And the season from hell continues for the Denver Broncos.

According to KDVR in Denver, Elvis Dumervil (who was placed on injured reserve before the season with a torn pectoral muscle) was cited for assault following the Broncos’ loss to the Raiders in Week 7. He allegedly tussled with a parking attendant outside Invesco Field and was cited for both assault and disturbing the peace.

As the report notes, Dumervil hasn’t gotten into any real trouble since being selected in the fourth round of the 2006 draft out of Louisville. He apparently has some speeding violations and was once busted for not having proof of insurance, but nothing that would warrant punishment from the league for this assault situation.

Dumervil wasn’t the only Bronco to find himself on the wrong side of the law this year. Back in November, DJ Williams was arrested by Denver Police for DUI and less than two weeks ago, Perrish Cox was busted for charges of sexual assault. This past Monday, Kevin Alexander was arrested for assault and battery and was released by the team shortly thereafter.

Is it just me or do players usually find themselves in bad headlines when their team is having a horrible year? This of course doesn’t apply to Cincinnati Bengal players, who find themselves in bad headlines no matter what kind of season they’re having. But it just seems like when it rains it pours for NFL teams. And it hasn’t stopped raining on the Broncos since they started 6-0 last year.

Merry training camp season, everyone. It’s been a long offseason, but football is finally gearing up again and to celebrate I’m rolling out a new series on TSR entitled “2010 NFL Question Marks,” where I discuss one or two of the biggest concerns that teams have heading into the new season. Granted, some teams have more issues than others, but I’ll primarily be focusing on the biggest problem areas. Today I’ll be discussing two potential issues that the Broncos face in 2010.

I’ve tried to stick with talking about only one position when discussing teams in this question marks series, but it’s hard not to bring up two key issues that the Broncos will face this season.

Brandon Marshall amassed 101 receptions and 10 touchdowns last season – almost half the number of TDs that Kyle Orton threw (21). The player with the next most receptions on the team last year was Jabar Gaffney, who finished with 54.

Needless to say, now that he’s in Miami the Broncos’ receivers have their work cut out for them trying to duplicate Marshall’s success.

The team did well by selecting former Georgia Tech product Demaryius Thomas in the first round of April’s draft. His skill set is off the charts and in time, he could make Denver forget about Marshall and become the Broncos’ go-to guy.

But he also keeps injuring his surgically repaired left foot and while he should be ready to go by Week 1, will the foot be a problem for him from here on out? How many times do we see a player hampered by an injury all season, even though he’s able to play every Sunday? Receivers have a difficult time making an impact in their rookie years as it is, so it stands to reason that Thomas could struggle this season.

While Orton has looked great so far in his second year running Josh McDaniels’ offense, he doesn’t have a ton of playmakers to throw to at the receiver position. Gaffney and Eddie Royal are fine complementary options, but neither of them is a No. 1 and if Thomas can’t fill that void as a rookie, Denver’s offense may be limited.

On the other side of the ball, the Broncos were dealt a crushing blow when outside linebacker Elvis Dumervil suffered a torn pectoral muscle and likely will miss the entire season. As of this writing, Jarvis Moss, Jason Hunter, Baraka Atkins and rookie Kevin Alexander are all getting the chance to start at the weakside linebacker position and it appears that there is no front-runner.

The Broncos would love it if Moss (a former first rounder) stepped up and claimed the spot. He arguably has the most talent of the group, but he has been an under whelming player to this point in his career. He also may be a miscast as a converted outside linebacker (he’s a former defensive end), because he’s not particularly fluid or loose enough in the hips to cover backs and tight ends in passing situations. He could be good in a rotation, but eventually the Broncos would like to find a solid replacement for Dumervil.

No matter who takes over for Dumervil, he’s going to have some enormous shoes to fill. The Broncos are weak in the pass-rush department on a whole, so losing Dumervil (who led the league in sacks last season) is obviously a huge hit.

As with any team when it comes to weaknesses, if certain players step up this season, the Broncos will be fine. And the additions that the team made to the defensive line this offseason could certainly mask the deficiencies at weakside linebacker.

But as it stands now, the Broncos have more questions than answers at those two spots and you wonder if this is an improved team or if they may have taken a step back.

In a recent Q&A for the Denver Post, columnist Mike Klis tells Broncos fans not to fear, because linebacker Elvis Dumervil (torn pectoral) will return at some point this season.

