Title

Broncos Fans: Welcome Back to the Weeds (Coors Light on sale)

Jay Cutler was a franchise quarterback, or at the very least that was where he was trending. The town thought he was good (he’s no Elway, but he’s better than Jake the Snake); the NFL obviously thought he was very good; and the Broncos could have spent the next 5 years plugging in anybody around him in their quest for the Super Bowl and the fans would have felt all right. For fans, having Cutler as your franchise quarterback felt just like you did as a child sleeping in the back seat while your dad drove through the rain:  the car is going to stay on the road, just close your eyes and you might wake up at Uncle Super Bowl’s house. But McDaniels traded that guy away. Not having a franchise guy is like when your oldest friend in high school first gets his license and is passing other guys in one-lane school zones and smoking Parliament Lights and you get the feeling  that there is a good chance you are going to end up in a fiery wreck and will soon be watching your arm smolder 10 feet away from your body through the broken windshield.

Sure, Cutler was acting like a wild brat, I get that. But why would Josh McDaniels throw your franchise to the wolves? This is your franchise guy, not some fly-by-night girlfriend. This is your wife, the mother of your children, for rich and for poor. You hold on to your franchise quarterback like you do your wife: you make it work, you get down on your knees as you make promises, you massage their feet, you take them out to dinner, and hang out with their parents, you do everything you can to keep them because if you don’t you know you are going to end up in a one-bedroom apartment surround by beer cans and take-out drinking yourself to death. An NFL team can pretend all they want, but without a QB like Cutler they are out in the NFL borderlands, waist deep in the weeds, while your fans watch you in the distance bumbling through the growth, heading down paths that all lead to the same place: mediocrity. Teams die out there. And they die alone.

Cutler had taken the Broncos away from all that; the Broncos were out of the weeds, they were in that clear, magical space that NFL teams find themselves in when they have their franchise QB. NFL rosters begin and end with the guy under center, and a team without him is like putting a nice stereo in a Chevy Nova– you are not fooling anyone, you still drive a Nova. The Broncos finally had the guy to replace Elway. He was their GUY! If I’m a Bronco’s fan this morning, I feel sick because I know it could take years– decades even– to find that new guy. Ask the Buffalo Bills who are still looking to replace Jim Kelly or the 49er’s who are trying to replace Jeff Garcia (though in fact they are still trying to replace Steve Young).  The boys in Dallas aren’t that far removed from Quincy Quarter and they’re not sure if they are sold on Tony Romo. The Browns have been around since 1999 and they haven’t had one single QB their fans can feel good about.

Not having a QB will suck the marrow off a fan’s bones. It will take you and slowly squeeze the life from you as you watch mediocre QB, after mediocre QB toss 4-yard passes on 3 and 8. If I am a Broncos fan I am confused. I am betrayed. I am done with Josh McDaniels who somehow can’t change the mind of a 26-year-old kid who had his feelings hurt over trade rumors, a guy who decides that Kyle Orton and his fabulous neck beard can step into John Elway’s Hall-of-Fame-sized shoes. If I am a Broncos fan, I am taking a day off from work, I am retreating to my basement, I am opening the first of 30 Coors Lights, I am staring into the dark screen of the TV, and I am wondering if it will be worth turning on this year, or next year, or ever again.