I'm not sure what he was supposed to do.

The narrative never changes.

Forget the fact that Manning had no interest in coming to Kansas City.
Forget the fact that Orton chose to be an overpaid clipboard-holder.
Forget the fact that we were in no real position to trade up for either Luck or Griffin.
Forget the fact that there were no other options.

It's always Pioli's fault.

Yep.

Pay Manning $90M apparently.

I wanted Manning as much as anybody but I heard Jamie Dukes on NFLN this morning say the deal could be worth over $70M in the first 2 years. That's borderline reeruned.

Neither are upgrades.

Holy hell. $70 million in 2 years? Honestly....no thanks. I would have given up 3 1st round draft picks for RGIII instead of paying Manning $70 million in 2 years.

Exactly. He can't pull a "franchise guy" out of his ass. Manning wanted to "be" with Horseface and the 2 top QB's in the draft are unattainable. We are left with stopgaps and lackluster options in the draft.

Orton is a huge upgrade. Not good enough for what we need but significantly better than cassel.

he's not a huge upgrade. He's a marginal upgrade at best.

I would agree if I believed they will spend all that money elsewhere improving the team.

BUILD ROBO QB 2012 HERPTY DERP!!! BUT THEY ARE TO CHEAP TO DO THAT!!! **** THIS TEAM!!!

their silence worked against him. The fans would be fine if they knew the front office tried. It feels like they made a half ass attempt to court peyton and didn't even ask about rgIII.

The chiefs made promises that they'd fix the qb situation. Don't feed us the same corporate speak that Brady Quinn accomplishes that. Don't try to convince us that we should somehow be happy win cassel. Tell us flat out that cassel has to earn a starting job, is under the gun, and that they're still actively looking.

This situation wouldn't be so bad if the front office would treat fans more respectfully.

His struggles in the red zone bear that out.

I didn't hear him, but I read that it was more like $40M in the first two if he clears the March 2013 physical with no damage/issues to the specific areas of the neck where he had surgery.

Either way - it's a SB or Bust move with high risk. If this thing works and they can get to a SB and win in the next 2-3 years, it's worth the investment. Until then... as Elway said in the press conference, this guarantees nothing - just gives them a much better shot and they have more work to do.

I'm a little confused by the salary cap stuff. At first I was hearing that we were way under the cap and had something like $40M in room. Then later I heard that it was only $15M and that the Broncos were way under (as if they follow the rules anyway).

If cap space dictated that we couldn't pay a $90M contract over 5 years, then it is what it is. But that's not what I was reading at first.

The biggest problems to me are:

1. The fact that Manning wouldn't talk to us at all, and why, which is a bigger issue than not signing with us in the end.
2. The fact that we let Orton go when he was a clear upgrade over Cassel.
3. Not drafting a QB twice when we had top-five picks. In hindsight some of the obvious choices were mediocre or busts, so does that mean we have really good talent scouting or does it mean that we didn't want a QB?

Not trading up in the draft doesn't bother me. Those trades are always highly risky.

Pioli is doing a good job in fixing everything else, and he seems to identify the problems well. So is he just not finding the right QB and waiting until the right one comes along, or is he too wedded to Cassel to look? Finding the next Brady could take decades, but I think the team could do quite well with the next Donovan McNabb or Matt Schaub or Matt Hasselbeck while we're waiting for the next Brady.