It was an offseason in which the Broncos tried to improve their image by adding players of quality character or subtracting those whose character was in question.
And it was an offseason of Brandon Marshall.
“I like Brandon. I think he can be a great player,” Broncos owner Pat Bowlen said. “And hopefully the experience he’s going through now will help him grow up.”
Marshall is one of the NFL’s best young receivers who had 102 receptions for 1,325 yards last season. But the expectation is he will begin his third NFL season serving a multi- game suspension.
Numerous off-field transgressions brought Marshall to a face-to-face meeting last Friday with Roger Goodell in the NFL commissioner’s New York office. Goodell is expected to rule next week on whether Marshall violated the league’s personal conduct policy.
“You’re always concerned when the commissioner calls you in to have a meeting,” Broncos coach Mike Shana- han. “It’s obviously not a good sign. You’ve got a commissioner who has a very strong conduct policy. We got a chance to talk at length and we’ll wait for his ruling.”
Exemption for Rod.
It’s a foregone conclusion retired receiver Rod Smith will be elected to the Broncos’ Ring of Fame. The only question is whether he will be exempted from the five-year waiting period, as was the case with John Elway.
“There is a committee, so I’m not going to disenfranchise my committee,” Bowlen said. “Would it be considered? Possibly.”
Besides Bowlen, the Ring of Fame committee consists of former Broncos broadcaster Larry Zimmer, former general manager John Beake and former coach Joe Collier.
Jake speaks.
Since his impromptu retirement news conference at a local handball court after the 2006 season, former Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer never has spoken to a member of the NFL media. He broke that silence Thursday and it was Smith’s retirement that made him do it.
“Probably one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen him do was, in my first year there (in 2004) I had just gotten hurt and we didn’t have a backup for a couple days,” Plummer said from somewhere in Idaho. “So they had Rod take a 7-on-7 drill. And I think he was 6-for-6. And it wasn’t like he was dumping to the back or hitting the checkdown. He was throwing a skinny route, right on. He’d throw a go-route, he threw an out route. I was thinking: “Good God, he’d be good enough to take my job if he spent a year working on it.”
Gold retiring.
Ian Gold, who started the past three seasons as the Broncos’ weakside linebacker, has told the NFL Network he is retiring. Still a month shy of his 30th birthday, Gold played seven of his eight NFL seasons with the Broncos.
Mike Klis, The Denver Post
