Make that three people who will pick the Broncos’ new head coach.
Pat Bowlen, Joe Ellis. And Jay Cutler.
All right, so Cutler is a slight stretch. He did not make the trip Saturday to meet with New York Giants defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo. But Cutler has more influence on this decision than people might think.
After Mike Shanahan was fired Tuesday, Cutler, the Broncos’ 25-year-old quarterback, made it clear through an emotional phone call with Ellis, the Broncos’ chief operating officer, that play-caller Jeremy Bates had better stay.
Cutler reiterated his endorsement of Bates, in much calmer tones, during a phone call the following morning placed by Bowlen, the Broncos’ owner.
“Obviously he’s the man around here now, so I will be talking to Jay,” Bowlen said.
Cutler has been kept abreast of the coaching search. He knew the five candidates, not including Bob Stoops, before anyone else knew.
Cutler’s desire to retain Bates is tied for the top reason why the Broncos are leaning toward making a defensive coordinator their head coach. The other tied-for-first reason is this Broncos franchise desperately needs to fix its defense.
And the most impressive defensive coordinator by far on the market is Spagnuolo. If the Broncos get Spagnuolo, they would like Bates to become one of his top assistants.
Marshall gets huge raise.
There was instant credibility and even some redemption for Brandon Marshall after he was named to his first Pro Bowl last month.
There also was an enormous financial benefit. In part because he crossed playing-time thresholds, but mostly because of a Pro Bowl incentive written into his rookie contract, Marshall’s 2009 salary will jump from the $620,000 minimum for a fourth-year player to nearly $2.2 million — an increase of about 250 percent.
Three other players from the Broncos’ 2006 draft class — Tony Scheffler, Elvis Dumervil and Chris Kuper — met enough playing time and performance provisions to get a hefty raise for 2009.
The good news for the team is that since it insisted on four-year contracts instead of three-year deals for their rookies starting in 2006, none of those players will become restricted free agents, where the price to retain them likely would have been higher.
Why Bowlen did it.
Much as he tried to generalize rather than specify during his news conference Wednesday, Bowlen did explain why he fired Shanahan.
All one has to do is review his statements more closely.
Bowlen didn’t open by saying he was going in a different direction, or even that he had fired Shanahan. He said, “I have terminated Mike Shanahan as head coach.” Terminated? Goodness. Bowlen later said that as an owner, it’s hard to explain why his instincts told him it was time for a change.
“Twenty-one years of being at one organization and 14 years as head coach is about long enough,” Bowlen said.
What happened here is Bowlen simply got tired of Shanahan running his team. It’s the only way to explain the timing. Had Bowlen fired Shanahan after the 2007 season, when the Broncos went 7-9 and missed the playoffs for a second consecutive year, people would have been surprised but less shocked.
Had Shanahan been given one more year and missed the playoffs again in 2009, the fans and media wouldn’t have waited for Bowlen to fire him so much as they would have demanded it.
But firing Shanahan now had the feeling of abandoning a rebuilding project just as it was developing some promise. The only way to explain the timing is the owner had become fed up with owning a company that was run by somebody else.
“I’m here every day and I make the decisions,” Bowlen said Wednesday. “I run the show.”
Can’t say it much clearer than that.
Mike Klis: 303-954-1055 or mklis@denverpost.com
