Broncos Shopping Alphonso Smith

NOT
Nice move McX. Hope you learned from it.

I am very surprised

If he is really traded, my perceptions of the depth at CB – and Squid in particular will change.

Ridiculousness. You don’t give up on a first-round pick after only a year.

I think most of us thought he would ride it out another year and see if Phonz worked out or everybody forgot. The fact that he (McD) is basically admitting this draft pick was a mistake means, IMO, that we will see that particular draft move move again in the future—- McG, since the coach seems to agree with you on Phonz, you have now officially won this debate, at least for me. I am going to view this as if we drafted somebody that blew out a knee with a carreer ending injury, and hope to heck that we don’t have to have this debate in the future. Now, if we can just get even a 5th round pick……..might be better than using a spot on the 53 for somebody who no longer has the faith of the coaching staff.

I’m shocked? Oh wait. Just kidding.

A 5th round pick sounds good to me.

while I think McD wants to be justified about giving up a first rounder for him,
I don’t see McD letting his ego overriding his common sense. If Phonz doesn’t deserve to be on the team, he shouldn’t be here. There are other DB’s on the roster that are outplaying him NOW, with less experience at that. I don’t think Phonz is safe. He may stay on the team, but he’s not safe.

i, too, would like to see a power back in return instead of a pick. still waiting… with smith, this appears to be a mental/motivational issue, not a talent issue. giving up on a high pick after 1 season is very surprising. whatever, if cox/thompson perform at that level, then i really could care less what round we got a bonafide cb, as long as we got one. right?

That’s the thing about taking risks. Failure is as bitter as success is sweet. But I really don’t think anyone at Dove Valley had any illusions about that. You take your lumps and move on.

Besides after last night, I imagine even Phonz’s parents are ready for a change.

Good luck, kid. Hope you didn’t spend too much on a house.

You take a chance and sometimes it doesn’t work out. Where most people go wrong is they try, try, try after the fact to prove themselves right instead of letting go.

If this is true, I think it shows just how little ego Josh McDaniels has. He’s not holding onto a mistake so that one day he can say “I told ya so! I was right!” He’s moving on and will most likely say something to the effect of “we put the best players we can on the field, regardless of where they were drafted.”

So it’s fine to discuss it but hard to praise or criticize them yet because nothing happened. :-)

first, in terms of trades, I know in the NBA you have to wait a certain amount of time before you trade someone you just signed as a free agent. Is it the same in the NFL? I ask because people are advovating for the Broncos to trade Jones instead of Phonze, but I’m not entirely sure you can trade a guy you just signed.

Second, if this does indeed go through, I’ll be disappointed. Obvoiusly you expect more from a 1st/2nd round pick but then again if we missed on him and hit on Cox what’s the real difference? We could have easily hit on Phonze and missed on Cox and we’re no better for it. The main point of contention is what we gave up for him, but it’s really moot because there’s no guarantee that pick would have hit either.

We stole Perrish Cox in the 5th Round and his salary is nothing comparted to A. Smith’s contract and he is twice the player.

The draft is hit or miss. Even good teams miss on players.

McDaniels did very well in this year’s draft.

Demaryius Thomas = Should be great player

Tim Tebow = getting better and better every week.

Zane Beadles = will end up starting multiple games this year.

Joe Walton = Starting Center and looks like Tom Nalen II

Eric Deckers = STUD WR

Perrish Cox = looks very good!!!!

THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT

GO BRONCOS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rub some dirt all up in that and walk around a bit…it will feel better.

Like I said above, if they do get a 5th or better for Phonz, it is a win. He has not shown that he has what it takes to be a NFL caliber CB. Odds are highly against his making it based on what I’ve seen at this point. He should be doing much better than he is.

 michaelombardi
  
Hearing from a souce close to player that the Broncos will make it official toimorrow and place Elvis Diumervil on IR

I think McDaniels expression when asked to comment on Smith’s stellar (or words to that effect) performance said it all. Smith has potential and could still become a very solid player but McDaniels is not going to put up with mistakes. Making mistakes is the one thing that McDaniels can’t accept. Thus, Smith is a very dispensable part in the scheme of things.

