Our Own Free Agents, Tic-Tock, It's Time to Pen a Battle Plan

The combine is comming up in just a short couple weeks, which should keep us all pretty busy ooohing and aaahhing, and putting our man crushes & mock drafts in overdrive. After that, free agency opens on March 5th, which iif it's anything like last year, we should expect to see Josh make moves like Napolean Dynamite. Should be pretty fun to watch.

Yet, expecting two weeks of quiet wouldn't necessarily be accurate, because more important than March 5th might be March 4th, 20 days from now. It's the deadling to which each team must have their one-year tenders offered to restricted free agents. Any RFA's not tendered by then become UFA's. So these tenders could start comming at any time.

And let's not forget about the unrestricted guys either. By my count, we've got about ten UFA's. Without action, these guys hit the open market with no strings attached to Denver come March 5th. So some decisions will soon need be made on guys like Hochstein, Holliday, Hamilton and Tony Carter. Ryan McBean will likely happen very soon, and others will probably walk without much thought given.

So with action seemingly so immenent, I figured it was now or never to sing my swan song, to get off the fence and make some solid projections of how we deal with these guys. I'm not sure you necessarily care about what I think, but this is also something for me to later look at to evaluate my own judgments. With accountability from clear porjections, hopefully I can learn from mistakes and look to future improvement.

I'm not going to go into the draft aspect, but rather just detail what course I see likely with each of our restricted/unrestricte/exclusive rights free agents. I still may change my opinions, but tomorrow could be too late, so for the sake of my own learning I'm willing to jump the gun just a bit.

Speaking of jump, here next, I'll detail likely actions for the key players, then briefly take a stab at the lesser key guys that may require action over the comming weeks.

Brandon Marshall

Tendering Marshall is the action here, but only as the means to an end. It’s simply the conduit we use to determine his worth, then either contract him or move him. Having him play out the season under tender is absolutely not an option. It would be begging from bended knee to have more punted balls, bad attitudes, and cancer in the locker-room. I would rather watch paint dry than watch that drama unfold.

Moving to the next stage, the big issue to getting a beastly contract commitment to work for both sides could likely come down to "guaranteed" money. We should neither ignore the risk, nor harp on it, but Mr. Marshall’s past cannot be ignored no matter how much one wants to believe in him. It’s not necessarily naïve to believe in him, but one league suspension and two team suspensions cannot be ignored, nor can his thirteen, or so, arrests.

Past behaviors tend to predict future risk. Knowing that an eight game suspension is likely, should Brandon have another brush with the law, dictates that a team protects itself against guaranteed money. Make no mistake, a contract extension for Marshall is to bet on Marshall’s ability to stay out of trouble with a good attitude, the production side of it is much less risky.

In the end, I think Marshall and management will wait to show the player his worth before any move is made one way or the other. Which means the first move is to place the high tender on him. Then field offers with open dialogue and see where things shake out. I said I’m getting off the fence, so I want to go on record here as saying I think he gets traded 60/40.

Matt Prater

This one shouldn’t be too hard. A 2nd round tender for Matt Prater will cost $1.759M. You can’t really go any lower than that, because him not being drafted likely means the next step down would cost the responsive team no draft picks, only money to attain him. $1.76M is fairly cheap even for a kicker, so this seems like an easy solution. Prater could be given a contract extension anytime throughout the off-season/season, but I don’t expect that it will be a focus early on.

Elvis Dumervil

The ability to tender these restricted free agents is something of a Birthday present this year. With the players’ fear of playing out the season under tender, negation leverage resides near exclusively with management. Granted, Dumervil’s paycheck this year, even under tender, will be far more than he has ever made before. But the sack-master is still looking down the barrel of a potential lockout, potentially meaning no payday next year. So he faces a very real possibility of making $3.168M over the next two years combined versus cashing a fat signing bonus in the here and now.

On the other hand, with similar players very recently cashing in on new contracts, it would be hard to pull the wool over his eyes too badly.

Anyway, even for the highest tender amount, there’s a very real chance that offer(s) come sheets come in on him while we’re still working out a contract. So if I’m management, I try to lock him up right now. As you’ll see in the chart below, I project giving him a very large amount of guaranteed money, a very handsome signing bonus, and perhaps just to the lighter side of fair market value as to the average yearly salary.

