Former Browns DB comfortable with Broncos

Former Browns DB

comfortable in Denver

Associated Press

Denver

He was a veteran deemed expendable by his old team when the Denver Broncos came calling, figuring an extra dose of savvy in the backfield might help them get where they were trying to go.

Unlike Peyton Manning, howeve, strong safety Mike Adams didn’t know how to navigate the road to the Super Bowl. In fact, he had never been to the playoffs.

The ninth-year veteran spent five years with the Cleveland Browns, a team in a near-constant state of turmoil, rebuilding, hiring, firing and, of course, losing.

Today, it will be Adams against his old team, which is guaranteed another losing record, while his new team is taking him on his first ride to the playoffs, with signs pointing toward a deep run.

Adams still has many good friends in Cleveland. But this is football. It’s a business. And like Manning, Adams is in his 30s. He knows he doesn’t have many more chances at a Super Bowl ring.

“I don’t feel sorry for them at all,” Adams said. “Ever since I got there, they’ve been trying to rebuild. At some point, you just move forward. But that’s them. I’m here. It’s different now. I’m happy. I’m content.”

The Broncos (11-3) have had their playoff spot wrapped up for three weeks and are looking at bigger things. They are the No. 2 seed in the AFC and with a win over Cleveland (5-9) and next week against an even worse Kansas City, they’ll have a first-round bye.

The Broncos are on a roll: Nine-game winning streak; only team in the league with offense (fifth) and defense (fourth) ranked in the top five. They even resolved one of their few weaknesses — turnovers — last week, going without one for the first time in 21 games, including playoffs. Their turnover margin is now even after languishing in the red most of the season.

Their goal of showing improvement every week has, by almost all measures, been reached. What more could there be to improve upon?

“What’s the difference between getting better and getting a lot better?” said Manning, who last week surpassed 4,000 passing yards for the 12th time in his career. “It’s just improvement. You want to improve and you want to try to keep winning at the same time.”

With Manning setting the tone, the Broncos have shown a remarkably disciplined penchant for staying on point, not looking ahead and treating the next team on the schedule like the ’72 Dolphins no matter the record. In most cases, that record hasn’t been good. During their win streak, the Broncos have beaten only two teams with winning records, with last week’s 34-17 win over Baltimore (9-5) as one of the few true litmus tests. The Browns? They had won three in a row before last week’s 38-21 loss to Washington.

“I’ve said all year long, we don’t look at teams’ records, we look at the tape and they’re very capable,” coach John Fox said.

And, there are signs Cleveland could be building for a brighter future.

With two games to go, quarterback Brandon Weeden, who the Broncos considered drafting had the Manning deal not worked out, has 3,281 yards — the seventh most of any rookie in NFL history. And, rookie running back Trent Richardson, the third pick in the draft, has 11 rushing touchdowns, surpassing the rookie record set by another famous Brown — Jim Brown.

Pat Shurmur, who may be coaching his last games in Cleveland, is being careful of setting up the Broncos as a measuring stick for his team. The Browns are 13-point underdogs.

“You add ’em up at the end and you decide how the year went,” Shurmur said. “Unfortunately, we’re one of 20 teams that won’t be in the playoffs, so what we need to do is make this the best week of preparation we can, and we need to get on a plane and play winning football.”

Over his eight years before arriving in Denver, Adams was only part of one winning team — the 2007 Browns, who went 10-6 but missed the playoffs. The last time he played for a championship was in 2003 when he was the captain of the University of Delaware team that won the Division I-AA title.

He’s hoping for another kind of championship in February 2013.

“We dream of the confetti coming down,” Adams said. “Going a whole career and not going to the playoffs, sometimes you try to set goals a little lower. You say, ‘I hope I make the playoffs now.’ But now that we’re going to the playoffs, now the goals are set higher, especially for this team.”