Off-Season Posse In Effect Theme for our beloved +Denver Broncos, +BRONCOS CR3W Horse Track Playlist presented by the +Beastie Boys
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Friday, February 14, 2014
Broncos' Salary Cap Tight, but Still has Good Outlook
Broncos' cap snug, but still looks good
The NFL’s scouting combine gets underway Wednesday in Indianapolis and all of the Denver Broncos’ football decision-makers will be there.The draft continues to be the long-term foundation of what John Elway wants to get done with the depth chart. And while the Broncos did land the greatest prize of free agency, in Peyton Manning, and paid him accordingly with a $96 million deal, Elway has largely been conservative in free agency overall because he wants the heart of the team's roster to be homegrown.
The Broncos have favored, outside of a few contracts, including Manning and guard Louis Vasquez, one- or two-year deals. Many of those, after the initial hysteria passed, were with little or no signing bonus. Look how the team has handled the last two free-agency seasons following Manning's signing.
 |
| Peyton Manning and Broncos Offensive Teammates Photo Courtesy: Denver Broncos (AP) |
This past year, Terrance Knighton got a two-year deal and Wes Welker got a two-year deal. Stewart Bradley and Shaun Phillips signed one-year contracts while Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie signed what is a two-year deal on paper, but turned into a one-year deal five days after the Super Bowl.
Denver figures to take a similar approach this time around. The Broncos won’t know what 2014’s salary cap will be for a bit yet, but they do know they are in pretty good shape for a team coming off a Super Bowl appearance. Many in the league expect the ’14 cap to be at, or near, $126.3 million per team.
When free agency opens in March, the Broncos will have to be under the salary cap with their top 51 contracts. At the moment, those top 51 salary-cap figures for players under contract amounts to $117.8 million. By a rule put in with the current collective bargaining agreement, the Broncos can also roll over any available cap space from this past season into 2014.
That figure is $6.573 million. So, including the rollover, the Broncos actually have just over $11 million worth of cap space to work with.
That puts them in a good spot, compared to many, as noted in this from ESPN’s Kevin Seifert.
And that’s before the Broncos do, or don’t, talk to Champ Bailey about his $10 million cap figure for ’14 -- the second highest on the team -- or Chris Kuper’s $5.915 million cap figure, seventh highest on the team.
The Broncos have also done a quality job limiting the dead money on the cap – cap charges for players no longer on the roster – with Elway and Mike Sullivan overseeing the team’s contracts. The biggest dead-money charge for ’14 at the moment comes from Rodgers-Cromartie. Again, even though it’s consistently been reported as a one-year deal, Rodgers-Cromartie actually signed a two-year deal last March and the second year voided five days after the Broncos' loss to the Seahawks. However, with that contract data circulated among the teams across the league shows a $2.1 million dead-money charge -- the pro-rated portion of his original $4.2 million signing bonus.
Beyond that, the oldest dead-money charge will be $500,000 for Willis McGahee, who was released last June.
All in all, the Broncos head to Indy without any concerns they’ll have to do any major adjustments to participate in free agency. They will eventually need $6 million or $7 million in cap room to deal with their draft class, but they get some time there since the draft isn't until May 8.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Football Guy: Elway in it for the Long Haul
 |
| Brad Penner/USA TODAY Sports |
John Elway has delivered impressive results in his short time as Denver's top football executive.John Elway has been, and still is, a lot of things to those in and around the Denver Broncos, to those who live and breathe with the team's fortunes.
Hall of Fame quarterback.
Your basic football legend, one with a been-there, done-that swagger taken straight out of central casting.
Face of a franchise.
Heart of a franchise.
Businessman.
Restaurateur.
Celebrity.
Take your pick, even as you drive around in your car, purchased at one of Elway’s dealerships, to eat in one of his restaurants before you take one of the afternoon tours of the stadium where his name is in the team’s Ring of Fame.
But now add another. The one Elway, if he would admit to such things, wears with pride to go with a new contract extension that runs through 2017.
Football Guy.
When Broncos owner Pat Bowlen fumed over what his team had become in 2010 -- cheaters, to many in the outside world, that were set to finish 4-12, with an already fired head coach, a Spygate scandal in tow, and a growing number of empty seats in the home stadium -- he looked to Elway to save the day and the ones that followed.
