Elam out, Mare not in: Symptoms of Bronco headlessness

By Os Davis  |   Thursday, March 27, 2008  |  Comments( 0 )

Denver Broncos
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Rarely is the release of a kicker such cause for indignance and outrage, but rare too is one of Jason Elam's standing.

The stats say Elam has racked up 1,786 points in 15 seasons - all for the Denver Broncos. Now that the front office has been essentially cleared out, Elam was one of the sole remaining links to the Elway Era (and those halcyon days when Denver was a perpetual threat to take the AFC championship).

Outside the numbers, the truth is Elam could well have been considered the Broncos' MVP last season, a title he iced back in week two with his second consecutive game-winning field goal. Elam would send one more game into overtime and nicely assisted in the last week of hope for the 2008 Broncos' season, i.e. the week ten 24-11 win against Kansas City, with a career-long 50-yarder.

This is the kind of stuff Champ Bailey was talking about when he called the Elam departure the "most significant move" of the Broncos' off-season and labeled Elam as one of the "key guys that really helped us out last year": high praise indeed coming from a "skill" player for a lowly kicker.

The move makes even less sense, yet is symbolic of Denver's 2008 off-season. After all, no replacement was readily lined up for Elam or clearly apparent on the free-agent market. When the Broncos did make a play for a free agent, said free agent turned out to be 34-year-old Olindo Mare, who is recovering from a dislocated hip. When the Denver front office considered Mare, they were unwilling to spend the extra dollars to outbid the Seattle Seahawks for his services.

(Incidentally, here's a question: Why didn't Mike Shanahan et al slap the franchise tag on Elam, a recently employed tactic in cases of similarly key kickers: Seattle's Mike Brown and New England's Adam Vinatieri?)

Sure, it's easy to criticize from way outside the front office's inner workings. Yes, the numbers say that the Elam move was perhaps strategically correct. (Stat junkies must immediately check out Mile High Report's excellently thorough take on Elam's production through the years.) And no, this writer won't bother attempting to define (or espouse) the intangible value he who bears the "great locker-room guy" epithet.

What was Plan B in the Free Jason Elam scenario? For that matter, was there a Plan A? And with the mad nearly nonsensical shuffling around going on in Denver, how much confidence will Bailey, his rostermates and Bronco backers have in a slapdash patchwork team chasing up a pitiable 7-9 season?

In short, what the hell was the Elam departure really about?

Good luck, Matt Prater...

Kickin' it throughout the year at RealFootball365.com.
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About Os Davis

Os Davis has taken a twisted route to get to RealFootball365.com in his nearly 17 years in professional writing, working in any number of capacities in the sportswriting, news reporting and film criticism worlds. In print media, Os has served as editor at a few publications, including Albuquerque's ...
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