The story behind Smith’s apparent availability is the emergence of Syd’Quan Thompson. Cox is also part of the story, but Thompson’s performance has pushed him into ‘keeper’ status and the staff would prefer keeping him rather than Smith. And they really don’t want to keep 6 CBs.

Smith may remain with the team — just as Moss did — but he’ll fall on the depth chart and there aren’t enough assignments to give him that would justify his salary. Another team could benefit from having Smith, but our depth situation at CB is too strong to allow waiting for him to develop.

Re: Jones. Jones hasn’t impressed me, but he’s a little more useful and has less marketability. Teams aren’t going to be willing to trade for Jones but they might trade for Smith. And Smith would benefit from having a change of scenery. He’s still a young and talented player who would benefit from a trade and a new fanbase with fresh expectations.

Finally, performance counts. Smith did some excellent things against Minnesota but his performance on STs — oddly — was an area where he really hurt himself (both literally and figuratively). In order to play as a nickel CB, he had to justify his presence on the active list through STs performance. I saw a lot of field awareness from Thompson on kick returns and none from Smith.

I think Smith is right now our 4th best CB. With that said, he’s done a decent to good job, but as a 4th CB he’s not going to be starting/playing many games, if at all, plus as has been noted Squid seems to play better on special teams.

With that said, I think the Broncos will be fine keeping him, but as he’s not going to be playing much if at all, might as well shop him to see if anyone has any interest, pick or player, if not then they keep him and don’t lose anything.

I think Phonz has played better than Squid based on what string he’s been playing against, but they couldn’t really get a pick or player for Squid if they tried.

I think it’s basically comes down to the fact that the CB position is overloaded with talent, Phonz is better (or at least seems to have to ability to be) than a lot of teams #3 (some teams even there #1) CB. So if your overloaded at position w/ talented players, sometimes you have to cut ties with one of them, like the Vikings are going to have to do w/ there LB/DL depth.

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I didn’t see Smith get a whole lot of playing time last year. How are we supposed to know the kids full potential after one season in which he didn’t even play that much? You need to put him in games that matter and then go from there.

Why not move Nate Jones? He’s hit his ceiling already…

And I hope you have a great career wherever you land.

I think my daughter took it. Sigh.

Anyways, I’ll take anything with a grain of salt until I hear it from Schefter

considering the way the injury bug has designated us as its #1 target this year? it always happens to at least one team every year, and it’s us this year…

We just would have traded the 2010 1st rounder down until we had 7 fifth round picks and a “system” punter.

To put it simply, the loss of Phonz(or the bust of Phonz) is a major setback to our teams development. I’ll never be happy concerning something that ultimately hurt my favorite football team.

there will be an element of relief to it. This has been like getting run over by a steamroller… it took forever it feels like.

…
Here he is, initiating a move to shop a player...we all know how that ends....another player run out of town!

If this is for real, and we have have to assume it is as I see little reporting incentive for La Confora otherwise, then what are the facts?

McX evaluated Smith highly back in 09 and was willing to trade a 2010 1st for a 2009 2nd. Simple discounting would tell you this DOES stack up in terms of value.

Smith then went on to play moderately for a season and showed flashes of promise and flashes of clumsiness in his second pre-season while competing with 4 other CBs – at least 1 of whom appears better than he.

So the question boils down to: do you keep an expensive 2nd round pick on the roster to play at most as a dime back? Or do you admit the product wasn’t as good as expected and try to re-coup some value for it? The answer to me appears easy – football is a business and high draft picks are by no means a home-run at any time…see ya later Phonz

(I see very little reason to have a dig at McD over this…everything done re: Phonz has been savvy from a managerial perspective)

Ask any fan who has suffered through a decade of Cleveland or Detroit drafts. Not to mention you can fill up the a phone book with the list of 1st round QBs who are sitting on the sidelines. A few years back didn’t Shanny draft like 2 or 3 DBs in one draft and then turned around and did it with DEs in another. Was he a bad GM because of that? Or did he understand the lottery nature of drafting and had hoped that given enough tickets he’d hit the jackpot?

