Keenum or Cousins. Cousins or Keenum. Baker or Josh or Josh.
Or Lamar?
Oh, the NFL Combine – a place to test the best of the best in college football, but perhaps more pertinent (important?) is the facilitation of a slimy petri dish, ripe for growing rumors and hot takes and craftily placed misinformation. Seriously, what can one expect? How bored can the boatload of writers and NFL talent scouts be while watching 335 big kids have field day without ribbons?
Yawn.
And when boredom sets in, the mischief begins. You might be better off tuning out the NFL in general until free agency begins (officially March 14, tampering begins on the 12th). Believe it when it happens; until then, it’s all just speculation.
If you follow the Denver Broncos – or more specifically, the reporting of and on the Denver Broncos – you probably know that whenever Mike Klis, the Broncos beat reporter for 9News, writes something, well, there’s probably something to it. Perhaps most accurately, what Klis writes is what the Broncos want written. After all, if they didn’t want the word out, they certainly wouldn’t openly offer it up to Klis (or any other reporter for that matter). But this isn’t a column about Klis; it’s a column about what he wrote over the weekend. On Saturday, Klis wrote that the Broncos want Kirk Cousins.
Period.
There’s two ways to interpret that: Either the Broncos really, really want Cousins, or, they want you to think they really, really want Kirk Cousins.
Let’s go with the former: The Broncos want Cousins.
Good. They should want him.
In Denver, the clock is ticking and there’s no time to waste with another season of guessing, hoping and experimenting. Denver doesn’t take kindly to playoff droughts, and neither does John Elway. Cousins makes the Broncos a playoff team; anyone else “might.” It’s that simple.
This isn’t a new situation in Denver though. Not at all. In fact, the Broncos have been in darn-near the exact same place.
Remember the four seasons that followed the Broncos back-to-back Super Bowl titles? Sure you do. And you can bet John Elway does, too.
A quick refresher: The Broncos went with a young, smart quarterback named Brian Griese, who had moments of being good, stretches of being bad, and no time being great. The team went, 34-30 and went to the playoffs just once in the four-year stretch from ’99 to ’02. After the ’02 season Mike Shanahan threw in the towel on Griese, deciding that quarterback was the primary reason for the Broncos’ lack of success.
So, he did what any good GM would do — he went and got one. And it wasn’t just any old quarterback; it was Jake Plummer, a 28-year-old gunslinger who’d done some great things for a not-so-great franchise (Arizona). In fact, in his six-year career, Plummer had amassed 21 fourth-quarter comebacks. Elway held the record with 47, but it took him 16 seasons to get them. Plummer, most believed, had all kinds of potential, he just needed some better surroundings.
Guess what? Cousins is Plummer. Plummer was Cousins.
Cousins, who just turned 29, has six seasons under his belt. He’s done some great things for a not-so-great franchise (Washington). If only he had some better surroundings…
A caveat: Cousins and Plummer are different kind of players. Then again, NFL offenses today are significantly different than yesterday’s iterations. That’s okay; it’s not the point. Plummer and Cousins might play differently, but their situations — and the situation in which the Broncos then found and now find themselves — are nearly identical.
In 2003, Plummer was considered to be the best (maybe second-best) free agent quarterback on the market. In retrospect, that proved to be absolutely true, as Plummer went on to be far superior to Jake Delhomme, Jeff Blake, Shaun King and Todd Collins (all free agents that offseason). In that year’s draft, Carson Palmer (No. 1) and Byron Leftwich (No. 7) were the only notable first-rounders; both had plenty of doubters.
In 2018, Cousins is undoubtedly considered to be the best free agent quarterback on the market (realistically speaking, of course, assuming that Drew Brees sticks with the Saints and knowing that Jimmy Garoppolo was already inked by the 49ers). Other somewhat notable names on the list? Case Keenum, A.J. McCarron, Teddy Bridgewater, Sam Bradford and Josh McCown. Reads an awful lot like Delhomme, Blake, King and Collins, doesn’t it? The current draft close could be loaded, or it could be filled with busts. You know how that goes. And you also know that John Elway has two strikes and a few foul tips when it comes to taking swings at rookie quarterbacks.
But back to 2003. Plummer signed with Denver and took the Broncos to the playoffs for three straight seasons, including a run to the 2005 AFC Championship Game. His regular season record as the starter in Denver was 49-15. Until the arrival of Peyton Manning in 2012, most considered Plummer to be the second-best quarterback in franchise history — behind Elway of course.
No, Plummer never won a Super Bowl in Denver. But under his watch, the Broncos were never irrelevant — a word that best describes both the 2002 and 2017 Broncos.
In terms of the current landscape of viable quarterback options, Cousins is the 2018 version of Plummer. Nobody in Denver wants a third-straight season of quarterback questions. In Griese’s third season as the Broncos’ starter, he went a ho-hum 8-7 and Denver missed the postseason once again.
History has a funny way of repeating itself, and here’s betting Elway remembers how all of that went down. Denver can’t afford to miss the postseason again – not on John’s watch.
Go ahead, Broncos; ink Kirk Cousins. Get it over with fast and furious and get back to the playoffs.
