What do you do if you recently cut a bunch of players and freed up about $30 million in cap space? Well hopefully you spend some of it.Well the Denver Broncos spent a lot of it on the first day of free agency, signing RBs J.J. Arrington and Correll Buckhalter, LS Lonnie Paxton, WR Jabar Gaffney and Safeties Brian Dawkins and Renaldo Hill. As a Patriots fan and a Dawkins fan, these moves make me wants to love the Broncos. But lets take a look at their actual effect, shall we?
Arrington and Buckhalter are good pieces, but interesting considering this was a team that was rumored to maybe take a run at Derrick Ward. Arrington is definitely more of a depth guy, given his great special teams play and his speedback style. Buckhalter is less understood. A lot of sites are saying that he will battle incumbents Peyton Hillis and Ryan Torain for the starting job, but what does this make of Selvin Young and Andre Hall? Give them all inconsistent carries like Shanahan did and watch them be inconsistent. Give Young or Torain or Hall the starting role and let them run with it and who knows what could happen. Considering Buckhalter is 31 and all the other guys are in their early to mid 20's, I don't see what Denver was thinking there.
Paxton seems like a great signing to me as he is one of the best at what he does, though it hurts me to see him go as a Patriots fan. Gaffney gives me similar feelings since he too is a former Patriot, but I actually think he might be the Broncos best signing as he'll form a sweeeet 3 WR set with Brandon Marshall and Eddie Royal. Add in that he came at a very cheap $2.5 million a year with only $3 million guranteed, and that is a very solid low risk high reward signing.
As for the safeties, the Willenium in me loves the Dawkins signing because he is one of my favorite football players ever, but he's not quite the guy he used to be. Regardless, his leadership will be huge, and will hopefully help right the Denver defense. But Renaldo Hill? I get that Randy Moss is a beast, but it's hard to believe that a former DB coach would encourage his team to sign a guy who was lit up by his former team's WR like this. And like this. But hey, I'm not a head coach.
Arrington and Buckhalter are good pieces, but interesting considering this was a team that was rumored to maybe take a run at Derrick Ward. Arrington is definitely more of a depth guy, given his great special teams play and his speedback style. Buckhalter is less understood. A lot of sites are saying that he will battle incumbents Peyton Hillis and Ryan Torain for the starting job, but what does this make of Selvin Young and Andre Hall? Give them all inconsistent carries like Shanahan did and watch them be inconsistent. Give Young or Torain or Hall the starting role and let them run with it and who knows what could happen. Considering Buckhalter is 31 and all the other guys are in their early to mid 20's, I don't see what Denver was thinking there.
Paxton seems like a great signing to me as he is one of the best at what he does, though it hurts me to see him go as a Patriots fan. Gaffney gives me similar feelings since he too is a former Patriot, but I actually think he might be the Broncos best signing as he'll form a sweeeet 3 WR set with Brandon Marshall and Eddie Royal. Add in that he came at a very cheap $2.5 million a year with only $3 million guranteed, and that is a very solid low risk high reward signing.
As for the safeties, the Willenium in me loves the Dawkins signing because he is one of my favorite football players ever, but he's not quite the guy he used to be. Regardless, his leadership will be huge, and will hopefully help right the Denver defense. But Renaldo Hill? I get that Randy Moss is a beast, but it's hard to believe that a former DB coach would encourage his team to sign a guy who was lit up by his former team's WR like this. And like this. But hey, I'm not a head coach.
