Why the Denver Broncos Should Draft Knowshon Moreno

(Photo by Scott Boehm/Getty Images)

It may be far easier for Denver to recover from losing Jay Cutler than many claim.

First off, the folks who are stating "this will wreck the franchise!" need to get a grip on reality. Yes, Cutler was a franchise QB, but the truth is that franchise QBs are rare, which means that most teams don't have them. Yet many of them manage to do fine, including win Super Bowls (as did teams with Brad Johnson, Trent Dilfer, Mark Rypien, Jeff Hostetler, Jim McMahon, Joe Theismann, etc.)

Meanwhile, having a franchise QB is no guarantee of winning a Super Bowl, as Dan Marino, Dan Fouts, Fran Tarkenton, Warren Moon, Jim Kelly, and some other guys on this "best QBs never to win a Super Bowl" list have proven.

So if Denver is terrible for the next 10 years, it isn't because they alienated Jay Cutler, especially when it is obvious that Cutler—who wanted to play for Chicago or Nashville to begin with and only liked being in Denver as long as he was playing for Mike Shanahan—was so easy to alienate. Instead, it will be because Denver failed to replace Cutler with a capable, effective QB.

And while franchise QBs are rare, capable effective QBs are not. It really is not that difficult to acquire in the draft, with a trade, or through free agency a guy that can win a lot of games if he is properly coached and surrounded with good talent.

Josh McDaniels, who had a lot of success with guys drafted in the sixth (Tom Brady) and seventh (Matt Cassel) rounds, knows this. 

The reason why McDaniels was willing to trade Cutler for Cassel was because Cassel is a better fit for his offense than Cutler is, and McDaniels would play a lesser QB that fits his system than change his system to accommodate a better QB. Look, McDaniels won 11 games with Cassel last year. So McDaniels knows that he doesn't need another Cutler to win games. All he needs is another Cassel, and Matt Cassel's aren't that hard to find.

They may be hard to coach and surround with talent, mind you, but they aren't hard to find, and if you can't coach up your QBs and build great teams around them, you aren't going to win anything anyway. Take, well, Denver for instance. Shanahan was unable to get Cutler to reduce his turnovers and never gave Cutler a defense or a running game. Result: 17-20 record.

If Denver's next QB has a defense, a running game, and doesn't turn the ball over 20 times like Cutler did last season, he won't need to throw for 4,500 yards to get Denver into the playoffs. See Joe Flacco: only 2,950 yards, yet his team won two road playoff games and went to the AFC title game.

So that's why Denver should resist the knuckleheads that are now claiming that they should use their two No. 1 picks to trade up to get Mark Sanchez. (Similar to his SEC brethren Jay Cutler and Jason Campbell, Matt Stafford is a vertical game QB who doesn't fit McDaniel's offense.) That would be, in a word, idiotic, amounting to little more than trading a 25-year-old Pro Bowl QB for a guy who had one above average season in college.

Sure, Denver would still have next year's No. 1 pick, but come on: they have no idea where Chicago is going to draft next season, and they also have no clue what next year's draft is going to look like. All they know is that this year's draft is very strong in players that Denver badly needs (DT, LB and RB) and they have No. 12 and No. 18 in it.

They have to use those two picks to get better, and getting Sanchez doesn't make them better. Even if Sanchez is as good as Cutler is, the bottom line is that Denver is no better off.

So, the way that Denver gets better is to use their No. 1 picks in this year's draft to find starters at positions other than QB. That is the first step to making sure that they are a franchise capable of winning games when they do get a good QB: a franchise like the New York Giants, New England Patriots, Baltimore Ravens, and Pittsburgh Steelers.

(Notice that I left out the Indianapolis Colts

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