If Broncos win coin toss, let Manning come out throwing, right? Wrong! Mark Kiszla The Denver Post January 11, 2013 Heads? The Broncos win. Tails? Baltimore loses. But if Denver wins the coin flip before this AFC playoff game, there is only one choice: Take the football. Give it to quarterback Peyton Manning. And let Manning shove it down the throat of linebacker Ray Lewis and that over-the-hill Baltimore defense. Nobody asked me but: Deferring is for losers. If the Broncos have the greatest NFL quarterback of this generation on their side, what sense would it make for them to win the coin flip and kick off? Well, guys who own way cooler pocket protectors than I do would argue that deferring makes math sense. The stat geeks who ogle advanced metrics the way I drool over a bacon cheeseburger tell me the smart and hip decision is to defer. During their 11-game winning streak, the Broncos have won the coin toss four times, and each time coach John Fox has elected to defer possession of the ball until the second half. If his team is on an unbeatable roll, why would Fox mess with success? And a coach can be just as superstitious as any fan who has been wearing the same ratty, old Broncos T-shirt on game day for 20 years. Consider this: When Denver began the season with a 2-3 record, the Broncos won the coin flip four times and elected to receive the opening kickoff four times. The results of those four drives: punt, interception, punt, fumble. Zero points. With the Broncos, Manning has grown more dangerous as the game has worn on. During the seven times this season when Denver has taken possession to open the third quarter, Manning has produced four touchdowns and one field-goal attempt shanked by Matt Prater. Hey, who was the knucklehead who suggested deferring was for losers? Certainly not New England coach Bill Belichick. Belichick, the great and powerful Oz of NFL coaches, defers every single time. No questions asked. In fact, the last time the Patriots won the toss and elected to receive the opening kickoff was way back in 2008. You might recall the game. Quarterback Tom Brady does. He suffered a season-ending knee injury. Nevertheless, it makes sense to me to put the football in the hands of your best player from the word “Go!” The way I have it figured, if the Broncos take the opening kickoff, they will never trail against Baltimore. So what should Fox do if the Broncos win the coin toss? Whatever Manning tells him to do. Klis: Atlanta Falcons are trying to go from good to great Mike Klis The Denver Post January 12, 2013 Sometimes I root for the underdog. But how did Notre Dame work out for me? Mostly, I root for greatness. I pulled for Ali, not Frazier. Or Leon Spinks. I'm bummed at Tiger because I wanted it for him. My most despised world championship team ever was the 1997 Florida Marlins. They decided, just for that one year, to try. They wound up winning it all, beating out the Atlanta Braves, who were the team to beat, year after year after 14 not- quite remarkable years. Rooting on the favorites, you see, can bring disappointment too. Which brings us to the Atlanta Falcons and their playoff game Sunday against the Seattle Seahawks. "I feel like the Falcons, their whole narrative of who they are is now at stake," said Steve Young, an ESPN analyst and former NFL quarterback. "There is nothing they can do from September to December that we pay much attention to. They could have gone undefeated and we would have been, 'Oh, all right. That's great. But we want to see you in January.' " The Falcons' chronicles should focus on the remarkable comeback from their 2007 disasters that were Michael Vick and Bobby Petrino. "It was my lowest point in the 11 years I was there," said Broncos linebacker Keith Brooking, a Falcon from 1998-2008. "At the time, Michael Vick was maybe the face of the entire league and he gets indicted on federal charges. And I don't have a lot of positive things to say about Petrino. You can tell he bailed out on us in Week 4 or 5. You can't fool players. Then he leaves in the middle of the night. The way I found out about it, I was watching a local TV affiliate there and it crawls across the bottom: "Breaking news: Petrino leaves the Falcons for Arkansas." That's how I found out. And then 30 minutes later I see him do the Pig Sooie deal on 'SportsCenter.' " From that nightmare, the Falcons went 11-5 the next year, then 