Moreno charged with drunk and careless driving
--The ongoing saga of running back Knowshon Moreno took another lamentable twist Feb. 1 when he was arrested in Denver on charges of drunk and careless driving on Interstate 25 in Denver.
Moreno has remained in Denver this offseason to rehabilitate from surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament suffered Nov. 13 at Kansas City.
"We take the incident involving Knowshon Moreno very seriously and are thoroughly reviewing this matter. Our organization will continue to gather information and closely monitor this issue while the legal process runs its course," the Broncos said in a prepared statement.
Moreno's status was already tenuous. Although he has two years remaining on his contract, he failed to distinguish himself in his first season under John Fox. A Week 1 ankle injury knocked him from the lineup; when he returned three weeks later, Willis McGahee's play had relegated Moreno to the second team.
Moreno had a brief, promising moment in 2011 -- when he replaced an injured McGahee and picked up 52 yards on four carries at Kansas City. On the last of those runs, he tore his ACL.
McGahee returned the next week and completed a season filled with a raft of accomplishments that Moreno has failed to achieve since being a 2009 first-round pick: six 100-yard games (Moreno has just two in his career), a 1,000-yard season (Moreno's career high is just 847 yards) and a Pro Bowl appearance, which was the first for a Denver running back since Clinton Portis in 2003.
--The Broncos' contract and salary-cap point man will now be a man who once sat on the other side of the table during countless negotiations.
Mike Sullivan was named the team's director of football administration on Feb. 3, joining the Broncos after spending 11 years working for Octagon, a sports and entertainment marketing and management firm. Sullivan was the managing director of Octagon's football division and broke into the agent business in the 1980's working for Leigh Steinberg.
Among Sullivan's extensive roster of former clients are one-time Broncos players such as wide receiver Ashley Lelie and running backs Glyn Milburn and Le-Lo Lang.
"His in-depth knowledge of contract structure and the salary cap combined with his strong negotiation skills and far-reaching industry ties will be a great asset to our team," Elway said.
Sullivan replaces Mike Bluem, whose contract was not renewed. This is the second time this offseason the Broncos have parted ways with a long-time member of the football operations staff. Last month, the team didn't renew the contract of strength and conditioning coach Rich Tuten. Bluem and Tuten each spent 17 seasons with the Broncos, dating back to the first year of Mike Shanahan's stewardship.
Tuten was replaced by Luke Richesson. He held the same position with the Jacksonville Jaguars from 2009-11 under Jack Del Rio, who became the Broncos' defensive coordinator Jan. 27.
--It was no surprise that linebacker Von Miller was named the AP Defensive Rookie of the Year on Feb. 4; the only question was the margin.
Miller took 39 of 50 first-place votes. The other 11 went to 49ers outside linebacker Aldon Smith, who finished with 2.5 more sacks than Miller's total of 11.5 but logged 27 fewer tackles, since he wasn't an every-down player as Miller was for most of the season. Miller might have finished with more sacks had he not torn ligaments in his right thumb; the injury forced him to play with a cumbersome cast that sapped his effectiveness in the final four weeks of the regular season and the playoffs.
The Texas A&M product became the Broncos' first defensive rookie of the year since linebacker Mike Croel in 1991. Not coincidentally, Croel was the last top-five draft pick of the Broncos before they selected Miller second overall last April. Denver had just one other top-five pick in the last 35 years: offensive tackle Chris Hinton, who was the No. 4 overall pick in 1983 but was subsequently traded to the Baltimore Colts as part of the John Elway trade.
--The Broncos' re-signing of fullback Austin Sylvester doesn't cause much of a ripple -- until considering that the 2011 rookie is the only fullback currently under contract to the Broncos for 2012.
Sylvester was with the Broncos for parts of three weeks at the end of the season after they signed him to their 53-man roster on Dec. 26. A week later, first-team fullback Spencer Larsen was lost to a knee sprain, leaving Sylvester as the only healthy fullback on the roster.
The Broncos' heavy use of shotgun formations and zone-read option runs left Sylvester inactive for the wild-card win over Pittsburgh. Six days later, he was off the roster entirely, jettisoned to make room for long snapper David Binn, who had to fill in during the 45-10 playoff loss at New England while Lonie Paxton tended to a family emergency.
If the Broncos veer away from the zone-read option that helped define the Tebow offense and return to a more traditional I-formation-based attack that Fox and McCoy used with the Carolina Panthers, then the fullback will return to prominence in the offense. That could leave Sylvester in place to earn a roster spot, whether Larsen returns or the team searches for another fullback in free agency.
"You go back to the ground zero rules of football: if you control the ground, you can control everything," Sylvester said in January. "I feel like this is the place to be for me."
QUOTE TO NOTE
"We talked about trying to get together before we report back here in April. And we're going to make a point to get that done." -- WR Eric Decker, when asked about whether he would work out with Tebow before the start of team-organized workout sessions April 16.
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