DENVER-
A season earlier, Jake Plummer directed the Broncos into the AFC championship game. On Tuesday, Mike Shanahan was fielding questions about the status and future of the 10-year veteran, and whether there was a clear date to get deal done.
“Really there’s not a target date,” Shanahan said. “He’s 40-18 as a starter (here) and there should be a number teams that want to look at a starter and to give him the opportunity to show what he’s capable of doing.”
He added that it wasn’t out of the question that Plummer would return in 2007. “Nothing has closed,” Shanahan said.
Plummer started the first 11 games of the season before being benched in favor of 2006 first round draft choice Jay Cutler. Despite being 2-3 with Cutler as the starter, Shanahan had no regrets in making the move.
“I definitely thought it was the right time when you’re averaging 17 points a game and you’re 7-4 and you’re not going anywhere in the playoffs,” Shanahan said. “Not with 17 points a game. We put Jay in there and we averaged 25 points a game.”
One month removed from being eliminated from the playoffs with a loss to San Francisco in their last regular-season game, Shanahan addressed several questions in his annual offseason state of organization session.
“What we’ve been doing the last couple of days and will be doing into the night is going through all the free agents at every position, take a look at if players can upgrade us at starting positions and look at the salary cap as well,” Shanahan said. “We’ll take a look at depth at every position knowing that a guy is one play away from being a starter.”
“We’ll do that over the next three weeks to get an idea of what direction we’re going in free agency and then we’ll target the draft after that,” He said. “So it’s a little early to say which direction we’re going to go.”
He said he was assured of the return of several players, specifically John Lynch, Rod Smith and Tom Nalen.
“They will all be back,” Shanahan said. “Tom had a very good season, a Pro Bowl season.”
Shanahan was as quick in naming a replacement at right cornerback for Darrent Williams, who was fatally shot several hours after the San Francisco game.
“Domonique Foxworth will be the starting right cornerback and Karl Paymah has experience at that position,” he said. “We lost a great person at that position and I don’t think I need to dwell at that.”
Williams also was the team’s primary punt returner. Determining a replacement for those duties will be done in the future.
He finished with a question about playing on Thanksgiving. The Broncos have played successive years on the holiday.
“I like to play on Thanksgiving,” he said. “Maybe, they would give us a home game.”