Bowlen looked to the guy he had seen do all things amazing, to the guy he had seen make the most of any situation the Broncos had been in, regardless of down and distance, the odds, or even the weight of history and expectations.
Bowlen has called Elway "a great treasure." In fact, Bowlen did it as he introduced Elway as the Broncos’ top football executive on Jan. 5, 2011. Still, some wondered if this all had a ceremonial feel to it.
That if a franchise's marquee player, a Hall of Fame passer no less, with a potential lifetime of celebrity golf and lucrative corporate speaking engagements already guaranteed and waiting, could really be interested in coming back to roll up his sleeves and run the football side of a team.
Because no matter how much wood paneling they put up in the offices, that's not really an executive job, not at its core anyway. It has an executive title and executive salary, but it is a get-down-to-it vocation for grinders.
This is a job for those who are actually interested in finding players, maintaining stability, building a roster, sorting through problems, keeping a franchise out of salary-cap trouble, making the correct decisions about who to keep and who to not keep, standing for something and sifting through the hours of digital video it takes to do that.
This is what those in the game call a Football Guy.
As a scout who works for a team whose top decision-makers didn't make the trip to last month's Senior Bowl said, "My guys aren't here, and I look up in the stands and I see [expletive] John Elway the week before his team is in the Super Bowl. All you need to know."
Sure, all of the Senior Bowl practices, every one-on-one or team drill, are available on video for all to see later in the comfortable confines of a nicely appointed office. It's why some choose not to make the trip to Mobile, Ala., each January for the best all-star game for NFL hopefuls each year.
And sure, Elway could get all that on video, too. But leaders lead, they set expectations and make sure everyone is doing things properly to meet them. For real leaders, that includes themselves.
They also empower people to know what they do is important to the organization, to the goal as a whole. And nothing, repeat nothing, is more disheartening to a football team's scouting staff, the guys who grind it out on the road throughout the year, than a general manager or head coach who doesn't show all that much interest in what they're doing until it's time to make the picks in the draft.
A team's top football decision-maker can say whatever about the importance of player evaluation, but when the staff sees you taking an interest, being a part of the evaluation process before the video rolls, it means something.
Ozzie Newsome, Elway's Hall of Fame peer in the personnel business and the one who calls the football shots for the Baltimore Ravens, takes that approach. Newsome is visible at the Senior Bowl, the East-West Game, the scouting combine. He shows his staff what they're doing is important by how he conducts himself. He leads, he does the work and his team consistently finds players and wins.
It's no accident Newsome was one of the people Elway contacted after accepting Bowlen's offer three years ago.
Even as the Broncos have won an AFC West title in each of Elway's three years since his return, even with a Super Bowl appearance 10 days ago, there are those who have wondered, including some who have known Elway for some time, if the constant all-or-nothing drumbeat of criticism that comes in the social media era for those who don't raise the trophy would make Elway decide the effort wasn't worth it, decide the returns didn't equal the investment.
But behind all of the rest is a Football Guy. One who answered a disheartening Super Bowl loss with a signature on a contract extension that promises he'll keep trying for four more years.
Maybe if folks had listened a little more closely three Januarys ago, to the usual here's-what-we're-going-to-do declarations that opening news conferences bring, the hints that Elway would be the guy for the long haul were there.
"When I retired from football, I was 38 years old. And I was not done doing what I needed to do in this life. And I believe that I am a guy that likes challenges. I am a guy that likes to compete. I am a guy -- and I have had several people say, 'How many times are you going to climb up another mountain?' And I said, 'Probably [until] I get too tired.' But I am not too tired to climb another mountain. Obviously, this is a mountain here that we need to climb, and I look forward to the challenge. That is the way that I am built. I do not look at myself as an icon. Maybe people from the outside look at it that way, but I look out from my eyes. The way I look out of my eyes and what I want to do with my life is that I love the challenges that Mr. Bowlen has given me here. So, I am truly excited about it. Talk about legacy -- the thing that I would want to do is look back and say, 'You know what? You had a chance to go do something as big as this and as the position that was given to you.' To be able to walk away from that, I would have never been able to forgive myself. That is not what I am about."
