The Broncos have now officially lost defensive end Elvis Dumervil. In the eyes of some in the agent community, they’ve also lost something far less tangible.
“I don’t trust them,” said one agent who requested anonymity because the agent will be dealing with the Broncos going forward.
While the cutthroat nature of the agent industry prompts few to ever feel compassion for a competitor, the thinking is that the Broncos steamrollered the career of Marty Magid, who already has a limited collection of client and who now will have a very hard time recruiting more of them.
While it’s easy to blame Magid for the glitch that resulted in Dumervil’s reduced deal being scrapped and his existing contract being terminated, the Broncos share responsibility for letting the issue linger until the last minute. And if, as Magid has claimed, the Broncos changed terms of the final draft on Friday, March 15, the Broncos bear even more of the blame for knocking the eleventh-hour effort to revise the deal off the rails.
Then, after the existing contract was scrapped, the Broncos reduced the offer that had been on the table, pointing to the fact that termination of the prior contract resulted in a cap acceleration. However, given that the acceleration came from future cap dollars hitting the bottom line now, the problem easily could have been fixed by pushing more of the 2013 payment under the new deal into future cap years.
Or, if necessary, finding a way to artificially reduce the $20 million cap number assigned to quarterback Peyton Manning. (Since Dumervil and Manning are both represented by CAA, that would have been easy to accomplish.)
The truth could be that the Broncos realized that the reduced contract was still more than they needed to pay Dumervil. If so, they guessed wrong, because the Ravens (who were outbid for the likes of Paul Kruger, Anquan Boldin, Ed Reed, and Dannell Ellerbe) were willing to pay Dumervil more than Denver.
Regardless, agents will now be more careful when dealing with the Broncos.
“I will read documents from them 10 times,” the agent said.
That won’t help Marty Magid, but it could keep others from suffering the same fate.