You don’t become one of the best general managers in the NFL by following the status quo, and there is certainly nothing about John Elway that screams “status quo.”
Elway is one of the most competitive men in the entire world, and now that he can’t express himself on the football field, he’s doing so at the negotiation table.
Since returning to Denver as the Broncos’ football czar, Elway has been a relentless negotiator, oftentimes letting big-name contributors and free agents walk without so much as an offer sheet. And even when he gives you one of those, he’s not budging off the number he thinks you’re worth.
And that can work well at times. Whatever you think of Brock Osweiler and Colin Kaepernick, they’re probably not worth the type of money they were asking for, and Elway didn’t give it to them. Instead, he found a cheap short-term option in Mark Sanchez and traded up to draft the quarterback of the future in Paxton Lynch.
With Von Miller, though, Elway eventually budged, increasing the guarantees in his contract and making him the highest-paid defender in NFL history.
And while Miller and his agent, Joby Branion, received the brunt of Elway’s no-nonsense negotiation tactics, Branion can’t help but respect the product.
“He’s just extremely competitive,” Branion said while on PFT Live last week. “I can say that the negotiation approach that he and his team uses is a bit unorthodox and unconventional but you can’t argue with the effectiveness and we don’t know unless we’re in their room what their ultimate goals are. So it’s always after the fact you sort of look and say, ‘Well that didn’t look like that worked out well,’ or ‘Geez, that worked out great.’ Only they really know but, yeah, they’re a little different but, hey, there are a lot of people that use a lot of different approaches to negotiate.”
It can backfire, though. Being prudent with your salary cap isn’t a bad thing; not rewarding your best player is.
And it’s not because Miller deserves to get more money or anything like that — he probably does — but it’s because other big-name stars will see how the Broncos’ treat their best players and they’ll remember that next time they hit free agency.
Branion, though, says they’re not holding grudges.
“I hope there aren’t, I can’t speak for the Broncos,” Branion said of holding onto hard feelings. “I can tell you that I have deep respect for John Elway as does Von, who still calls him ‘Mr. Elway.’ He’s a rare competitor, extraordinarily goal-oriented. . . . Sometimes it can get dicey, the longer a negotiation goes on in my experience there are going to be ebbs and flows and peaks and valleys and communications and miscommunications. You try to keep professional with it, and I think that we all did and when it was all said and done both sides pretty much got I think what they were looking for. Which was a contract that made sense for them and Von staying in Denver.”
As usual, it seems to have worked out well for Elway in the end.
