Spat headed for bad ending
March 14
Denver Post columnist Dave Krieger
"Despite public assurances to the contrary from Dove Valley, it's looking more and more likely that the Broncos' melodrama with their starting quarterback will end badly. Even if Cutler shows up for the offseason conditioning program Monday, it may be too little too late. Short of a complete Cutler mea culpa, which seems unlikely, this thing may have reached the point of no return. Putting one of his area homes on the market may or may not even be relevant. I'm told his parents had been staying there while Cutler, when in town, spent most of his time at another place of his in LoDo. More significant is Cutler's loss of his closest ally at Broncos headquarters. When he failed to return owner Pat Bowlen's phone calls in the midst of his standoff with new coach Josh McDaniels, I'm told Bowlen was apoplectic. If McDaniels' refusal to come clean about shopping Cutler in trade talks was the eye-opener for the quarterback, Cutler's failure to return his phone calls may have done the trick for Bowlen. Hardly noticed amid all the hubbub was that McDaniels signed free agent Chris Simms to a two-year, $6 million contract that could go considerably higher based on incentive clauses that will reward him for significant playing time. Even without the incentives, that's a lot of money to pay someone to hold a clipboard, especially on a team with so many holes to fill and limited money with which to fill them. You have to wonder why Simms, who bolted Tampa over the lack of opportunity to compete for the starting job, would sign so quickly with a team that gave him no chance to start, which would have been the presumption in Denver up until two weeks ago. So I have to admit that my earlier assumption may have been dead wrong. I thought even a young coach as apparently sure of himself as McDaniels wouldn't be counting on Simms to start after throwing two NFL passes since 2006. But assuming Sage Rosenfels wins the starting job in Minnesota, the only quarterbacks I know of making more than Simms to play backup are Vince Young, Matt Leinart and Alex Smith, all of whom signed contracts anticipating they would be starters. Young and Leinart, Cutler's 2006 draft classmates, have since been supplanted by aging veterans who were supposed to be backups - Kerry Collins and Kurt Warner. It wouldn't make sense for McDaniels to knock down Cutler's trade value by following suit, but it does suggest that trading Cutler remains a real possibility. The power of the Broncos to shape the thinking of their fans remains as strong as ever. Cutler had very few critics in these parts when Broncos management stood behind him. Now, less than three months after his main sponsor was fired, his critics are everywhere. Talk-show hosts who have never met him feel free to call him a baby on the air with no response from the Broncos. That kind of fissure is hard to repair. It must have been quite a surprise for Cutler to learn he was just another employee, like you or me, and should act like on
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