For the rest of the country, particularly south Florida, this is a football trade, and a big one.
For Colorado, it’s the end of a melodrama that reached a Shakespearean scale.
Brandon Marshall’s final public appearance in Denver was as the prosecution’s star witness in the Darrent Williams murder trial. So, yeah, this thing went a little deeper than his yards-after-catch numbers.
But the bottom line is this: The Dolphins just got a heck of a football player. He’s high-maintenance and he’s worth it.
The Broncos did the best they could under the circumstances. Whether Josh McDaniels could have avoided this outcome by playing the situation differently is an interesting question, but it has also been irrelevant for quite some time. Too much water under the bridge, over the dam, wherever.
When McDaniels took over the Broncos in January 2009, Marshall had played three seasons, two of them producing sensational numbers, on a very modest fourth-round draft pick’s contract. He was ready to be rewarded.
McDaniels was just arriving. He wanted time to assess. He wasn’t handing out new contracts, particularly to a player he didn’t know, with documented off-field issues. Plus, he was asserting his authority, perhaps in ways that were, in retrospect, sub-optimal.
By the time he pulled the trigger on the deal with Miami, the relationship had reached the final stage of divorce. Both sides knew it was over and they were being reasonably nice to one another in an effort to end it amicably.
The Broncos put a first-round tender on Marshall, but the public nature of their differences hurt the club’s bargaining position. Other teams knew they could wait out the restricted free agency period because a reconciliation wasn’t likely. Ultimately, the Broncos were going to have to take what they could get.
Whether Marshall would have brought a first-round draft pick in trade under different circumstances we’ll never know, but it’s worth noting that neither Anquan Boldin nor Santonio Holmes, the most celebrated receivers traded lately, brought anything close.
In those circumstances, getting a second-round pick in this year’s draft and another second in next year’s is as much as the Broncos could have hoped for. It’s a good job of bargaining in a difficult situation, even if they did bring the difficulty on themselves. How good a deal it turns out to be on Denver’s end is all about what McDaniels and general manager Brian Xanders do with those picks.
Nationally, the operating assumption seems to be the Broncos must replace Marshall by drafting Oklahoma State star receiver Dez Bryant with their first-round pick — if he’s still on the board at No. 11.
As it happens, the pre-draft questions about Bryant — professionalism, maturity — were pretty much McDaniels’ complaints about Marshall. Reportedly, the Broncos will hold a private workout and meeting with Bryant this week to get a better handle on him as a prospect.
The Broncos now have picks No. 43 and 45 in the second round. They have numerous needs, including center, offensive guard and inside linebacker, not to mention wide receiver.
Having jettisoned a Pro Bowl quarterback in Jay Cutler and a Pro Bowl receiver in Marshall, McDaniels now has to show he can achieve similar levels of offensive productivity with less celebrated players.
The issue is not his team-oriented philosophy. Bill Belichick believes in it and he traded for Randy Moss. Bill Parcells believes in it and he just traded for Marshall. The issue for McDaniels is whether he can work with elite talents, whether he is flexible enough to welcome and not alienate them. Because, as both Belichick and Parcells know, it takes elite talent to win in the NFL.
The Broncos-Marshall melodrama is finally in the rearview. Whether it had to get to this point is just chatter now. It did. And once it did, this was the only possible outcome.
Given all that, the Broncos made a good deal. The Dolphins made a great one.
Dave Krieger: dkrieger@denverpost.com or
