I Say Tory-an, You Say Tor-rain

All year, I've been hinting around for you to remember about Ryan Torain and to stash him on your roster if at all possible. Bronco's coach Mike Shannahan, the Dark Lord of Fantasy Football, was positively gushing about this guy (and Eddie Royal) during the summer and through training camp. After suffering a broken elbow in training camp, Torain was put on the shelf and the Bronco's running attacked featured the three-headed mediocrity of Micheal Pittman, Selvin Young, and Andre Hall. Torain finally made his debut last week (3 carries for 1 yard), and with Pittman and Hall landing on IR and Young hobbled, it looked like he was set up to get the bulk of the carries against the Browns on Thursday night.

So I sat down to see just how good this rookie would be and if the Broncos had found their first reliable feature back since Clinton Portis. To my shock, I realized that I had been pronouncing Torain's name incorrectly all year. I had been saying "Tory-an," but Bob Papa and Chris Collingsworth were pronouncing it "Tor-rain" on the broadcast. I held on to some hope that I was right and Papa and Collingworth were not paying attention during the pre-production meeting (after all, they did not mention a thing when Brandon Marshall obviously pulled a glove out of his jock after a TD), but upon looking more carefully at the spelling of Torain's name, I realized that they were right. Damn.

However, it looked like I was right about Torian's ability. He carried 12 times for 68 yards and a touchdown, and I was feeling pretty good about myself again. However, since Denver running backs are dropping faster than the stock market, Torian tore his ACL on his 12th carry and is done for the year. Selvin Young then limped into the game and accumulated a grand total of 1 carry before leaving with an aggravated groin injury. So it looks like Peyton Hillis and P.J. Pope will be carrying the load until Young comes back, which could be a couple of weeks.

What this means is that FFV darling Jay Cutler is going to be even more valuable. Other than a couple of slow games before the Bronco's week 8 bye, Cutler has been everything we predicted he would be before the season. He put up over 440 yards against a Cleveland defense that had been decent against the pass until this week. Now, there is no doubt that the Broncos are a pass-first team. What's more, their crappy defense will ensure that they will never be able to sit on a big lead.

So while they have been good to this point of the season, I expect even better numbers down the stretch for Cutler, Marshall, Royal, Scheffler, and company. Oh yeah, that's right. My man-crush for Jay Cutler just got bigger!