FanPost

Bronco Down

It was pretty recent that I said in a comment that I've never been wrong here at MHR when loudly considering an idea stupid or a non-option. I'm not exactly shy in giving those opinions, and I probably plant those overgrown seeds about a dozen times each offseason (for the last three years or more) - generally relating to the shinny new flavor of the week in free agency, but sometimes including our own guys as well. There's never a shortage of rumors on major moves, and until now I've never really been on the wrong side of one of them.

I was wrong about Elvis Dumervil. His value wasn't what I thought it was. I said he would never get cut and considered it a preposterous idea. He got cut. I thought he had trade value. He didn't. I didn't foresee such massive tectonic shifts in the market coming. I could have. I was pretty loud in thinking Elvis Dumervil is worth the $10M per year he was getting paid, and maybe I was wrong there, too.

My friends, I no longer have a dog in that fight. I'm no longer clinging to a faulty idea or trying to preserve credibility on the issue. Up, down and sideways: I was wrong. I don't like it, but I'm over it.

I'm hoping some others are over it by now, too. Whether you nailed it, or whether you're living in Wrongsville like me: It's just no longer important. It's time to put the pitch forks down peeps. Time to stop pointing the finger. Elvis Dumervil remains on the open market. We have a man down, but not out. We have a Bronco down.

We have a hole that needs to be filled, and that void could still very well be filled by the man we all used to adore. He might still wear your colors again. So is it more important to be right, to guess right? Or is it more important to stand for the man that's never previously done you wrong?

Stop talking shit about Elvis. Now I'm not saying that because I'm still trying to defend a previous position... like I said, I was wrong and now that day is dead. Stop talking shit about Elvis just because he deserves better than that.

My friends, this isn't a Jay Cutler/Brandon Marshall type of situation. Elvis Dumervil is not, nor has he ever been, a cancer to this team. He and/or his agent botched a deal. Maybe he comes back, maybe he doesn't. But he deserves more loyalty than we're giving him. He deserves the benefit of the doubt because he has no history of being a douche.

Dumervil's small-time agent apparently isn't Ari Gold; He's not the best in the business. And so maybe his public relations strategy was awful. He shouldn't have made a big deal about fielding calls from other teams, saying his phone was "blowing up". He also shouldn't have said 'some things just aren't meant to be' shortly after D Day. But we're reading way too much into that stuff. Some people are just bad at their jobs. Some people are stupid. That's life. He probably thought he was helping Doom's value by underlining how many teams were interested. He probably even thought it would take focus away from his incompetence in executing the previous offer.

The agent screwed up, and Elvis Dumervil's skillset apparently doesn't translate to public relations very well either. He was naive and likely should have picked a better guy to represent him. And he should have flown to Denver. But so what? His jersey isn't hanging in your closet due to his public charisma, book smarts and common sense.

I work in construction management, and not all of that is office work. I spend a lot of time with boots on the ground, and I came up in the industry not through a resume but through promotions. I went to the school of hard knocks, spending years in the mud and the blood and the beer. I've met and known and become friends with some pretty colorful characters in that time. And it taught my the age old cliche of not judging a book by its cover. My best friend in life once spelled the word 'nice' out loud while excited: "Nice!", he shouted with a somewhat sarcastic fist-bump, "Nice! N.I.S.".

Ya, we laughed.

As you can see, Johnny don't spell real good. But you know what? He can fix pretty much any mechanical object that's broken whether he's seen it before or not. He never complains. He doesn't need a lot of back-pats or kudos. He's not a shinny-new-problem person. And he's fiercely loyal, both at work and in life - literally bleeding for me, and with me, at least a handful of times. I'm not going to ask him to do a book report, but I know who to call when I have a crew on downtime and the other mechanics either don't know what to do or aren't doing it fast enough. And I know who's going to stand tall and go elbows to elbows with me when things go South.

Don't blame Elvis Dumervil for picking a stupid agent. He kills quarterbacks, not press conferences and negotiations. His skill-set doesn't translate into the area of public relations, which means we're hearing all of the bad and none of the good. But so what? He's been a loyal and productive Bronco, and he still might be wearing your colors in the future. Ease up a bit. He's earned it.

This is a Fan-Created Comment on MileHighReport.com. The opinion here is not necessarily shared by the editorial staff of MHR.