Mike From Woburn's Felger & Mazz In Context: John Elway Is Not 'The Don'
By Mike From Woburn, 98.5 The Sports Hub Contributor
BOSTON (CBS) -- If you've been listening to 98.5 The Sports Hub from 2-6 p.m. this past week, you have undoubtedly heard Michael Felger speak wistfully about his new sports crush, John "The Don" Elway. And it's Felger's reality-free deification of the Denver Broncos' figurehead that prompts the latest installment of "Felger and Mazz in Context."
Felger, in his never-ending quest to tweak and annoy Patriots fans, has been combing the NFL, searching for the Holy Grail of trolling with which he can then transform his listeners into a roiling froth of outrage.
Until recently, Felgie's most recent straw team to bludgeon Patriot Nation with was the hated Jets. For a while this was actually effective, as the Jets were reasonably successful against their division rivals, most notably upsetting the Pats in the 2010 playoffs. His argument was that unlike the Pats, the Jets were able to win by spending money, trading up while they embodied the cocky attitude of their coach, Rex Ryan.
Unfortunately for Mike, the Jets' success was limited, as Jets GM Mike Tannenbaum traded up for the wrong players (Hello, Mark Sanchez!), actually spent the Jets into cap jail (down goes another narrative!), and embodied the stupidity of their coach.
So it makes sense that Felger would wait until an AFC rival actually won something before using that team to troll the masses.
Enter John "The Don" Elway.
The Broncos won the Super Bowl , but most importantly, they beat the Patriots in the AFC Championship Game, which amplified the trolling quotient. Felger has dubbed Elway as an NFL mastermind worthy of the title made famous in the movie "The Godfather." It makes you wonder if Felger has even seen the movie. The Godfather's two-hour-and-58-minute running time alone would cast serious doubt on this.
A Don of any worth has to have foresight and a plan for any scenario. Last year the writing was on the wall that Peyton Manning was just about done as a viable NFL starter. His play down the stretch of the season declined noticeably and come playoff time, another patented Peyton "One and Done," the ninth of his career, should have been more than enough impetus to make sure not only that Brock Osweiler was ready to take over should the increasingly elderly and ineffective Manning fail this season, but that Osweiler was under contract for the foreseeable future. Surely a "Don" of Elway's abilities would know that if Peyton did stumble and if Osweiler had any measure of success running the Broncos' offense, that it would spike the cost to keep the Broncos' QB of the future and further complicate what was already going to be a very messy cap situation for Denver during the coming offseason.
Having Osweiler under team control would also allow the Broncos to move him if they perceived the return from a team desperate for a quarterback would outweigh Osweiler's value to Denver going forward.
The hauls that teams received for backups that experience even fleeting success can be valuable. Rob Jonson, Matt Schaub, Kevin Kolb and even Matt Cassel all brought excellent return to the teams that cashed in on their temporary competence. Elway's "Don-sense" should have been tingling way before the season started and today he should be either fielding offers for Osweiler or readying the young QB to defend the Broncos' Super Bowl title, not watching as the Texans outbid the Broncos for Brock's services and getting forced to pick a QB off the scrap heap for the upcoming season.
Speaking of the Broncos' Super Bowl win, let's take a look at their title run and how John "The Don" handled the QB position during the title run.
By the eighth game of the Broncos' season, anyone who wasn't a member of the Peyton Press Corps could tell that Manning was toast. But instead of sending Peyton mattress shopping with Clemenza and benching him for good after almost as many picks as completions against Kansas City, Elway allowed him to save face with the most fraudulent injury since Iron Mike Sharpe's forearm sprain and loom over the competent Osweiler's back as Brock led the Broncos to a first-round bye and home-field advantage. A Manning cameo appearance at the end of the season in a win against the Chargers gave "Don Elway" just enough leverage to reinstall the almost-crippled Manning as starter for the postseason.
By allowing the decrepit Manning to QB his team in the postseason, Elway severely hamstrung the Broncos offense, specifically his running game, which had undergone a resurgence with Osweiler taking snaps. With Brock at QB, defenses at least had to respect his ability to throw a deep pass and hit Denver's receivers outside the numbers. Peyton's arm, on the other hand, was trash, and as a result, defenses could cheat up significantly and stifle Peyton's numerous checkdowns.
He wasn't a game manager; he was a human handicap.
This forced the Broncos defense and special teams to literally carry Peyton for almost the entire postseason. Manning's Super Bowl performance was so ineffective that punter Britton Colquitt could have actually been a viable MVP candidate. Not only did the Broncos offense put up the lowest total yards ever for a team that won a Super Bowl, they actually put up fewer total yards than all but seven Super Bowl LOSERS! Not since Morgan Freeman drove Miss Daisy to an Oscar has something as old and useless as Peyton been carried to a major award.
This wasn't the work of Elway the Mastermind. This was a terrible, short-sighted attempt to mollify an aging has-been not biting "The Don's" rear end clean off. It's like sending Fredo to kill McCluskey and Sollozzo, Freddy dropping the gun in the toilet and coming out of the bathroom to find his two targets dead from food poisoning. "The Don" lucked out that for once in Peyton's career, a QB actually out-choked him in a big game. If Carolina had won that game, Denver fans would want "The Don's" head in Jack Woltz's bed.
There is no doubt in my mind that Osweiler could have not only replicated the results of Peyton in the postseason, but he most likely would've made the Broncos' postseason wins easier. And by having confidence in their QB of the future, Elway wouldn't have alienated him and wouldn't be once again searching for a franchise QB. If Bill Belichick did what Felger applauds "The Don" John Elway for doing, the Pats MIGHT have one Super Bowl win with Drew Bledsoe, a win which would have been followed up with Tom Brady demanding a trade and Ron Borges saving a whole lot of breath.
If Felger really wants to nominate someone for "Godfatherhood" he should make sure that their deeds are worthy of such a title, not the product of good fortune.
And letting a valuable member of your franchise walk away for nothing in the offseason? That's not being a "Don". That's called being Don Sweeney.
Mike From Woburn, formerly known as Mike From Attleboro, is a regular caller to the Felger & Massarotti Show. You can find him on Twitter @MikeFromWoburn.