NFL Denver

Marcus Nash was the Denver Broncos' first-round draft pick out of Tennessee in 1998, and while Nash was productive in college, the Broncos quickly learned that his college quarterback, Peyton Manning, could make any receiver look good. Nash was a bust in the NFL.

But he has caught on in Arena Football, where 2008 was his fifth consecutive 1,000-yard season.

Unfortunately, it will also apparently be his last. The Dallas Morning News reports that Nash, playing for the Dallas Desperados, underwent surgery this week to repair a broken neck suffered in last week's playoff loss to New York. According to the paper, Desperados coach Will McClay said the injury could end Nash's career.
Nash finished his NFL career with four catches. He was Arena Football's offensive player of the year in 2004.

Via PFT.

Everyone who follows the NFL knows that Broncos receiver Brandon Marshall can't stay out of trouble. But a Denver Post investigation reveals that Marshall's problems go beyond just his two arrests last year and his one this year.

For starters, police were called to domestic disputes between Marshall and his girlfriend three times in three months in 2007. In all three cases, the woman said Marshall punched her. Police made no arrests in any of the incidents.

His girlfriend's friend also told police that Marshall hit her car with his while the girlfriend was a passenger, then threw a rock at the car. Marshall wasn't arrested in that incident, either.

Marshall has also been charged with crimes including retail theft to assault on an officer, and his own father once told police Marshall shot a gun during an argument they had in a parking lot.

Looking at the totality of Marshall's rap sheet, it's reminiscent of Adam "Pacman" Jones: No individual incident was serious enough to put him behind bars, but the cumulative effect is likely enough for a lengthy suspension from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

Via PFT.

Yesterday we brought you some of the conflicting stories concerning Brandon Marshall's March arrest for domestic violence. Marshall's denials ranged from the abject to the vague but overriding the whole thing was his assertion that he was the victim of a shakedown attempt and not a serial batterer of women.

Now, the attorney for Marshall's former girlfriend has fired back at the Bronco receiver.

"His story that he has been a victim is as pathetic as the story that he slipped on a McDonald's bag and injured his arm," David McGill, one of the two attorneys representing Rasheedah Watley, said Thursday night. "Hopefully, he will be as eager to tell his story in a court of law, under oath, as he has been in the media."

McGill also contradicted any notion that there was no physical abuse by saying that there was physical evidence to prove that part of his case. Marshall maintains that the only physical interaction was when Watley's sisters attacked him, causing a cut on his hand noted by police on the night in question.

In the Rocky Mountain News, Bernie Lincicome argues that it might be time for the Broncos to prepare a way out for Marshall.

Nothing he has done on the field or off the field would indicate he is more trouble than he is worth. Yet.

I think on the field trumps off the field in the NFL, which is why, short of a case of Pacman fever, Marshall will be with the Broncos this season.

We're still waiting for any fallout from the revelation that Brandon Marshall was arrested for the third time in 12 months in March but Marshall is going on the offensive against his accuser. He claims that Rasheedah Watley was trying to extort money and a car from him in exchange for keeping their affairs out of a courtroom. Her attorney emailed Harvey Steinberg, attorney for Marshall, and Steinberg provided details of the email to the Rocky Mountain News.

More than a year later, in an e-mail to Steinberg, O'Marra maintained that Marshall had offered to put Watley up in a furnished apartment for a year, get her a car comparable to her former BMW 645 and put $30,000 in her checking account, and that a settlement of $150,000 would be accepted. Five days later, that figure had shrunk to $100,000.

That was more than a year after a previous domestic violence charge against Marshall. When he refused to comply, Steinberg claims that the most recent charges, which he calls "unfounded," came to light. He also said the March incident was a figment of the imagination.

It's hard to believe that assertion. The Denver Post reports that when police were summoned to Marshall's home on March 4th, they found the receiver bleeding from a cut on his hand. Watley claims that Marshall found a text message from another man on her phone and beat her as a result.

