Tune into a certain Denver FM sports station for at least five minutes, and you’re bound to hear the promo slogan “there’s no offseason for talking Broncos.”
And the station holds true to the mantra, discussing the Orange & Blue throughout its local-programming slate at the expense of the Avalanche’s (now-failed) playoff chase, the Rockies’ just-starting season, the Nuggets in general and anything and everything else in the wide world of sports.
Justifying the Bronco-centric coverage, though, doesn’t require much of an argument.
Apart from the lack of game-filled Sundays, it’s getting increasingly tougher to pinpoint the slow time of year on the NFL calendar. Make that doubly so this spring in a football-crazed Mile High City only two months removed from a third Super Bowl parade in the last 20 years.
And those eight weeks undeniably have been jam-packed with Orange & Blue-flavored news. Here’s a quick review of the Bronco headlines which have ruled our airwaves and timelines:
- Peyton Manning calls it a Hall-of-Fame career
- Brock Osweiler stuns the Broncos and Broncos Country by turning down a mega-million offer and signing with the Texans
- Defensive starters Malik Jackson and Danny Trevathan also take the free-agency money and run
- Super Bowl MVP Von Miller embarks on a nation-wide celebrity tour, which includes stops at the NBA All-Star Game, the Grammy Awards and, of course most notably, Dancing With the Stars
- Denver starts to address its QB vacancy by trading for Mark Sanchez
- The Broncos then continue their QB pursuit by courting the 49ers’ Colin Kaepernick
- Defensive end Derek Wolfe becomes the latest unwanted TMZ Sports featured performer as a video surfaces of him unleashing a roundhouse in a Denver nightclub
And those are only some of the main headlines and trending topics as we’ve also had the deadline-beating matched offer to retain C.J. Anderson, DeMarcus Ware’s restructured deal, the pre-Houston-signing Osweiler TMZ Sports appearance and the unusual, no-agent-involved contract signed by offensive tackle Russell Okung.
All that, and we still have the schedule release, a full slate of OTAs, the draft, the Super Bowl ring ceremony, a White House visit and – almost assuredly – more QB news to come.
So, yeah, forget about any hint of an offseason.
It didn’t used to be this way though. Even as recently as 20 years ago, you had draft weekend an occasional free-agent signing or off-season player update.
But mainly there were five-plus relatively quiet months between the Super Bowl and training camp, and the season’s first glimpse of televised football in the Hall of Fame Game was a wondrous event.
Now, save for maybe a few weeks in late June and early July, the NFL is running on a 12-month news cycle.
And, again, that’s particularly true here in the Centennial State, where the other three main professional sports franchises have combined for zero (as in none) playoff-advancing victories in the last five years – let alone a championship and accompanying parade downtown.
So, barring the Nuggets winning the NBA Draft lottery, the Avs axing Patrick Roy or the Rockies flipping the time-worn script and remaining in reasonable contention past Memorial Day, expect the Orange and Blue to continue to dominate the Front Range headlines, posts and airwaves.
The NFL offseason, after all, has ceased to exist.
