Paige: It's time for minds to think alike
By Woody Paige
The Denver Post
Posted: 03/08/2009 12:30:00 AM MST
Kid McD and Jay-C, shake hands and come out fighting.
Fighting together for the Broncos.
There must not be bad blood.
This irrational, senseless, asinine feud has to end in the meeting they have this week. It has to end here. And from now on.
The Broncos have more important things to worry about.
Like, next season.
Like, their star, starting wide receiver might not be available for eight games.
Like, they have a convoluted mess at running back.
Like, they have to integrate at least a dozen free agents and as many as nine draft choices with the confused, holdover players.
Like, they have to retool the entire defense.
Like, they have to install a new offense.
Like, they have to find a quality kicker.
Like, they have to prove that replacing a two-time Super Bowl-winning coach was the right move.
Like, they have to recapture the loyalty of the wavering supporters, who are ill and fatigued over this brutal conflict involving the Broncos' young quarterback and young coach.
The most important relationship in sports is between the NFL coach and his quarterback. There is no relationship between Josh McDaniels and Jay Cutler.
Like, they don't like each other.
Dan Reeves and John Elway didn't like one another. (For those who never understood, Reeves once told me Elway didn't work hard enough and didn't even try to read defenses. Elway believed Reeves' offense was too conservative and didn't play to the QB's strengths.)
The difference between then and now is that Reeves hired and rehired (and fired) a coach/confidant/comforter for Elway.
Mike Shanahan.
Cutler had a coach/confidant/comforter in Jeremy Bates. He feels stranded, betrayed, unwanted. McDaniels fired his position coach, changed the offense, tried to trade him, released one of his closest friends (Niko Koutouvides) and intends to trade his best friend on the team (Tony Scheffler).
Sure, Cutler has to realize football is a business and stop moping, sulking, griping and acting like a child. But he certainly has been treated as a worthless commodity.
Owner Pat Bowlen, according to my sources, was miffed when Cutler refused to come to Denver for the McDaniels introduction. But it was an understandable decision by Cutler. He didn't know McDaniels and was still upset about the firing of Shanahan.
McDaniels has totally mishandled The Cutler Affair. McDaniels is coaching like a child. There were questions about his inexperience, his age and his background because of Bill Belichick's attitude toward the world. There is evidence these days the questions were warranted.
Meanwhile, the Kid McD/Jay-C grudge match has overshadowed everything else happening with the Broncos.
For instance, Brandon Marshall. A year ago at this time, Marshall got into trouble with his longtime girlfriend again, and I pleaded with him to grow up. After being suspended by the NFL, Marshall did mature during the season and became a model citizen with youth in the community. He had dumped the girlfriend and has announced his engagement with another woman. But he's gotten into a row with his fiancee (in Atlanta, as usual, for Marshall), and the NFL may suspend him for half the 2009 season for repeated arrests.
Where's McDaniels and Cutler when Marshall needs their counsel and encouragement? Shanahan went to battle with the NFL for his players. McDaniels is hiding in the office he spent time redecorating, and Cutler has been
There's all these new free agents nobody's paying particular attention to. McDaniels chose to go for quantity instead of quality — and signed several players with uncertain futures. Once more, it appears the defense won't be "Orange Crush," but more like "Broncos Band-Aid."
I like Chris Simms, a one-time starting playoff quarterback, as a solid No. 2, but McDaniels is more interested in backups and a long snapper (when there was nothing wrong with Mike Leach) when the team needed an all-pro defensive end and a new kicker.
And what is it with the gaggle of geese at running back? The Broncos waded through eight last season. Rather than signing one strapping, stalwart, 1,500-yard rusher, McDaniels decided on signing three.
And where is the X-Man? Brian Xanders has been about as functional as an appendix.
The so-called general manager didn't solve or even talk about the Cutler-McDaniels dispute. He's the X'd-Out Man.
And Bowlen is not taking control in the chaos and confusion.
So the millions of "fans" of the Broncos are left in the wilderness wondering why Shanahan was ceremoniously fired and wondering if they should give up. Have the Broncos shifted from The Mastermind to The Brainlesstrust?
It's up to McDaniels and Cutler, in their meeting, to settle their own fight and put the fight back in the Broncos to become a good team for the first time in years. At this moment, they're worse off than ever.
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