So, it seems, Elway called this play a while back.
H/T to Jeff Legwold: Original post, link here.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
New deal not likely for Knighton
 |
| Photo by Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)Terrance Knighton, left, was one of Denver's best performers on the defensive line this season. |
After a 35-point loss in Super Bowl XLVIII, the Denver Broncos have discovered the hangover can still linger in the city too.
Some with the team said this week that representatives for defensive tackle Terrance Knighton have approached the Broncos about the possibility of a new contract, an item that got things buzzing on the Front Range.
So much so that Knighton took to Twitter Tuesday to post: “I don't know why people are mad at me. All I do is play football. The business part is controlled by my agent.’’
Photo by Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)Terrance Knighton, left, was one of Denver's best performers on the defensive line this season. But it is often a rite of post-Super Bowl passage for teams. In the wake of the title-game appearance, players whose contracts made them relative bargains on the way to the championship game may be hoping for a bit of a re-do.
Knighton, who signed a two-year deal last March, was one of the Broncos’ best performers on defense this season, particularly down the stretch after Kevin Vickerson went to injured reserve with a hip injury in late November. Knighton’s deal, which included a $500,000 signing bonus, called for him to earn a $1 million base salary in the 2013 season to go with a $1.5 million base salary in ’14.
Knighton does have a $1 million roster bonus due in March.
And in the end, players, or in reality their agents, can certainly ask for a new deal. That’s how it works, the business of football. After all, when a team is done with a player, the executives don’t suddenly stop before typing the guy’s name on the waiver wire and say, “Oh wait, he’s got three years left on the deal -- we should honor that.’’
That said, don’t expect Knighton or his representatives to have much success with this one. With John Elway calling the football shots, the Broncos have chosen short-term deals for most of their free-agent signees just for this scenario. Elway ran a lot of businesses before Pat Bowlen hired him to be the team's top football executive and thus far Elway has picked his spots in free agency and hasn't made a habit of tearing up old deals to make new ones.
Knighton’s impact was clear on the team’s defense and he, and linebacker Danny Trevathan, may have been the most consistent performers all season.
But right now his $2.75 million salary-cap figure is slated as the third-highest on the defense for 2014, behind only Champ Bailey ($10 million) and linebacker Von Miller ($6.682 million). The Broncos are expected to at least broach the topic of a cap adjustment, possibly even a salary cut like Chris Kuper had last August, with Bailey in the coming weeks and months.
So, the Broncos will, unless there is an unexpected and shocking shift in their feelings on the topic, simply let Knighton play out the 2014 season and re-visit it next year at this time when Knighton will be approaching free agency.
In addition the Broncos will have an eye on the salary-cap horizon as well with Demaryius Thomas, Julius Thomas, Wes Welker, Orlando Franklin and Miller all slated to be unrestricted free agents following the 2014 season.
C'mon for those 'Naive and Ignorant' Seahawks' Players, Coaches, and (lack of real perspective) Fans
Let's Be Real, you Had a Fully-Stocked, Seattle Seahawks, Closet against the Bare Cabinet of the, Still Managed to win the AFC, Denver Broncos
 |
| Denver Broncos offensive tackle Ryan Clady appears in this 2010 file photo. (Joe Amon, The Denver Post) |
Because that’s essentially what the Broncos had to do as they played without left tackle Ryan Clady, top defensive back Chris Harris, safety Rahim Moore, best pass rusher Von Miller, defensive end/tackle Derek Wolfe, defensive tackle Kevin Vickerson and center Dan Koppen/J.D. Walton.
 |
| Cornerback Richard Sherman #25 of the Seattle Seahawks and middle linebacker Bobby Wagner #54 celebrate their 43-8 victory over the Denver Broncos during Super Bowl XLVIII. (Jeff Gross, Getty Images) |
I had spent the past week giving Seattle full credit as the physically superior team and ripping the Broncos for their dismal performance.
But these Seahawks won’t stop popping off about how great they are and how much better they were/are than the Broncos.
Come on, Seattle. You beat up Peyton Manning and a bunch of B teamers. Take your Lombardi Trophy — and quiet down.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)