it and be somewhat timely, so I thought it would be fun to look back at the series and see if there is any singular storyline or character that catches my eye. It only makes sense to start with season one.

And of course there will be major spoilers for season one and much of the series, but if you haven’t caught up by now, what the hell are you waiting for?

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Let’s Talk About Kyle Shanahan

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We at Pegboards are still saddened over the departure of Gary Kubiak. He is a great coach and an even better person, but the Broncos have no choice but to move on and neither do we. If you want more insight as to our thoughts on Kubes and his legacy here in Denver, we have written about that at length here. This article is all about the future, and the future of the Broncos could very well be centered around Kyle Shanahan.

The prodigal son some would say, and who could blame them? His dad was only the most successful head coach in Colorado sports history and the one who finally got the Broncos to the promise land (with some help from Gary Kubiak). Kyle has also made a name for himself the past two seasons as one of the more capable offensive minds in football, turning the Falcon’s into the NFL’s top offense and resurrecting Matt Ryan’s career (with no help from Gary Kubiak). Considering his ties to Denver and the Broncos’ desperate need for an overhaul on offense, it would seem to be a no-brainer that Shanahan should be far and away the top candidate for the job, right?

Well, not so fast. While there is certainly a lot to like about Kyle following in his father’s footsteps, it may not be the slam dunk that everyone seems to think it will be. Kevin and I bring back our “Let’s Talk About” series to take a closer look at Shanahan and why the Broncos may need to proceed with caution if this is really the route they want to go down.

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A Letter to Gary Kubiak

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Dear Coach Kubiak,

It’s impossible to sum up in just a few paragraphs how much you have meant to the Denver Broncos. Or at least we thought it was. Then Von Miller wrote this classy and sincere farewell to you and made us look bad. We may as well be another helpless right tackle.

Quite frankly, you deserve a lot more than a letter from a couple of fans. As far as we’re concerned, you deserve the neverending gratitude from all of Broncos Country, and free meals at Elway’s for the rest of your life. That probably still wouldn’t be enough to thank you for all that you’ve done for this franchise and this community. A letter certainly isn’t enough.

But we’re going to try and do you justice, Coach Kube. You always gave us your best, so it’s only right that you receive as much from us.

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Power Ranking Ramblings: Week 17

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Welcome back for another round of Power Ranking Ramblings! The rankings that we crank out every week are identical in order to the nonsensical ones that ESPN spews out every week. This is partly because creating power rankings from scratch is a painstakingly lengthy process and Kevin gave me the death glare when I suggested that we come up with our own. However, the main reason we do it that way is because ESPN’s rankings are… well, they are just awful. You will seldom come across something as overly biased and ill-conceived as ESPN’s opinion on who the best teams in the league are. And it’s a lot of fun to call them out on this, so the point of our rankings is to rip on ESPN’s version as much as possible.

Or at least that’s how it started. I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but it’s been a fairly abysmal year for the NFL. Bad officiating, bad games and most importantly, bad teams. There are three squads in each conference who have a legitimate shot at winning the Super Bowl, and after that it’s a whole bunch of meh. So while making fun of the Worldwide Leader in Sports and its rampant stupidity is always a good time, we can scarcely allow the league’s overall mediocrity to skid by unscathed.

 

Thanks for sticking with us this year. We’ll be back next season.

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