On his final carry for the Broncos, Travis Henry was run out of town by the same man who gave the 29-year-old tailback a $6.7 million salary last season and stood by Henry when allegations of marijuana use threatened to send his NFL career up in smoke.
On Monday morning, Denver coach Mike Shanahan cut Henry without so much as saying goodbye.
And the Broncos are better off without him.
“Enough is enough,” said Shanahan, wiping his hands clean of a fistful of trouble that wore No. 20 for the Broncos.
Many of us cannot recite the precise number of yards Henry gained on the ground during his single season carrying the rock in Denver.
But there’s one statistic that will haunt this town’s brief memory of Henry: nine kids with nine women.
What does a player’s night moves have to do with lugging a football?
Maybe nothing.
Or maybe Shanahan discovered Henry cannot be trusted to act responsibly.
“I think our guys know that if you don’t do the little things the right way, you’re not going to be with us, regardless of what kind of signing bonus you’ve got, regardless of how high profile you are,” Shanahan said Monday after dropping Henry from the Broncos roster within 15 months of signing him to a five-year, $22.5 million contract and a $12 million bonus.
“To win a championship, you’ve got to have everybody going in the same direction. And if you have one of your better players not buying into it, chances are you’re never going to win anything. Nobody’s bigger than the team. That’s the bottom line.”
While Shanahan has heard plenty of grief for personnel blunders since the Broncos last won a Super Bowl, he deserves applause for taking harsh action to ensure there’s nothing less than a championship attitude on his team.
In early October, Henry was leading the NFL in rushing. Now, he’s unemployed.
For a back with a reputation as being tough to tackle, it was a rapid, clumsy fall from grace. He had the look of an athlete starting to show the wear and tear of a violent sport.
But what’s saddest is Henry ultimately tripped on his own feet, then stumbled toward the same exit door at Dove Valley where receiver Javon Walker was last seen departing.
The purge of two offensive stars came as no shock to anyone who was paying attention as frustrations mounted with each loss of last season’s 7-9 record.
Walker began too many of his sentences and expected all pass routes to end with me, me, me. Henry frequently seemed to do his job with one eye peeled on the clock in an I’d-rather-be-anywhere-but- here stare.
Shanahan was obviously angered by Henry, and the coach probably had good reason to feel a sense of betrayal.
When the league forced the Broncos to deal with the lengthy distraction of a drug investigation into Henry, Shanahan stuck his neck out for the player, going so far as to get hit with a $25,000 fine for speaking combatively in the running back’s defense.
“I stood up for Travis and gave him, I believe, a second chance,” Shanahan said.
The Broncos will find a tailback, whether it’s newly appointed starter Selvin Young or rookie Ryan Torain or veteran Michael Pittman to rush for 1,000 yards, because moving the football is what Shanahan does best. But the fact of the matter is a key offensive position has been in constant transition since Denver traded Clinton Portis in 2004.
Maybe using a No. 1 draft choice on Oregon running back Jonathan Stewart instead of Boise State offensive tackle Ryan Clady might not have been such a crazy idea.
After all these years and all the times he has been burned by Dale Carter or Daryl Gardener or Walker or Henry, perhaps Shanahan has learned that life’s too short and the margin of error in the NFL is too small to risk a bad teammate contaminating the locker room with selfishness or excuses for failure.
“The way you win championships is you have a character team,” Shanahan said.
Good people do not always become big winners.
But, in a town that loves the Broncos with the hugs that Denver fans gladly give their hometown heroes, the measure of this team should be more than victories and defeats.
Give the Denver coach credit for one thing.
In the name of ego, Shana- han does not waste time trying to justify his mistakes.
He erases them.
That’s why Henry is gone without a trace.
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
