Mile High 80122

Wow, Dallas owner Jerry Jones must be pissed. Despite his desperate attempts to make the Cowboys the running soap opera of every NFL off-season, it seems that his team is getting some big time competition from mountain country.

Maybe new Broncos head coach Josh McDaniels loves him some drama, or maybe doing things the Patriot way means shaking up an organization and pissing off as many players who aren't consider 'your' players as possible.

The Broncos looked to be free-agency winners when the team lured Brian Dawkins away from the Philadelphia Eagles over the weekend. Dawkins won't be in the NFL much longer, but he's a team leader and could teach the young Broncos defenders how to behave in the NFL. Judging by the reaction in Philadelphia, the Broncos got a real bargain.

And then the Bronco wagon split down the middle and all of the wheels came shooting off.

I don't know if McDaniels hasn't liked the film he's seen on Jay Cutler, really thinks Matt Cassel is destined for greatness, or if he's just an idiot. I do know that it's probably not a good idea to inquire about trading your young franchise quarterback the first chance you get unless you actually go through with the trade. Now that Cassel is with the division rival Chiefs, this storyline can be relived over and over and over again. Yeah!

At the very least, Cutler isn't going to feel completely secure in Denver for a while. If Cutler's initial comments are any indication, this thing is going to fester and cause some locker room problems. Culter isn't being very sanguine about his relationship with the new look Broncos.

But hey, it's okay, they signed Brian Dawkins to help smooth the locker room over!

Getting your quarterback back on board is enough to fill in the off-season to do list, but now there's another pressing need: get a lobotomy for your top receiver.

To say Brandon Marshall uses poor judgment is like saying Octo-mom likes kids. He's an idiot of the highest order that you only find in the ranks of wide receivers and defensive backs. Now he's in trouble again.
The good news: the recent case against him for disorderly conduct has been dismissed by the courts.
The bad news: the NFL doesn't need a conviction in court to dole out punishment of it's own.

(ATTENTION NFL COACHES and OWNERS: Atlanta night clubs are bad places for NFL players to hang out in. Bad things tend to happen here.)

So the Broncos now go into the 2009 draft with a franchise quarterback who was already unhappy with a coaching change and is now more than likely unsure if he wants to be a Bronco anymore, plus a top receiver who has police records in three states that includes multiple domestic disturbances, disorderly conduct, and a random arm injury that Marshall swears was just from roughhousing (because we've all put our fist through an entertainment center when we were messing around.)

Can Brian Dawkins play offense too?