Originally Posted by DomCasual
Well, other than Russ, who was an unmitigated disaster (and he actually got two years), they've not really made any kind of investment in them.
But I would argue that the biggest contributor to this has been the train wreck of an ownership situation since Pat Bowlen stepped away from the team. In just a few years, we went from having one of the best ownership situations in all of sports to literally having the worst (at least in the NFL). Bowlen's memory started to slip in 2009 or 2010. John Elway (and Peyton Manning), early on, mitigated some of that - for the good and the bad, there was no doubt who was running the Broncos.
After the last Super Bowl, there were just too many competing opinions, and too many conflicts of interest. Where does that get you? It gets you passed up by the best coaching candidates, because they don't want to go down with a sinking ship - instead of the Kyle Shanahans of the world, you end up with Vance Joseph, Vic Fangio, and Nathaniel Hackett.
In terms of taking your lumps with a young quarterback, it gets you guys like Case Keenum and Joe Flacco. They're quick fixes, at best. When they don't do well out of the gate (because they're, you know, not good - in most cases, they never were good, other than a flash or two), you quickly move on; because you don't really have any skin in the game with them.
Russell Wilson is a great example of having a committed owner - ironically, in both his signing and in his release. No one at Dove Valley since Bowlen would have ever had the authority (or the courage) to sign off on a commitment like Russell Wilson. And what's worse is that once that situation was clearly doomed, it took courage and vision (and money) to say, "Let's take our lumps on this and move on." Otherwise, we let it play out, and we have absolutely no hope for the next three years.
Everyone is excited about Bo Nix. But the biggest signing the Broncos have made since Peyton Manning was the Walton-Penner group.
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