PHOENIX — Happy birthday, Peyton Manning.
The Broncos' star quarterback turns 39 on Tuesday. The stinging truth is the birthday brings as much concern as celebration to the Broncos' fan base. Especially when his 38th year, after a promising start, didn't finish so well.
Manning's age is one reason it's fair to wonder which way the Broncos' arrow is pointing. It's not the only reason.
For the first time in the Joe Ellis-John Elway management era, the Broncos lost more headliners (Julius Thomas, Terrance Knighton, Orlando Franklin and Rahim Moore) to free agency than they signed from the market (tight end Owen Daniels is the team's most significant addition).
The Broncos posted 13-3, 13-3 and 12-4 records the past three regular seasons, yet in part because those years did not culminate with the hoisting of the Lombardi Trophy, the team turned over the top end of its coaching staff with John Fox, Jack Del Rio, Adam Gase and Jeff Rodgers exiting and Gary Kubiak, Wade Phillips, Rick Dennison and Joe DeCamillis stepping in.
And has it been mentioned that Manning is 39?
But this is the half-empty approach. Sit across the table from Ellis during a break from the NFL owners meetings Monday at the Arizona Biltmore resort, and the Broncos' president and chief executive officer provides a far more optimistic outlook between sips of his iced tea. And, yes, there were long stretches when the glass was half full.
"We're excited for 2015," Ellis said. "It's true 2014 didn't end the way we wanted to, but we're assembling a team that should be competitive again. We believe we will be competitive again in 2015. We've had a nice run of success since John Elway took over football operations.
"I think there's some anxiety out there that we didn't make a splash in free agency. Two things on that: You don't win a Super Bowl in March. And two, John made some significant investments in players in recent years in free agency."
"Spend to the cap"
Still, any team with Manning on its roster is going to be a team heavily dependent on its quarterback.
And for the first time since coming back from his surgically repaired neck that forced him to miss the entire 2011 season, Manning will enter a new season with questions.
"There's been a lot of speculation regarding how he's going to perform when he comes back," Ellis said. "I think a lot of that speculation is questioning his ability and doubting his ability. And I can only imagine how hard he is champing at the bit to prove everybody wrong."
Manning will play while living on a tighter budget; the Broncos slashed his 2015 pay from $19 million to $15 million. Some American families have tighter budgets than others.
Broncos president and CEO Joe Ellis said asking Peyton Manning for a pay cut was a matter of "sticking to a discipline."
Broncos president and CEO Joe Ellis said asking Peyton Manning for a pay cut was a matter of "sticking to a discipline." (John Leyba, The Denver Post)
But the Broncos had to get their books in order this year after they spent heavily in free agency the previous three seasons. And within the next 12 months, the team hopes to sign the likes of Demaryius Thomas, Von Miller and Malik Jackson to contract extensions.
And so asking Manning for financial relief was deemed necessary.
"It's sticking to a discipline," Ellis said. "You step outside the discipline, it comes back to bite you. And John's not going to do that. He's a smart businessman as well as a good football person."
By discipline, Ellis means maintaining a budget that spends one dollar of cash for every dollar of the Broncos' $150 million salary cap payroll in 2015.
"We'll spend to the cap," Ellis said. "We've spent a lot of money. We've always done that. We better do that. Because if you're not doing everything you can to win, why would anybody support you? Why would people purchase their tickets?'
"Sometimes I think it's easy to forget you can't spend like that every year because you end up mortgaging your future. The system doesn't allow for that to happen."
The Broncos' ownership structure is unusual, if not unprecedented, because Alzheimer's disease caused owner Pat Bowlen to place the team in a trust last July. The trust states Bowlen's desire is to have one of his seven children run the club when one proves to have earned the position.
Bowlen "a battler"The trust is controlled by Ellis, Broncos general counsel Rich Slivka and Denver attorney Mary Kelly. The New Orleans Saints are going through an embarrassing family feud with owner Tom Benson's revised secession plan. Could the Broncos be similarly vulnerable?
"Pat Bowlen put in a plan over a decade ago to deal with the secession planning for his team in the event of death or incapacity," Ellis said. "We're executing that plan, we're keeping the family informed and any further details on that are private to the family and out of respect to Mr. B and his wife and his children."
Bowlen's absence from these annual meetings remains palpable; for years he was one of the NFL's most influential owners, serving as a longtime co-chairman of the broadcast and labor committees.
So how is Bowlen doing?
"He's a battler," Ellis said. "He's doing the best he can with a disease that's just unfair. It's tough on him, it's tough on Annabel, it's tough on his seven children. But he's fighting it as best he can."