FOLLOW THE MONEY
The Broncos head-scratching decisions are all about dollars and cents
By James Merilatt
When Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were trying to unravel the Watergate mess, their secret informant offered them sage advice. “Follow the money,” Deep Throat suggested on more than one occasion. And when they did, the two journalists exposed the biggest political scandal in American history.
As Broncos fans try to make sense of the madness transpiring at Dove Valley this offseason, they should heed the same suggestion. Follow the money.
Suddenly, the team who once rewarded players with big-time contracts when they outperformed their existing deal (see Terrell Davis, Rod Smith, et al) is now making personnel decisions based on finances. It’s an uncharted territory.
Back in the day, the Broncos tried to emulate the San Francisco 49ers, a franchise that spared no expense in an attempt to treat their players well. Of late, they look more like the Arizona Cardinals, Cincinnati Bengals and other well-known penny pinchers of the NFL.
At the end of the day, the team’s decisions regarding their star quarterback and wide receiver have nothing to do with unreturned phone calls, late-night boozing, McDonald’s wrappers, DUIs, domestic disputes or anything else. They have everything to do with the fact that the Broncos don’t want to pony up and pay their stars.
The way Jay Cutler was going, he was going to have a hefty pay raise coming his way in the near future. Yes, the Broncos quarterback was already handsomely paid, having signed a six-year deal valued at $48 million prior to his rookie season, but that pales in comparison to what other top-flight NFL passers are earning, especially young ones.
In 2004, Peyton Manning inked a seven-year, $99 million deal. That was surpassed a few months later by Carson Palmer’s six-year, $119 million extension and Michael Vick’s $130 mega-contract to be paid over 10 years. And most recently, Ben Roethlisberger signed on for eight years and $102 million in Pittsburgh. Each of these deals included millions in guaranteed money, including Roethlisberger’s astounding $36 mil.
The thought of having to cough up this kind of dough for Cutler, and he was on the path toward being able to demand it, had to make the Broncos cringe. And given that head coach Josh McDaniels believes his system can turn second-tier quarterbacks into effective passers, a theory that was validated last year by Matt Cassel’s performance in New England, it seemed like an unnecessary expenditure.
As a result, the Broncos started finding holes in Cutler’s game. Supposedly, McDaniels watched film of every Broncos game and didn’t like what he saw in his future quarterback. Oddly, nobody else seemed to see these things. General managers and coaches around the NFL salivated at Cutler’s talent. But McDaniels saw flaws? Either he’s inept as a talent evaluator, which he’s not, or he was seeing things that helped validate a decision that had already been made for other reasons.
The Broncos also started to buy into the fact that Cutler had off-field issues. Isn’t it a little strange that none of the so-called concerns came up until the team had decided they were going to trade him? Nobody said Cutler was a bad leader during his first three seasons in Denver. Nobody talked about his extracurricular activities being a problem. Nobody ever mentioned that the Vanderbilt grad had trouble picking up the system. But these types of rumblings began to percolate once the decision to move Cutler was made. Bringing those things up, and letting the media run with rumors that reinforced those notions, certainly didn’t help increase Cutler’s trade value. So why didn’t the Broncos squelch the criticisms? Because they helped with their CYA strategy.
If a team is going to take the unprecedented tact of trading a third-year quarterback who already has a Pro Bowl on his résumé, they had better be prepared for how they are going to spin the move if it backfires. If Cutler goes on to put up big numbers in Chicago, lead the Bears to the playoffs and become a top-flight NFL passer, quieting the Broncos faithful would be a tough proposition. But if the team has firmly established that the quarterback is a whiner, tips a few too many back and isn’t particularly sharp, their defense is already in place. Throw in the fact that Cutler ignored the owner’s attempt to reach out during the entire saga and the Broncos have positioned themselves as the helpless victims who had no choice but to ship their talented signal-caller out of town. Now, Pat Bowlen’s two letters to the fans make a whole lot more sense. Operation CYA was in full force!
And the Broncos are executing the exact same playbook during the Brandon Marshall situation. Suddenly, his off-the-field problems are a concern. Never mind that the team didn’t seem to care about these incidents when they were getting a wide receiver who posted 100-reception seasons at a discount. And now, Marshall’s hip injury is a major question mark. Keep in mind, this is the same injury that the Broncos doctors didn’t think was serious enough to keep the wide receiver out of the lineup last season. But they are both convenient excuses for not giving Marshall a new deal, one that the fans are buying hook, line and sinker.
In short order, the Broncos roster will be devoid of two players who went to the Pro Bowl a season ago. As a result, the team’s talent base will have taken a giant step backward. It’s not because the duo of Jay Cutler and Brandon Marshall can’t play the game. And it’s not because they are lacking in character. It’s because they were going to be expensive to keep in Denver. Any other explanation is nothing more than smoke and mirrors, illusions put in place to distract everyone from reality.
