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The Emperor’s New Clothes
by Khaled Elsayed
25/6/2009
 Right now Pat Bowlen is preparing to address Denver, Colorado in nothing but his birthday suit.
I’ll give you a second to get that mental image out of your head.
Long enough?
Anyways back to Pat, who was long applauded by his public for the success he helped bring to Denver. Super Bowls and stability are more than most fans would ask for, but it wasn’t enough for Pat who wanted more, because being perennial contenders was simply not enough. And much like the Emperor shunned his regular tailor, Bowlen disposed of long time associate and chief bringer of the success, Mike Shanahan, and replaced him with the untested Josh McDaniels who had built his reputation under the famed guidance of the most highly regarded of tailors, Bill Belichick.
With this new designer on board, Bowlen would be wearing the most fancy of clothes he had to believe. After all he had provided McDaniels with plenty of resources such as an elite young Quarterback, a superstar receiver, and a young and talented offensive line. Not much was needed, but for work on a defence that was questionable at best.
So what could go wrong? It only required a tweaking of his outfit a little bit to turn what was very nearly a playoff team into an actual playoff team. Focus on bringing in better defensive talent and all of a sudden the Emperor would be dazzling all in his new clothes.
But this new designer had other ideas. He didn’t care about what Pat looked like as he had his own ideas. And so it began.
At first he tested the waters a little bit. He needed to know just how gullible his Emperor was. So he went up to him and politely enquired about whether it may be in the teams interests to bring in Matt Cassell. Bowlen would have been a little shocked by this, but this guy was a fine designer, how else would he have graduated from the New England academy of Fashion and Design? So he allowed Josh to present his vision, that they could trade quarterbacks essentially and come out with a lot more on the other end to help out areas where the team was struggling. He wasn’t sold but the fact he was entertaining the most ludicrous of ideas was the in McDaniels needed to know he could take Bowlen for all he was worth.
In the drama that followed it was clear that though his court disapproved of McDaniels suggestion, the Emperor was prepared to defend him. But McDaniels needed more confirmation of his sway over the Emperor and decided, that even though they had no personnel to run it, and had done nothing to acquire suitable talent, a switch to the en vogue 3-4 would be in the best interests of the Broncos, even though it would expose the rather unflattering figure of the Emperors defence. But Pat stood by and though he wasn’t comfortable with the attire his team were going to be turning out in, he’d made an investment in McDaniels and was determined to see a return.
 So newly convinced he could get away with almost anything McDaniels decided to push forward with his plan and was able to convince Bowlen on the merits of getting rid of their franchise QB, with the Emperor again going along with it, not quite sure it was in his best interests, but effectively declaring his faith in McDaniels to do right by him and his empire.
So now he knew he could get the Emperor to sanction anything he wanted, and it wasn’t long before the Emperor was presented with a new outfit that although it left him extremely exposed, he believed in McDaniels enough to allow him to spend his 1st round pick on a running back even though he’d just acquired 3 in free agency to go along with the 2 he already had. Furthermore he was content allowing them to trade away next year’s 1st round pick for a 2nd round talent of a player in a position where they had relative depth compared to the atrociousness of other areas of their defence.
The Emperor had officially declared his faith in the outfit and was prepared to take it to the streets, the whole world of American Football fans bearing witness to the design of Josh McDaniels.
And that’s as far as the story goes for now. The future will clue us in to see if Bowlen has learned from the Emperors mistakes, and whether he will stick with Josh McDaniels in the long run if, as expected, Denver struggle this year. All we know right now is that Bowlen is preparing to face his once adoring public sans Franchise Quarterback, anything resembling a functional defence, and possibly his star wide receiver with plenty of other players disgruntled.
While I would never suggest intentional sabotage on the part of McDaniels, its clear to all but the most naive of people that his decisions and how he has handled himself as Denver Head Coach have managed to destabilise one of the most stable franchises by being so intent on putting his own imprint on the Broncos. Now he has to walk into the season arguably doing more than any coach in recent memory to make his team worse than it was in the previous year, especially considering their failings were perhaps hidden by playing in a weak division and having an explosive offence. He faces challenges in terms of keeping players happy and it appears the transition to 3-4 defence is going to be something of a grind with the personnel they have in place. The fact that when looking at the evidence it seems that McDaniels is intent on destroying the infrastructure that has been built up must be a massive concern to all Broncos fans, especially when things get so bad that they’re regarded as the joke of the division when you play the Raiders twice a year.
For the sake of Pat Bowlen you have to hope a lot of these things are rookie mistakes that McDaniels can learn from and that his lasting legacy won’t be so detrimental that it takes the Broncos years to recover from. As for right now let’s hope Pat is proud of what’s downstairs, because if I was this Emperor, I’d be feeling pretty exposed about now.
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