What Does a GM Do, Anyway?

[Bill]

As many of you are aware, Mike Shana...er, the Denver Broncos fired Ted Sundquist, their general manager, several months ago.

Many of you were probably unaware that the Broncos had a general manager, rightly supposing that the megalomaniacal Shanahan was the coach, GM, media liaison and concessions coordinator. I can only imagine the hard feelings engendered in that firing, like when the toady little protagonist from The Good Earth told his wife he was taking a mistress and she broke down crying all about "I gave you sons, I gave you sons."

Ted Sundquist probably sobbed "I only got the guys you wanted, I only got the guys you wanted." Really, how do you tell a grown man that he is no longer qualified to be your bitch? If you are not qualified to be Shanahan's bitch, what can you do?

I'm thinking mortgage broker, but that's getting off-topic.

Even more fraudulent than Sundquist's tenure is that the Broncos claim their GM position is vacant. Riiiiiight. If the GM serves any function at all for an NFL team, it is during the period from the opening of free agency to the last pick of the draft. It speaks volumes about the them that the Donkeys have left the position unmanned during this time.

Don't the Patriots have a ballboy you could hire to at least make it look good?

Normally, you can see Shanahan's fingerprints all over the Broncos' off-season moves. Now you can see his palms and face, as well, like a low budget new wave album cover done on a Xerox machine.

We started with Boss Bailey, a younger and healthier Ian Gold, which would have been a great pickup except that Gold did not fit Jim Bates' defense, either. Talks with the Jets about DeWayne Robertson have an embarrassing deja vu thing about them, given Shanahan's dalliances with other underachieving, overdrafted defensive tackles (turned Gerard Warren and Daryl Gardener right around, didn't he?).

And then there was Darrell Jackson.

Darrell Jackson.

Darrell *&%$ing Jackson.

Anyone who suffered through last season with Van and I knows that we do not agree on a lot. Mostly we agree on what sucks. We agree that Andy Reid is not a good father. We agree that the Chiefs are a bad team. We agree that Rex Grossman cannot play football.

And we agree that Darrell &*$%ing Jackson is a wide receiver who runs bad routes, gives very little effort and cannot catch. Who would not want a guy like this on their team? What is so askew with Shanahan's ego that he does not recognize his consistent inability to reclaim reclamation projects?

You know who needs to keep Shanahan in line? The GM. The great check and balance, the guy who signs his paycheck, the guy in charge of...

Oh. Right.

[Van Walker]

I've been calling for this guy's head for two seasons, and I'll continue to do so until his tenure as Donkey-In-Chief is finally and blissfully terminated.

Really...what is it that he and Matt Millen are using to fool their respective owners, and how can I get a bottle of it? Bill Parcells might have once said that if he was going to cook the dinner, he should be able to buy the groceries; okay, fair enough, but that also means that the cook/shopper gets all the blame if dinner sucks because the groceries were bad or out-of-date.

The only reason Millen didn't grab Jackson was because Shanahan got there first.

I can't wait for the comedy that will be their upcoming draft picks...