Sunday Night’s contest was one of the more entertaining games of football you’ll ever watch, but the sloppy game played in poor weather conditions taught us a thing or two as well. Most notably, Peyton Manning did nothing to dispel the notion that cold weather affects his play and both backfields came out with question marks regarding ball security and fumbling that leave some ambiguity as we close the season. In Denver, the lead back Knowshon Moreno faces no such workload questions (after all, they fed him the ball 37 times against the Patriots) though there are some concerns about his ability to hold up down the stretch, particularly as the weather gets colder.
In New England, the story is considerably different. Just two weeks after Shane Vereen‘s return from injury he finds himself with an anticipated significant increase in workload and Stevan Ridley found himself on the bench for the second consecutive week (after fumbling for the third game in a row).
We spoke about all this, this week in our inside the locker room week 12 review, conveniently embedded below. Check the archives for more content, too.
Per the Providence Journal, without addressing the player by name Belichick painted a bleak picture for his future role: “Ball security is the paramount issue for your football team every week, our football team every week,” Belichick said Monday. “We fumbled the ball, whatever it was, six times last night. We can’t go on like that. We just can’t. There were multiple situations and multiple things involved and it hurt us the week before in Carolina.”
Ridley didn’t return to the field after fumbling his fourth carry, and Brandon Bolden did all the work in the second half. He and Shane Vereen are in for a larger chunk of the workload, and I’d be surprised if Ridley received a significant share of that load in any game the rest of the way. The team is in a dog-fight for playoff seeding and can ill afford to build confidence when they need to be sure to win the turnover battle. In the short term, I think it’s very reasonable to expect only a handful of touches in Week 13 against Houston. From there, his return to the field depends largely on the performance of Brandon Bolden and LeGarrette Blount (he was benched for fumbling too, but they’ll need someone to carry the mail inside the tackles), although I wouldn’t count on starters reps from either during your fantasy playoffs. Of the two, Bolden’s versatility makes him the intriguing add – both are worth a roster spot if you have the space – but until we see how the workload shakes out my only recommended play is Vereen. For certain, leave Ridley on your bench in Week 13.
For Manning and the Broncos, they have two cold weather games remaining at home and play the second on a short week so we’ll need to temper our expectations on those weeks slightly (you’re not writing this offense off of course) and we’ll want to keep an eye on the use of depth back’s this weekend in light of yet another fumble from rookie Montee Ball. The distribution could be particularly telling if Knowshon Moreno is unable to go. If it isn’t Ball getting the number two reps for Denver, my money is on rookie C.J.Anderson over the previously banished Ronnie Hillman. Anderson has been active the last few weeks while Hillman has not, so it’s logical to assume that he is the next man in the order.
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