ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Vonnie B’Vsean Miller Jr. lives his life with a golden rule.
“Maybe it’s just the little sick feeling I get from telling people the truth. People tell me the truth. I like to tell other people the truth,” the Denver Broncos star pass rusher said, well, truthfully. “I see it as the truth. My profession is all about the truth.”
Whether people call him Vonnie, Von, Super Bowl 50 MVP, Mr. Miller or anything else doesn’t change his approach about how he’ll treat you.
“I love to tell people uncomfortable stuff,” Von said with a grin, knowing how the eerie statement sounded. “I love keeping it brutally honest. That’s one of my best characteristics. I love keeping it brutally honest with not only my teammates but my family. I just like keeping it real.”
That’s why the truth hurt so much on Thursday when Von—as most call him—laid out the cold hard truth about the 2017 Broncos.
While others around town—and in the Broncos’ own building—have continued to maintain Denver has a championship-caliber defense, the highest-paid defender in NFL history took a hard stance against those people—many of whom are his own teammates.
“We didn’t win this year. So, you can’t really call it a championship defense,” the nearly always positive Miller said. “We’ll still be living in the past if I say we’re still the championship defense.”
On one hand, Denver’s defense has the opportunity to finish the season as the league’s No. 1 defense in terms of yards given up—technically the go-to measurement for defensive rank—as they currently sit at No. 2 in the league, only 45 yards behind the Minnesota Vikings.
However, that same defense, which would be championship-caliber judging by total yards, would be far from that in terms of scoring defense as they currently allow 23.7 points per game, putting them in the bottom-third of the league.
Regardless, at 5-10 entering the final meaningless game of the season, there is nothing that would indicate anything on the team is championship-caliber, as Von suggested.
Here’s where the but—in an encouraging way—comes into play. Although the Broncos don’t have a championship-level team now, they’ve got the foundation of the structure for one built.
“We still have a really good defense that can win championships, yes, we do have that. We just have to build on that. I think we will,” Von said, building the team up while shining hope for the future. “If you look at the leadership that we have here—two times not going to the playoffs is just not going to ride… We have championship leadership here. That’s still there. We might not have the championship defense, but we still have championship leadership.”
“We still have championship facilities and championship staff here,” he added firmly. “As long as we have that new glitz, the championships will come.”
Decade in and decade out, Pat Bowlen always made sure the Broncos had the “glitz” needed to contend for world championships. Currently in a rare two-year lull, Von Miller’s brutal honesty gives a glimpse of optimism as to why the 2015 Super Bowl champs could be primed for a quick bounce-back next season.
“What you put out on the football field is what it is. You can’t sugar coat that. That’s what I like to do,” Miller said talk about his honest approach with his teammates. “I feel like over time, if the rookies develop that same mindset, we will be a hell of a team to beat in the future.”
