RobKirkpatrick.com

I don’t know how, but the Broncos are 5-0. 

Well, let me amend that.  I know how they’re winning; it’s their NFL-best 43 points allowed. First-year coach Josh McDaniels seems to be redeeming himself after a rocky offseason, not through his advance billing of being an offensive genius but rather the near miraculous turnaround of the Denver defense that he and coordinator Mike Nolan have achieved after instituting a 3-4 scheme. 

And I don’t think anyone’s claiming that Kyle Orton is a better quarterback than Jay Cutler, and Denver has scored as many touchdowns as has the 0-5 Kansas City Chiefs.  But Orton played his strongest game as a Bronco yesterday, completing 35 of 48 for 330 yards and two touchdowns, the last one at the end of a 98-yard game-tying drive in the 4th quarter. After throwing his fair share of interceptions in Chicago (27 INT to 30 TD in 33 games), he’s thrown only one through five games in 2009. That one came on a Hail Mary caught by New England’s Randy Moss at the end of the first half yesterday – which means Moss caught as many passes from Orton as he did from Tom Brady in the game.

The Broncos’s 17-10 win over Dallas in Week 4 was their first win over a team that anyone thought was any good, and Brandon Marshall’s game-winning touchdown catch-and-run might have woken up the troubled wide receiver to what he is capable of doing in Denver. Marshall made another great play as he weaved through the New England secondary to score the tying touchdown late in the 4th quarter yesterday.

The Week 5 win over Misters Belichick and Brady now has the rest of the league taking the Broncos seriously. Their next test comes a week from tonight in a road game against their division nemesis, the San Diego Chargers. If McDaniels, Orton, and company can  somehow get past them, then the Broncos will have confirmed their unlikely status as a serious contender in ‘09.

- Rob

Ps. By the way, am I the only one who thought those “mud ‘n’ mustard” AFL 50th anniversary retro jerseys were kinda neat?  Style points go to Jabbar Gaffney for twisting his vertically striped socks to make his calves look tigerlike.

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I’ll have to do a follow-up post to my piece on the Jay Cutler trade, but in the meantime, here’s the Denver Post article on last night’s preseason matchup between Jay Cutler’s Chicago Bears and the Denver Broncos, now helmed by Kyle Orton.

Remember, this is the quarterback that first-year coach Josh McDaniels wanted to trade as his first order of business with his new team…

http://www.denverpost.com/broncos/ci_13235534

Those of you who read my post comparing Joe Namath and Brett Favre know I follow the NFL. Really, I only follow it because I’ve been a huge Denver Broncos fan since I was 9 years old.  It’s not like it is for me with baseball, which I would watch avidly even if the Mets decided to switch over to the MLS.  As I sometimes say, I’m not a football fan; I’m a Broncos fan.

So I have to say something about today’s trade between the Broncos and the Chicago Bears. Denver got rid of their 25-year-old quarterback and team captain, Jay Cutler, who in 2008 – just his second full year as a starter - set a single-season franchise record in passing for 4,526 yards, threw 25 touchdowns, and was named to the Pro Bowl.  In return, they get three draft picks plus a mediocre quarterback in Kyle Orton, who couldn’t hold onto a job with a team that’s been desperate for a quarterback since the days of Jim McMahon.

Not too long ago – just a few months ago, in fact – Broncos owner Pat Bowlen had said Cutler was “the man around here now.”  Bowlen had fired two-time Super Bowl-winning head coach Mike Shanahan so that he (Bowlen) could have more control of the team. He then hired a 32-year-old rookie head coach, Josh McDaniels, whose first order of business was to alienate his star quarterback by (it soon came out) trying to trade Cutler in a deal for Matt Cassell, with whom McDaniels had worked as offensive coordinator for New England.  Cassell, who had never even started in college, came off the bench in 2008 following Tom Brady’s season-ending injury and surpised many by performing admirably, leading the Patriots to an 11-5 record. Then again, he did inherit an offense that had gone 16-0 the previous season; and of those 11 wins in ‘08, only 3 came against teams with winning records.

Cutler had not been happy when Shanahan was fired; neither were many Broncos fans.  Cutler said he hoped Bowlen would hold onto quarterbacks coach Jeremy Bates. Bowlen hinted that he would…and then Bates was sent packing. When McDaniels came in and tried to trade Cutler for a lesser quarterback, it poisoned the well for good. Before long, he demanded a trade. He got one.

Reading stories in the Denver Post and the now defunct Rocky Mountain News, I was amazed by the logic of some sportswriters and fans. Cutler should grow up, they said. He needs to realize football is just a business.

And they were right on both counts. Cutler needed to grow up…and he needed to be allowed to do so. Along with a learning curve, young players experience a maturity curve. But it seemed that people in Denver were angry that Cutler at 25 was not as mature as John Elway had been at 35. Incidentally, Elway had come to the Broncos after refusing to play for the Baltimore Colts because he didn’t like their coach. People back then said Elway was spoiled and would never make it in the NFL. He came to Denver and won five AFC championships and two Super Bowls.

When Cutler came out last year and said his arm was stronger than Elway’s had been – a juicy quote for the sportswriters, who were then all too happy to criticize him for it - many fans were outraged at such a sacriligeous statement and saw it as a sign of immaturity. At the time, my thoughts were (1) Well, no, Elway’s arm was stronger, and (2) Good for you! At least you’re not shrinking away in the Shadow of Elway. And I say this as the biggest fan of John Elway anyone in the northeastern United States has ever met.

