Today’s question about the Broncos comes from Derek Schmidt in Toronto. Send your questions via e-mail to jlegwold@denverpost.com.
Q: I keep reading articles about us only having six picks in the 2011 draft, but we received an undisclosed pick from Detroit in the Alphonso Smith trade along with tight end Dan Gronkowski. With the season being over now, do we know what round it is in?
A: Derek, the Broncos — after a flurry of trades, most of which have involved draft picks, over the past two years — have just those six picks remaining for the 2011 draft.
They have a pick in the first (second overall), two in the second, a third-round pick and two sixth-round picks. The sixth-round picks were each acquired in a trade.
One of the sixth-round picks came in the deal that sent cornerback Smith to the Lions for Gronkowski.
The other sixth-rounder came from the Patriots in the deal that brought running back Laurence Maroney to Denver. The Broncos sent a fourth-round pick to New England in that trade.
And the two deals are representative, as is the relatively light six-pick total in April, of where the Broncos’ current personnel troubles stem from.
Just a year before trading Smith, the Broncos sent a first-round pick in the 2010 draft to move up in the second round of the 2009 draft to select him. That 2010 pick ended up being the 14th pick overall for the Seahawks.
They selected safety Earl Thomas with it. He started 16 games and had 76 tackles and five interceptions for a Seahawks team now in the divisional round of the playoffs.
The Broncos have already traded Smith, so they essentially handed Thomas to the Seahawks. Thomas has the look of a long-term starter, and the Broncos have nothing in return to show for it.
In the Maroney deal, they got a running back who did not have a carry in the Broncos’ final 10 games of the season. He was even a game-day inactive for the final eight games and not even in uniform.
So the Broncos essentially sent a fourth-round pick — the same round the Broncos selected Elvis Dumervil and Brandon Marshall in the 2006 draft — to New England and got a sixth-round pick in return.
And whether McDaniels actually made all of those decisions, those are exactly the kind of trades that send teams to the bottom of the standings and get the people who made them fired.
Teams cannot consistently ship more value out the door than they get in return. Some trades work and some trades don’t; that’s how it goes.
But to trade so many draft picks to acquire so many players who are no longer with the team has put the Broncos in a difficult position to move forward. And they’ll likely be shopping to get more picks in any way they can in the coming months.
Jeff Legwold: 303-954-2359 or jlegwold@denverpost.com
