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In the least surprising news of the offseason so far, the Denver Broncos have decided to hitch their wagon to Gary Kubiak as head coach for the next four years. This was all pretty much a given, considering Teryl Austin of the Lions withdrew his name earlier in the week and Kubiak already came out on Sunday and let everyone know that he’d take the job if he was offered it. To seal the deal, John Elway met with his former OC and backup quarterback in Houston for a romantic weekend of what I’m assuming was reliving old times (Hey, remember Bubby Brister? We got him a ring!) and hate-watching the Colts game. Now, with the deal now done, challenges ahead of them include figuring out how to keep four hundred and thirty seven free agents from scattering around the league and leaving creepy yet scrumptious gift baskets at Peyton Manning’s house to persuade him to give it JUST ONE MORE YEAR.
Right, yeah, about that last part – thanks to the 24/7 BASELESS INTERNET SPECULATION ENGINE that is twitter dot com and the need for content on blogs (cough), we’ve got numbers on just how effed the Broncos are in the free agent market, even without Manning. Expect one of the two Thomases to be gone, as well as a good amount of the mercenary defensive players signed to ‘win now’ over the last 3 years (Terrance Knighton has made overtures to Oakland and old DC Jack Del Rio, and TJ Ward might be on the way out as well).
Kubiak was most fans’ choice going into the hiring process – mainly because the team entered so late and Dan Quinn was likely waiting around to get hired in Atlanta. He enters a situation where the team is either going to try and cobble something together around Manning’s last year or just wipe the whole slate clean, offload some contracts, and throw Brock Osweiler to the wolves. As usual, nothing will happen until that big domino falls.