Football is just a business?  Yes, okay. So let’s imagine this: You’re the best young talent at a struggling company. You’ve been recognized by your peers in the industry as one of the best in the business. You’re widely hailed as the key to turning around your company’s future. Then some 32-year-old CEO comes in and tries to get rid of you and replace you with “his guy,” someone who is not as good as you are. What’s more, that CEO is evasive in his statements about his having tried to get rid of you. Would you want to stay and keep working for him?  Oh, you would?  And what if you had suitors at many other companies who would *love* to have you come work for them?

The reports coming out of Denver have amounted to he-said, he-said; but most agree that McDaniels (or is it McDenials?) was less than clear on his telling of events regarding the original trade talks that reportedly involved Detroit and Tampa Bay. In one statement, he offered, “Conversations were had.” Note the lack of a subject in that sentence. Conversations were had…by whom? Beware the man who delivers news in a passive voice. The very nature of the passive construction is that it says what was done but does not say who the doer was. It’s a roundabout, blunted admission - a way of admitting something without really admitting it, as if to create the impression that the something that occurred happened on its own, as if by magic or divine intervention. It’s why Ronald Reagan – a man who knew something about manipulating the media – said of the Iran-Contra scandal, “Mistakes were made,” which was different from saying, ”I made mistakes.” 

No party is totally blameless in this.  Bowlen, McDaniels, Cutler, first-year general manager Brian Xanders, they all made mistakes in this mess.  And it’s hard not to suspect that Cutler has been getting some bad advice from his agent, Bus Cook. Not so coincidentally, Cook was also agent to Brett Favre, who himself was at the center of an ugly quarterback controversy last year when he talked his way out of Green Bay and ended up with the Jets for one lackluster, legacy-staining season. In an industry such as book publishing, the agent and the publisher at least have a common goal: to sell copies of a book. But in the sports world, it’s not necessarily so. A sports agent wants to make money; winning is nice, but it’s secondary. One can’t help believing Cook was telling Cutler, “They don’t want you, kid. You’ll be better off where you’re wanted.” (Translation: “You’ll be better off with a team who wants to trade for you and then will commit to a lucrative contract extension.)

But make no mistake about it: Bowlen and McDaniels blew this one. It reminds me of a publishing house I used to work for. A new regime came in from a small New England house claiming to have all the answers on how to make a profit. People were switched around, de-valued, let go; paperwork was multplied; “process” was debated and rethought and rethought again. In a scenario that is like the opening scene of the 1969 film Putney Swope (which I’ll have to write about here one day), the company paid $12,000 to hire a “change management consultant” to come in for one day and give a speech on how employees must be “change adaptive.” The consultant had a nice little act, pranced around the front of the room, gave a slide-show presentation (using a remote that, he was proud to reveal later on, he kept concealed in his jacket), and spoke with the inflection of an Evangelist preacher. But when you cut beneath the surface rhetoric and stylized pitch and really listened to what he was saying, his message boiled down to: (1) Management is always on the cutting edge of change, and thus always right, so (2) you should never question management or else that makes you Defiant with a capital D, but (3) if something goes wrong with the company, it’s not management’s fault, it’s yours for not questioning things…which you shouldn’t do because that makes you Defiant.  Pretty soon, managers throughout the company were regurgitating this logic. On a self-evaluation form, I was asked to grade my “Adaptiveness to Change.” I said I welcomed positive changes; this was later criticized because I did not say I welcomed all changes, good or bad.  Not too long afterward, I decided to go to a better publishing house for a lot more money. Meanwhile, my former company lost several books and had its salaries slashed across the board, and the publisher who’d come in and tried to remake the house in his image was gone after less than two years.

McDaniels, the import from New England, is under contract for four years in Denver, and good money says he doesn’t last that long. Some fans and at least one Denver-area writer favored cutting Cutler loose, on the rationale that a team can’t win with a quarterback alone; that change is good. So now they’ve become a team without a quarterback. This is what ”change” has brought to the team. 

Many writers and fans said Cutler wasn’t a winner, citing his sub-.500 record so far. (It was the same criticism I once read of the Atlanta Braves when they signed Greg Maddux to a big contract even though he’d been a .500 pitcher for the hapless Cubs.)  But then one insightful writer pointed out that in games in which Denver gave up 21 points or less, Cutler had a career record of 13-1…and that one loss came in overtime, when his team never got the ball. In other words, when the Broncos defense did it’s job, the team won 93% of the time.  Sounds like the kind of quarterback I’d want on my team. 

Granted, in games in which the Broncos allowed more than 21 points, Cutler’s record was, not surprisingly, dismal. But that same writer pointed out that under those same circumstances, quarterbacks by the name of Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, and (yes) Elway had similarly dismal records. True, you can’t win games with a quarterback alone. But build a team around him – like the Steelers with Ben Roethlisberger, the Giants with Eli Manning, the Colts with brother Peyton, and the Patriots with Brady – and you can win a Super Bowl or two. Or three. Call me crazy, but I thought the Broncos would look to improve the team around Cutler, not try to replace him.

Some said the Broncos weren’t going to win anytime soon, so you might as well trade your best player for what you can get for him. That works fine if you’re talking about a aging veteran, but not with a quarterback who was slated to be your leader for the next ten years. Drafts picks are nice, but even a number-one pick is nothing more than a high-priced gamble…especially when it’s a quarterback.  Just ask the Arizona Cardinals about Matt Leinart or the Tennessee Titans about Vince Young. Shanahan once had a saying about high draft picks: coaches who make them tend not to stay around too long to enjoy them. 

Josh McDaniels has just turned the 2009 season into Year One of a rebuilding plan–something that I have to imagine 35-year-old Pro Bowl safety Brian Dawkins was not expecting when he left the Philadelphia Eagles (who were one game away from the Super Bowl last season) and signed with Denver earlier this year.

But that’s fine. Change is good, right?

Except when it’s bad.