Osweiler leaves Broncos for $72M Texans deal on busy day

First you hold the trophy. Then you try to hold your team together.

That’s the formidable challenge facing every Super Bowl champion. Your newly crowned players want to get paid, and 31 other teams are looking for some of that magic that got you so far — with the bonus of eroding your base of success.

The Denver Broncos are dealing with that headache at the moment. Two days after Peyton Manning announced his retirement, Brock Osweiler — the team’s presumed quarterback of the future despite making just seven career starts — gave Denver a Heisman-like straight arm and signed with the Houston Texans on Wednesday, the first day of the free-agency period.

The Broncos were unwilling to pay the 6-foot-7 Osweiler the $18 million per year he was seeking — the Texans hit that number

with a four-year deal worth $72 million — and Osweiler wasn’t happy about being benched in favor of Manning throughout the playoffs.

“We’ve stayed true to our philosophy of building a team with players who want to be Denver Broncos and want to be here,” John Elway, executive vice president of football operations, said on the team’s website.

The Broncos won’t be the first Super Bowl champion to begin its next season without the two top quarterbacks from the year before. The Ravens did that after winning the January 2001 Super Bowl, parting ways with Trent Dilfer and Tony Banks.

So now Denver is left scrambling to fill its vacancy at quarterback, and lost a pair of defensive standouts, with defensive tackle Malik Jackson heading to the Jacksonville Jaguars, and linebacker Danny Trevathan headed to the Chicago Bears.

While the Osweiler deal was still reverberating throughout the NFL, the New York Giants made a big deal of their own by signing defensive end Olivier Vernon, who became reasonably expendable in Miami after the Dolphins signed Mario Williams.

The Giants, who were last in total defense and 30th in sacks in 2015, are hoping the addition of Vernon, along with the re-signing of Jason Pierre-Paul, will pump life into their pass rush.

As pass-rushing tandems go, it’s hard to top Oakland’s, with the Raiders adding linebacker Bruce Irvin from the Seattle Seahawks as a bookend to budding superstar Khalil Mack.

It doesn’t hurt the Raiders that AFC West rival Denver is now in search of a quarterback and that the Kansas City Chiefs were docked two draft picks for tampering because of improper contact with wide receiver Jeremy Maclin during free agency last year.