Let’s begin this mailbag by stating that based on nearly everything I’ve been hearing, Elvis Dumervil is expected back this season.

To answer your question, yes, clubs do get insurance on their star players. But the key to collecting is a career-ending injury. Dumervil probably won’t even be out for the season, much less for his career. He suffered a torn pectoral, not an amputated femur.

Barring a setback in his rehab, expect Dumervil to return and play in 2010.

I view myself as an optimistic guy, but I don’t see any way Dumervil returns this season. First and foremost, the math doesn’t add up. The doctors have given him a five-month recovery time and players who have had this injury before have come back no earlier than five months. Seeing as how Dumervil suffered the injury in early August, that puts his return at sometime in December.

Granted, there are games to be played in December, so theoretically yes, Dumervil could return in 2010. That said, if the Broncos don’t place him on IR, they’ll have to burn up a roster spot until he returns. Denver has already been bitten by the injury bug several times this month and more injuries are likely coming. Can Josh McDaniels afford to keep Dumervil on the active roster all season? Doubtful.

That said, I’m not a doctor, nor do I pretend to be one. For all we know, Dumervil heals at double the speed of a normal human and he could be back in October. But then that begs the question, would the Broncos want to rush him back and risk further injury?

Injuries are part of the game and it’s unfortunate that a hard worker like Dumervil had to suffer one in training camp. But he needs time to heel and I just don’t see him coming back in 2010.

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Jets’ GM Mike Tannenbaum and owner Woody Johnson saw the news that Broncos’ linebacker Elvis Dumervil suffered a torn pectoral muscle yesterday.

The conversation probably went something like this:

“We’re f*&%ed with Darrelle Revis, Woody!”

“Now, now – maybe he didn’t hear about this, Mike.”

“It’s all over the f*#&ing news, Woody! Get your head out of your a$$!”

Dumervil led the league in sacks last year while emerging as the Broncos’ best pass-rusher. He also had just signed a lucrative six-year, $61.5 million contract just three weeks before suffering the injury. Now he’s likely to miss the entire season and Denver is up a creek without a paddle in terms of his contract. (Even if the injury keeps him out of football this year, the Broncos still have to pay him.)

One could only imagine that the injury reinforced to Revis the need for him to continue to holdout. He already has former Jet Leon Washington in his ear about what could happen if he plays on a one-year contract, and now Dumervil’s injury serves as yet another reminder to 1) get paid and then 2) play.

The Jets want Revis to either play on a restructured one-year deal or sign a long-term agreement that will pay him slightly less annually than the Raiders are paying Nnamdi Asomugha. But Revis wants neither – especially not the former. Had Dumervil not signed the six-year agreement before suffering the injury, there’s no way the Broncos would have paid him after he tore the muscle. He would have probably had to produce another double-digit sack season just to justify a long-term deal because all of the leverage he got from his performance last year would have flown out the window.

If the Jets were hoping that Revis would blink first, they may be waiting a long time in light of Dumervil’s injury. It might be time for Johnson and Tannenbaum to pay Revis what he wants and call it a day.

If this past week offers any indication of how the Broncos will fair in 2010, then Josh McDaniels and company are in for a long season.

Just days after the Broncos lost starting running back Knowshown Moreno for 2-3 weeks because of a torn right hamstring, Elvis Dumervil suffered a torn pectoral muscle and will be out for up to five months.

Fans have the right to remain hopeful that Dumervil will return at some point this season, but the math suggests otherwise. If he’s out for five months, that makes his return December and at that point, Denver might as well keep him out the rest of the year.

The real kick to the stones for the Broncos is that they just signed Dumervil to a six-year, $61.5 million contract three weeks ago. And this was after they deliberated about whether or not to just let the linebacker play on the one-year tender they signed him to in June.

But you can’t blame the Broncos for shelling out big bucks to their best pass-rusher. Dumervil led the league in sacks last year and had become a vital component to the team’s defense. Injuries obviously can’t be predicted and there was no way of knowing that Dumervil was going to rip a chest muscle less than a month after the Broncos broke out their checkbook. Despite their incredibly bad timing and luck, it was still the right decision for Denver at the time.

