Miller’s deal now Broncos’ burden
Von Miller was the No. 1 reason the Broncos won Super Bowl 50. His contract is the No. 1 reason Denver might not get back to the Super Bowl until after Miller leaves town.
While trying to pull the Broncos from the last-place abyss, president of football operations John Elway made a troubling discovery. The team’s best player was making it very difficult for a roster in need of a major overhaul to be competitive in the AFC West.
My intention here is not to bash Miller. Far from it. The Vonster can flatten quarterbacks like a boulder and be as funny as Chris Rock. But I’ve done the math. Paying big money to a defensive player, even one as talented as Miller, generally does not compute in the NFL.
Let’s start with a riddle: What do Justin Houston, Josh
Norman, Miller, Ndamukong Suh and Muhammad Wilkerson have in common? They were the five highestpaid defensive stars in the league last season. And, all together, they won exactly zero playoff games.
In the NFL, where all the rules are tilted in favor of the quarterback, a healthy Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers can all but ensure his team will be a championship contender. Even with a salary cap hit in excess of $20 million, Rodgers or Brady is worth every last penny.
In 2017, however, Houston, Norman, Miller, Suh and Wilkerson cost an average of $19.8 million on the salary cap ledger. For those boatloads of Benjamins, only Kansas City was rewarded with a winning record from its hefty expenditure on Houston.
Hey, during the afterglow of the Super Bowl parade, the six-year, $114.5 million contract signed in July 2016 seemed like a great idea. I was not only all for it, but argued loudly for Elway to show Miller the money. So blame me, if it makes you feel better. It doesn’t change the current situation. While Miller grades out as an elite NFL defender, he has been unable to mask the team’s flaws for two years since inking the deal.
While all the recent hullabaloo about the Broncos began with the quarterback and ended with signing Case Keenum to a two-year, $36 million contract, the recent move that was far more telling about Denver’s current difficult state was a restructuring of Miller’s contract, in order to free up $12.375 million for Elway to refortify the personnel around his new quarterback.
Hey, it sounded good. Miller did his team a financial favor. Just like Brady would. What was not to like?
But here’s the rub: The Broncos are still cashstrapped.
Waiting for a big spending spree in free agency? I wouldn’t hold your breath. The No. 5 pick in the NFL draft will chew up most of Denver’s remaining salary cap space. As much as I’m enamored with the idea of Penn State running back Saquon Barkley or Notre Dame guard Quenton Nelson wearing orange on Sundays, there are strong financial reasons a team with more than one hole to fill might want to seriously consider trading back in the first round.
While Miller did help out the team by lowering his cap hit for this season, the Broncos essentially robbed Peter to pay Von, using a little creative accounting that kicked their financial obligations down the road.
Starting in 2019, when Miller will turn 30 years old, the Broncos must swallow a $25.6 million salary cap hit on their Pro Bowl linebacker. That’s quarterback money. How the team expects to allocate in excess of $46 million on Miller and Keenum alone in 2019 and still have enough wiggle room under the cap to field a top-flight team figures to be an extremely sticky football calculus.
Catch the hint? There are few chores harder in the NFL than for an aging championship roster to rebuild on the fly without a major retrenchment. The Broncos are in win-now mode this season.
If the gamble on Keenum doesn’t work, Elway might have to swallow hard and blow this thing up.