9-7, 13-3, 10-6 and 13-3. That's a near Bill Belichick- and Tom Brady-like average record of 11-5. The Falcons should be held up as exemplary to all moribund franchises. If you pick the right coach, even if it's an uninspired candidate like Mike Smith, and draft correctly, specifically with the No. 3 overall pick in a year when a quarterback like Matt Ryan is available, you too can immediately transform from embarrassingly bad to real good. Instead, the Falcons are held up as a paradigm to the reality that the gap from good to great often is canyonesque. The next time the Falcons win a playoff game in the Smith-Ryan era will be their first. When they meet the No. 5-seeded Seahawks at the Georgia Dome on Sunday, it will be the second time in three years the Falcons open their postseason against the NFC's lowest-seeded team. The first time, in the 2010 season, the Falcons were trounced by Aaron Rodgers and the No. 6-seeded Green Bay Packers 48-21. The Packers went on to win the Super Bowl. That followed the Falcons' 2008 playoff opener. They lost to the seemingly ordinary Arizona Cardinals. The Cardinals advanced to the Super Bowl, where they came within 35 seconds of becoming the first 9-7 team to win an NFL title. Instead, the 2011 New York Giants became the first 9-7 team to win it all. The Giants opened their playoff run last season with a 24-2 win at Atlanta. The Falcons have become not Super Bowl contenders but a steppingstone to the Super Bowl. "Everyone in the playoffs has got sudden death, but I think there's more here," Young said. "And maybe more than any other team. More can be gained by the Falcons than anybody else in the playoffs." Nothing against Russell Wilson, the Seahawks' terrific rookie quarterback, but I'll be rooting for Ryan and the Falcons. Then again, like all those good people of Atlanta, I rooted for the Braves to stamp their greatness every baseball postseason. It's elusive, greatness. Maybe that's why it's worth rooting for. Spotlight on ... Matt Ryan, QB, Falcons When: 11 a.m. Sunday vs. the Seattle Seahawks at the Georgia Dome in the NFC semifinals. What's up: Ryan has five winning seasons in his first five NFL seasons, including four playoff berths. This is Ryan's best season. He has completed 68.6 percent of his passes for 4,719 yards, 32 touchdowns (14 interceptions) and a 99.1 rating. The catch: Ryan never has won a playoff game. Background: Like most quarterbacks who would have been first-round draft picks after their junior year in college, Ryan had a disappointing senior season at Boston College, throwing 19 interceptions. But he was the No. 3 pick for the Falcons in 2008, becoming the face of a franchise that was smeared by back-to-back fiascos involving quarterback Michael Vick and coach Bobby Petrino. Klis' take: There's no excuse this year. Ryan and the Falcons, the NFC's No. 1 playoff seed with a 13-3 record, can't lose to the No. 5-seeded Seahawks and a rookie QB, even though Russell Wilson is a superb rookie coming off an impressive playoff performance against Washington last weekend and even though the Seahawks have won six in a row by an average margin of 23.8 points. You have to beat somebody good in the playoffs, right? The pressure on Ryan is immense Sunday, but I think he comes through. John Elway's vision helped restore Broncos' home-field edge, defense Mike Klis The Denver Post January 11, 2013 "What are some of the emphasis we have? We have to get better on defense — there is no question about that. I think the No. 1 way we do that is we have to get some continuity on the defensive side. We have to get some continuity where guys are under the same system year in and year out and can go out and play. No. 2, we need to win at home. We have lost our home-field advantage, and that is something we need to get back ... to protect our turf up here at 5,280 feet. I am looking forward to the challenge." — John Elway, at his introductory news conference as the new man in charge of the Broncos' football operations, Jan. 5, 2011 *** Two years later, the Broncos have home-field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs and a defense that ranked No. 2 in the NFL this season. The priorities set by the Broncos' new front-office boss were not unusual. Play better defense and protect the home turf might have been mentioned at many news conferences that formally presented a coach or executive.