BroncoTalk Offseason Award – Best Free Agent Signing

The BroncoTalk Offseason Awards continue! I’ve awarded 10 or so awards to outstanding (and outstandingly bad) offseason moves as the world prepares for the 2007 NFL campaign. In my opinion, everything up to this point have been the “warm-ups” – like a Best Supporting Actor award at the Oscars, these have been the fillers, preparing for the real juicy stuff.

There were A LOT of free agent signings this year – hell, for a complete list, courtesy of NFL.com, go here. Also consider my Top 10 Signings so Far, done about 5 days into free agency.

The nominees were easy to determine. Travis Henry coming to Denver. Adalius Thomas, who was #1 on the countdown then. Joey Porter going to Miami. Ahman Green to Houston and Jeff Garcia to Tampa Bay were also considered, as well as other Denver signings of Daniel Graham and New England WR Donte Stallworth. I looked at the impact each player is expected to have and the contract they signed, and came up with THE Best Free Agent Signing over this offseason…

The BroncoTalk Offseason Award for Best Free Agent Signing goes to…

The Denver Broncos for signing Travis Henry

Since the bigger splashes were trades (Randy Moss, Dre Bly), the Best Free Agent signing goes to Henry. Photo Courtesy

Originally it was Henry 2, Adalius Thomas 1 on the countdown. But Thomas won’t have as big an impact on the Patriot’s defense as Henry will have on our offense – and considering that Henry cost us much less than Thomas cost the Pats, it was the best signing of the offseason, PERIOD. Henry has been able to stay clean, and once he gets through October he is rotated out of the league’s substance abuse program.

So now that the riskiness of the pickup is out of the way, we explore the significance. Not since Terrell Davis, and to a certain point Clinton Portis have the Broncos had a real, realy playmaker at the runningback position. And we’ve never paid for one until now, showing that Mike Shanahan was so disgusted with our running game last year that he wasn’t about to put up with that again.

The Broncos offense is very improved under Henry and Graham and, of course, the full-time job that will be Jay Cutler‘s. Expect nothing short of 1,500 yards from Henry, an exciting prospect as we go for the Super Bowl.