So what now? The Broncos have a couple of options available on the free agent market, including the recently released Aaron Schobel and former Patriot Adiliuas Thomas. But who knows whether or not Schobel would want to play in Denver’s 3-4 and given the lack of interest in Thomas this offseason (and his poor production in ’09 for Bill Belichick), maybe the Broncos will pass on signing a veteran. Of course, the team also has some internal options, as Robert Ayers could switch sides or Jarvis Moss could actually cash in on some of his first round potential. (That later idea is far-fetched, I know.)

Either way, the Broncos couldn’t be off to a worse start in 2010. Moreno should be back in a couple of weeks, but no team wants to see their best pass-rusher go down a month before the season. That’s not to say that other players can’t and/or won’t step up, but this isn’t the most talented team in the league as it is.

Mile Klis of the Denver Post brought up an interesting point recently in regards to Elvis Dumervill and Champ Bailey’s contract situations.

Both players will become free agents at the end of the season and both could command salaries that push north of $10 million per season. If the Broncos give one player a long-term deal, will they be able to do the same with the other?

Dumervil is 26 and coming off a season in which he led the league in sacks with 17. Bailey is 32, but is still playing at a Pro Bowl level, is a fan favorite and recently told the media that he doesn’t plan on hanging ‘em up for at least another five more years.

Generally, teams pay younger players first and legit pass-rushers like Dumervil are hard to come by. But Pro Bowl caliber cornerbacks don’t fall off trees either and Bailey hasn’t shown signs of decline.

What is owner Pat Bowlen to do? If he pays both of them market value, he’ll cripple his team’s budget and the Broncos probably wouldn’t be able to be major players in free agency next year. If he only pays one of them and allows the other to walk, he’ll have an angry fan base on his hands and worse, he’ll have a huge hole to fill defensively. If he gives one player a long-term deal and franchises the other, he could sabotage his short-term budget.

Even though Dumervil has toed the company line his entire career, this is one of the reasons why the Broncos have chosen to wait to give him a long-term contract. If he plays well this season, then they’ll have a huge decision to make at the end of the year. If he doesn’t play well, they might have an excuse to let him hit the free agent market and then they can invest long-term money in Bailey.

Either way, it doesn’t appear that Bowlen and the Broncos are ready to make a decision, which is why Dumervil still doesn’t have a multi-year deal.

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]]> http://www.scoresreport.com/2010/06/22/the-broncos%e2%80%99-upcoming-contract-dilemma-with-bailey-and-dumervil/feed/ 0 http://www.scoresreport.com/2010/06/14/nfl-notes-mankins-requests-trade-dumervil-signs-tender-mcrath-busted-for-peds/ http://www.scoresreport.com/2010/06/14/nfl-notes-mankins-requests-trade-dumervil-signs-tender-mcrath-busted-for-peds/#comments Mon, 14 Jun 2010 22:30:19 +0000 Anthony Stalter http://www.scoresreport.com/?p=41233

- According to the Boston Herald and Patriots’ beat writer Mike Reiss, guard Logan Mankins has requested a trade in wake of his current contract situation. Says Makins: “I don’t need to be here anymore. This is about principle with me and keeping your word and how you treat people.”

The Patriots aren’t big on handing out big contracts to guards (or anyone not named Tom Brady for that matter), but it’ll be interesting to see what approach they take now that Mankins has demanded a trade.

- The NFL has suspended Titans linebacker Gerald McRath four games for violating the league’s policy on performance-enhancing drugs. He was expected to start this season after seeing extensive action last year as a rookie, but now it appears that David Thornton’s job is safe.

Speaking of the Titans, Chris Johnson continues to stay away from mini-camp in hopes that the team will give him a new contract. A resolution doesn’t appear to be in sight, as the Titans wants him to play on his current deal, which still has three years remaining on it. Of course if CJ decides to holdout through training camp, Tennessee could be forced to pony up. Johnson is without a doubt their most productive player.

- Elvis Dumervil signed his one-year, $3.168 million tender with the Broncos on Monday. The Denver Post’s Lindsay Jones writes that the two parties will continue to work on a long-term deal, which Dumervil deserves in wake of his performance last season.

- The Vikings re-signed restricted free agent Ray Edwards to a one-year, $2.521 million deal. The defensive end had threatened last month to hold out, but apparently that was just a ploy in hopes of receiving long-term contract. Edwards recorded 51 tackles and 8.5 sacks last season.

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