ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — “Best player available.”
You hear it over, and over, and over, and over, and over again during the NFL Draft process. It’s a cliche that teams use, mostly before the draft, to express that they won’t reach on a player to fill a need. In response, everybody rolls their eyes and moves on.
John Elway, though, went out of his way on Friday night—following rounds two and three—to pound that phrase into the minds of all those listening. And guess what? It was believable.
Yes, despite what you may be thinking as you press down on that caps lock button and take to Twitter, John Elway appeared to be truly earnest when using that tired phrase on Friday. In his heart of hearts, The Broncos’ GM believes he took the best player available with each of his three selections on Friday.
The Broncos did address a need, adding a playmaker in Carlos Henderson, but they also added to two positions where they are pretty stacked in cornerback and pass rusher. According to the man in charge, that’s just the way the cookie crumbled.
“It’s the first draft VJ and I have had together, along with Matt and Tom and everybody in that room. It flowed great,” he said. “We’ve stayed true to the board, and I think that’s always been my philosophy. We did have discussions at every pick and we talked about three or four different guys, but ultimately, when it finally came down to it, we ended up taking the guy that was highest on our board and we’re glad about the way that it fell.”
John Elway has lied to the face of the media a million times, it’s part of his job, but this was not one of those times.
The Broncos board is just different than yours or your favorite draft expert’s, and that really shouldn’t be that hard to believe. If there was any reaching done in the selections the Broncos made in the second and third rounds, it was done during the evaluation process. Maybe they fell in love with a guy and allowed them to creep up their rankings, but Elway was adamant that they did not deviate from that board once it was set.
The most questioned selection was cornerback Brenden Langley, who was projected to go in the fifth or sixth round by many pundits, the Broncos took him with their compensatory third-rounder. Elway was asked point blank if he just felt like they couldn’t get him later on so they wanted to jump.
“He was the guy that we wanted on our board,” he explained, almost as if it should have just been known. “We thought he was the best player on the board at the time. That’s why we went that direction.”
How about DeMarcus Walker?
“Demarcus was the top guy on our board.”
You get the point.
Look, you can complain all you want about how the Broncos didn’t take player X, Y, or Z that was scrolling across the Bottomline on ESPN when they were on the clock, but just know that John Elway and the Denver Broncos invest a whole helluva lot more time, money and energy on it than any of those other folks.
Call me a sucker, I just think Elway and his staff see things differently than most. For better or for worse.
