With the once-proud Broncos a laughingstock, Drew Lock is the quarterback of a football team only his mother could love. So if you’ve got an extra $3 billion tucked under the mattress and have always dreamed of owning an NFL franchise, give the bickering Bowlen kids a call. Make an offer they can’t refuse.
On another sad day of soap opera in Broncos Country, Lock returned to practice with a lighter wallet, as well as a mask covering his mouth and nose to hide the shame of leaving teammates in the lurch by violating COVID-19 safety protocols.
“It hurt my heart, hurt my soul,” Lock said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told the Broncos to quit their bellyaching about the embarrassment of getting routed by New Orleans. So what if Denver was forced to take the field without anything resembling a professional quarterback? Tough cookies.
“We will not reschedule games for that purpose,” said Goodell, determined to keep marching through the pandemic, even if it means stepping on fallen Broncos and competitive integrity.
Not to be left out, because she tends to get irked when ignored, Beth Bowlen Wallace issued a statement of displeasure about this 4-7 team’s current state of disrepair. The loudest of the Bickering Bowlens made a thinly veiled suggestion that a sale of the Broncos might well be the best way to resolve an ugly family dispute.
“Watching these past few seasons has been extremely painful and we continue to see no other way to restore the franchise but through a transition of ownership of the Denver Broncos,” Bowlen Wallace said in a holiday statement best read in a Grinch voice.
Sell the Broncos, currently valued at $3.2 billion by Forbes, and each of Pat Bowlen’s seven children could go buy private tropical islands.
Beats bickering, eh?
In a year filled with anxiety and heartbreak, the Broncos are doing their best to make 2020 absolutely miserable. In the 18 months since the death of Mr. B, things just keep getting dumb and dumber at Dove Valley headquarters.
For example: On the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, at almost the precise moment offensive tackle Garett Bolles was celebrating a $68 million contract extension in the parking lot, Lock and his back-up quarterbacks were reeling from the news they wouldn’t be allowed to play against the Saints, while general manager John Elway was angrily hanging up on the league office for its slap-dash decision to punish the Broncos.
Yes, it’s infuriating.
But know what’s nuts? When the silence of coach Vic Fangio, Elway and team president Joe Ellis was deafening, it was left to the mother of Lock to make a strong defense of her son’s character as a leader.
Because this is 2020, Laura Lock went full blast mode on Twitter.
“Using people to make an example of a situation is wrong,” growled Momma Bear Lock, noting her son was not the Denver QB that tested positive for COVID. “The NFL used one of their own as an example — this is where the shame is.”
Don’t mess with Momma Bear.
“Moms will be moms. That’s just a fact. They’re going to back up their kid,” the struggling young quarterback said. Lock was fined by the team, adding financial insult to the humiliation of being banished to his room without Sunday dinner, while the Broncos were trounced 31-3 by New Orleans.
“My mom is fiery. There’s never a game where I played bad and wasn’t more scared of her than my dad.”
I’ve got no real problem with Lock’s mom being a helicopter parent. The Broncos have far bigger concerns.
All I want for Christmas is a new owner of this football team. How about you?
Although Jeff Bezos is made of money, Seattle or Washington needs the Amazon mogul more than Denver does. Football is a young man’s game, so maybe it’s past prime time for 80-year-old Phil Anschutz to buy a team.
Yes, I’ve dreamed aloud of Peyton Manning becoming the face of an ownership group. Perhaps more realistic: Denver native and self-made billionaire Robert F. Smith is a man with the financial wherewithal and business acumen to do the Bowlen legacy proud.
Without Mr. B, here’s what the Broncos have become: Inept. Irrelevant. Inadequate.
I would like to see Brittany Bowlen get the chance to show the sports world what a smart, young woman could do as the leader of an NFL franchise. But I don’t get a vote. And the last thing this franchise needs is to waste another year while being dragged through the mud of a lawsuit scheduled for next summer.
Before the Broncos can address their myriad issues, they must admit there’s a problem.
The problem starts at the top, with the power vacuum left by the late, great owner’s empty chair.
At this point, the Bickering Bowlens need to realize the best way for the Broncos to regain their lost glory is for the seven kids of Mr. B to come together and utter these words in unison:
We’re selling.
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