Yesterday afternoon, a Bronco player who wishes to stay anonymous came by my house selling Girl Scout Cookies, and I took the opportunity to ask him about Josh McDaniels. Here's what he had to say:

" That guy? Screw him. After a loss, he made us wear dresses when we watched video tape of the game. He said, 'If you're going to play like little girls, you're going to watch film like little girls.' I mean, ego? McDaniels' ego is huge. The dude slapped me in the face in practice. He said, 'I'm Josh McDaniels, bitch.' Who does he think he is? I'm glad he's gone so I can play Backgammon during practice again like Shannahan used to let us do."

I also chanced to meet a Broncos position coach in the grocery store only hours later, and here's what he had to say:

"If a guy likes to dress up as Moussilini for coaches' meetings, I think that's a bit of a clue, okay. If you forgot to call him 'Your Highness' any time you addressed him, you had to do a hundred push-ups while he sat on your back. If you had a bad game, he would wipe his boogers on your face during team meetings. How are you supposed to do your job when you have that to look forward to every day you come in to work?"

The point? I've seen a number of "anonymous sources" lately on the internet elaborating on McDaniels' character. If you're not a reputable paper where the Chief Editor actually makes sure a writer's anonymous source exists before the writer publishes an article quoting said source, I don't want to hear it. There's nothing to keep these people from making stuff up for attention. And to make matters worse, you've got other sites quoting the anonymous source from the first site, and I'd bet money that the author of the second article didn't check out the anonymous source. This is worse than quoting pure rumor as truth (as is often done) because it's presented with the trappings of pure, incontrovertible proof.

So please, let's take these anonymous sources with a grain of salt.