The immediate course is to tender him for a 1st and 3rd rounder if nothing is done before that becomes necessary. Also, don’t be shocked if a franchise tag gets used instead. I would doubt it, but this is the one case on the team where I could see it possible.

Kyle Orton

Mr. Bowlen recently stated he would like to draft a QB, should the chance present itself. Now I’m not one to read too much into coach-speak, rumors, the he said, she said, etc... But when Mr. B throws out a hint like that, I listen. And for that reason, I would say Kyle’s years here are minimally numbered.

That said, let’s get clear that Orton’s not a problem to be fixed. It wasn’t Kyle’s fault that Ryan Harris got hurt, that the interior line couldn’t "push", or that the defense stopped defending the run.  Even with all that, last season proved we can win without whatshisname, and Kyle was a big part of that. He did a great job and made amazing strides under Coach McDaniels’ tutelage. He’s a game manager, sure. But he’s a very good game manager. You don’t have to like him, but you very likely have to live with him, at least in the short term.

Chris Simms isn’t going to take helm and neither is Brandstater, certainly not yet anyway. David Carr is not an upgrade and Vick isn’t welcome here. The rumors about Donavon McNabb were ridiculous and unfounded, and an aging, injury prone scrambler was never really an option anyway. Oh, and whoever your current draft crush is, well he’s not the immediate answer either.

So we need to assume that Kyle Orton will be our starter next year, and leave the eventual replacement discussion for another time. The question now becomes how we keep him. Originally, I wanted to see him signed to a two year deal, because I could see a few very positive results from that action. First is that Kyle would be ecstatic to have a little security going into a potential lockout; he would soldier on and happily lead the offense like he always has. He would feel emboldened, that for the first time in his career somebody has shown confidence and faith in him. And that my friends, could truly make a difference.

Also, with what we should expect to be a better running game, a new focus on getting the short third-downs, and hopefully a run defense that defends all season long… Kyle’s stock will improve. Meaning, with a two year deal, we would still own the rights to him after he showed for two seasons that he is better than an average QB. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Kyle could then fetch a 2nd rounder or more. And it goes without saying that taking care of your players (by extending contracts when warranted), is good locker room mojo.

The problem with that solution, however, is that I ignorantly hadn’t realized the sheer amount of money that even mediocre QB’s make. Even guys like Delhomme and Garrard make $8M-$10M per year, while tendering Orton will cost about $3M. So sorry Kyle, but in the end, there’s just no way that Denver’s respect for you can single handedly kick over an extra $5M+. It’s just bad business.

So that’s the nuts of it with Mr. Orton. The Broncos will likely tender him for a first-round pick, but don’t be surprised if they go with the highest tender of a 1st and 3rd, either. In fact, that’s how I would do it. The difference in price paid is only like $500k, and we need Kyle to go into the season as our starter. We can’t chance somebody with a first-rounder in the teens, or later, offering Orton $5M to wear different colors. If we said take him, it would cost us a starting QB, one that knows our system, for a draft pick that’s not nearly high enough to go after Bradford. So I say just don’t play with fire, no matter how unlikely. It’s not worth 500k when you might then lose $3M, or a QB, just for being greedy.

I wouldn’t be surprised by either tender amount, but for the sake of clarity, I’m going with my gut, which is the highest tender. Kyle Orton tender for a 1st and 3rd pick and a salary of $3.168M. In addition, I would almost expect that later in the off-season, Kyle is given some sort of bonus/additional performance incentive.

Chris Kuper

Although I think most here are on the same page with Kuper, I’ve also heard it said that he needs to go. I say, no way. We’ve got a lot of issues to deal with on the line, and not just the starters but a colossal lack of quality depth all around. No need to create another hole to fill. The recurring theme, though, is where to tender him at. He was a 5th rounder in Mike Shanahan’s ’06 draft and has started 31 of the last 32 games. I don’t think the Redskins have a 5th round pick this year, but I wouldn’t put it passed Shanahan to go find one somewhere and start a small bidding war with us. So the action here is to place a 2nd round tender on Chris Kuper and pay him the $1.759M. In fact, I would be less surprised if it was a first-round tender, than if it was the 5th round tender.