There aren’t many organizations in pro sports as transparent as the Broncos — from the way they handled the Manning-Osweiler situation, to the fact they report all the coaches they are bringing in for interviews during a search and so on, the team does a great job of being up-front about their dealings and operations.
On Tuesday, just two days after hoisting the Lombardi Trophy, it would have been easy for Broncos General Manager and Vice President of Football Operations John Elway to dodge questions about their offseason plans, stating they were trying to enjoy the moment for now. That was not the case, though, in true Bronco fashion, Elway was forthcoming.
“That’s the hard thing, but there’s no question we’d like to try to [keep the NFL’s best defense together],” told the three-time Super Bowl champ. “That will be our goal, try to keep it together. The first step was trying to get Derek [Wolfe signed]. We were able to get that done, and so Danny [Trevathan] and Malik [Jackson]—the two that I can think of now that we’ll try to work to keep it together and see what we can do. That’s something we’ll start working on right away and see what we can get done.
“They’re all priorities,” Elway added. “As we go through it, it’s a fluid process to kind of see where each one is and talk to their representatives and see where they are. It’s going to be a fluid situation. . . Our budget is only so big, and so we’ve got to make it work within that. This will now be the time that we can now kind of see where everybody is and start working on that and get a feel for who we’re going to be able to hold onto. They’re all priorities, but we just have to see where they are.”
Of course, the first name in most fans minds is Von Miller but the question right now seems less about whether he will be a Bronco next year and more about how much he will be paid, with the franchise tag still an option for Denver.
“The goal is always to get a long-term deal,” Elway explained. “But, again, that goes back into the same old process of trying to include everybody in what we’re looking at and looking at it from the 20,000-foot view of how this team is going to look, not only next year but two or three years down the line. As you know, our goal is always to be competitive year in and year out, and that’s what we want to do.”
Not just win now, win from now on. The GM also alluded to players having to look at more than just the money if this championship team is going to have any chance of staying together.
“The great thing is we play for a great owner, we live in a great town, we’ve got a great head coach, we’ve got great coaches and players that want to play here,” he explained. “That does come in. That falls into the equation, and it depends on how much that equation fits for each player. For us to be able to try to continue to keep everybody together, that’s going to be a big part of it. We’ll have to make some tough decisions. Anytime you have a world championship team, you’ve got tough decisions, but you know what, we’d much rather have the tough decisions than the easy decisions because when you’ve got the tough decisions, you’ve got a lot of great football players.
“It’s going to be hard,” Elway concluded. “But we look forward to it and think we can get it done.”
