I appreciate you actually taking the time to do that, I can tell you were being earnest and not just being a d*ck like the McDaniels ball washers here.
Still, I fail to see how my past comments about Branch paints an inconsistent picture when it comes to my view toward Cutler or the Broncos front office. The McDaniels lovers are simply using your comments to somehow discredit my points because I am somehow being irrational over McDaniels, when I'm not. I think the past two months, never mind the past few years, are showing to the rest of football America just how inexperienced McDaniels is and how clueless he is over situational awareness, on and off the field.
The issue for me is, is the player "Patriot material" or not?
As i believe you agreed with in the quoted threads, Seymour is a very special talent who simply held out for a new contract; your support of Seymour was perfectly consistent with your argument that holdouts are a tool for players acknowledged by the CBA. Furthermore, during his holdout neither Seymour or his agent said much of anything to the media; Seymour practically disappeared from the press' POV, while his agent "actually negotiated" with the Pats. That is the very border case of Patriot material.
With Branch, which you recognized as a good player, but not on Seymour's level, you accepted the holdout, believed that the Pats ended up getting great value for him by trading him for a low 1st round pick, but when it came to the agent (Chayut) leaking stories to the press, holding pressers, and engaging in (alleged) player tampering with other teams, you considered that idiotic on the part of Chayut, not BB, though in the end Chayut got what he wanted. You didn't criticize BB that I know of, and as for Branch you praised his keeping his mouth mostly shut and letting his agent be the "bad cop."
Now we have both Cutler and Bus Cook talking to the press not only about contracts, but about heart-to-heart player-coach conversations like this is Jerry Jones' Dallas Cowboys. Neither one of them is keeping their mouths shut, and it looks likely that, much like Branch before, Cutler will get what he wants, or at least prove to be a big distraction in training camp, and possbily beyond. But since this isn't BB we're talking about, appearently neither Cook or Cutler are most at fault, its McDaniels for not handling this situation correctly.
My views may well be colored here because I, like McDaniels seems to, do not consider Cutler to be a sure-fire franchise QB like I think you do. This is a guy who ran the prototypical college option offense at Vanderbilt, then ran the prototypical west coast pro timing offense under Shanahan at Denver. Now you've got McDaniels coming in with an Air Coryell spread offense the likes of which Cutler has never seen. He demands a trade right then I believe. Then he puts up a public hissy fit when McDaniels considers bringing in a guy with the same measurables (minus the diabetes) who has had 4 years training in the offense. After that he demands a trade again, preferably to one of the west coast offense teams (like Minnesota, Tampa Bay or Detroit) that originally expressed so much interest in Cutler in the first place.
Thus I don't see how McDaniels has done anything to Denver that wasn't already done, besides sound out roster riff-raff at the most important position (QB) and alienate the fanbase, who naturally did not hate Shanahan and had high hopes for Cutler.