Criticizing talent evaluation systems over time is statistically is valid. But picking on a particular player or even a single draft trade is foolish. It’s one thing to argue that certain types of trades tend to yield poorer results, but even that kind of analysis falls apart if the circumstances of a particular trade warrant making such a move.

Let’s face it. McX gambled. He lost that bet. But under the circumstances of inheriting the old guard’s talent scouts and everyone being unsure about what the new regime had in mind, there were lots of things that could have gone wrong. His scouts could have given him bad information or he could have simply misunderstood what they are trying to communicate. Was that a reason to be cautious? Some people seem to think so. But caution vs. letting it rip are simply philosophies. See John B’s write up of Brady Quinn throwing it underneath versus Tebow throwing it long. Most fan’s are singing Tebow’s praise while pooh-poohing Quinn. I believe it’s the same with McX. When they think a player is talented, they’re going to gamble to get him. But there’s never any garenty that the individual player picked from that gamble will pan out.

What i think is brilliant In is that McX has now set out clear standards for the 6 attributes scouts should rate players on. Everyone’s now on the same page. And better still, McX has built in a normalizing system to compensate for bets gone bad. Except for kickers, he’s bringing in lots of competition at every position. We’re seeing the fruits of that system right now. The Broncos have a ton of good CB’s and they’re trying to maximize the value of that bounty by trading one away for future goodies while leaving the position well manned.

Truth be told, we won’t really know if McX are good talent evaluators/draft strategists until we have a significant body of work to look at. Even this year’s seemingly good draft could also be a fluke.

In my book, hindsight is just another form of hate. Either you trust in the system McX has in place, or you don’t. Only time will tell. But grousing about one player move while gushing about another is just self-indulgent. And when it comes along with bitterness, well then, bitter.

I realize people are peeved he cost us a 1st rounder, one that turned out to be Earl Thomas and could actually be a better CB than Phonz (I realize Thomas plays Safety, but real draft pundints know Thomas skill set translate to CB, where he might actually be better than Safety), but still let’s move on. We have Cox and Squid waiting in the wings, and if McD and Co. have seen enough from them to say they don’t need to wait for Phonz to develop that’s good! Plus it’s not like this will cost our season, none of these guys we are debating about will start anytime soon (at least I hope)

Plus, not so sure this will work out. Not sure how many teams really want him, and I doubt McD will let such a heavily invested player walk after a little over a year.

And I’m not going to single anyone out, but there have been some comments that most would frown upon. Keep your emotions out of this and make informed opinions based on facts

technically it was 2 draft picks…the original 2nd which should have been used on someone else and the next years 1st draft pick.

In fact he is wrong quite often.

I’ll wait until there’s a more reliable source before believing this.

That said, Smith looked good to me in the preseason. I think if we do shop him, and he’s traded, he could very well end up as a great player. CB is a hard position to transition to in the NFL….Revis and Asomgha (sp) weren’t phenoms in their first year…..I’ll bet the Jets and Raiders are glad they didn’t shop them around…..

I’m not saying Smith will be as good as those guys, but if this happens, we’ll never know.

He showed some great flashes in preseason, and a few mistakes, but for this being his 2nd year, I think it would be bailing on him too early.

We fans are going to look back and say MCD hit and missed on the same number of players as Shanny. He’s definitely a high risk/high reward type of gambler.

So far some high risk moves have panned out while others havent. After this year we’ll have a better idea if MCD really knows what he is doing or if we’re all being taken for a ride.

i’ll reserve judgement until after the year.

Alphonso Smith traded to detroit for Dan Gronkowsk.

http://denver.sbnation.com/2010/7/30/1596241/denver-broncos-training-camp