Yesterday Brandon Marshall got himself dragged into an unsavory situation thanks to shoddy journalism. Today he's there because of his own actions. The Denver Post, via PFT, reports this morning that the Bronco receiver was arrested for misdemeanor battery in Atlanta on March 6th after a complaint from his girlfriend.

Rasheedah Watley, 24, filed an affidavit in Fulton County Magistrate Court on March 5 claiming that a day earlier Marshall hit her in the mouth and left eye, leaving her with, according to the criminal warrant, "visible marks above the eye and a laceration on her top and bottom lip.

It was the third arrest in less than a year for Marshall, the second for domestic violence and he's had a couple of other instances where charges weren't filed. No formal charges have been filed yet in this case, either. The arrest came 16 days before Marshall badly injured his arm in the McDonald's bag slip/wrestling match with his brother.

Marshall could face discipline from the league under the Personal Conduct Policy. The trifecta in one year would not work in his favor, and could face more of an issue if the arrests were concealed. Pacman Jones got in more trouble by hiding his run-ins with the law from the NFL. A spokesman for the NFL said they are looking into the arrest right now but didn't indicate when the league was made aware of it.

There's definitely a lot we still don't know about what led up to Javon Walker getting beaten up in Las Vegas early last week. His story about a random group of thugs accosting him seems fishy, to say the least, in light of his champagne spraying in the Body English nightclub earlier in the evening. Not knowing exactly what happened, however, doesn't mean we can just assume a course of events.

Norm Clarke, an eyepatch-wearing columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is doing just that however in part of a column titled Latest Walker Twists.

And just when the story couldn't get any weirder -- on second thought, the hunch here is that it's going to get much wilder -- Walker's former Denver Broncos teammate Brandon Marshall showed up Friday at Tryst.

Clarke then mentions Marshall's role in the fracas that preceded Darrent Williams's murder in Denver last year. What Clarke doesn't deem worthy of mention is that there's no evidence placing Marshall with Walker at Body English nor any apparent connection between Marshall visiting a different club in the same city and what went down with Walker.

I fail to see how this makes the Walker story any weirder. Thousands of people went to clubs in Vegas on Friday night, are all of them somehow culpable in whatever befell Walker?

Mike Anderson was the best story in football in 2000, a 27-year-old rookie and Marine Corps veteran who came out of nowhere to rush for 1,487 yards and win the league's rookie of the year award with the Denver Broncos.

Anderson spent five more seasons with the Broncos and then the last two with the Baltimore Ravens, but he never matched that level of success, and he's not currently under contract to any NFL team. And now no team could play him in 2008, even if they wanted to.

Howard Balzer of Sports XChange is reporting (via PFT) that Anderson has been suspended for one year, apparently for a violation of the league's substance-abuse policy. He was previously suspended four games in 2003 for a violation of the substance-abuse policy.

Realistically, this suspension means his career is over no one is going to sign a 35-year-old running back coming off a yearlong suspension. It's a disappointing end for a career that had such a great beginning.

Denver Broncos wide receiver Brandon Marshall is recovering from a bizarre injury in which he slipped and fell in his home and put his arm through his TV screen. Marshall severed an artery and a vein, damaged a nerve in his right forearm, cut tendons to five muscles and needed surgery to patch everything up.

Marshall now says he's almost fully healed, but in providing that reassurance, he provided way too much information:

"I can do everything with my right hand that I was doing before the accident but I'm still wiping my butt with my left hand," Marshall said. "It's not as strong. My right hand is not as strong."

I really have no idea why Marshall, who lied to the team about how the injury happened in the first place, now feels the need to tell the whole truth about exactly where he is in his recovery. A simple "I can do almost everything with my right hand" would have been fine.

Selvin Young's proclamation that he was going to run for 2,000 yards this season was met with much skepticism. He's never been a full-time tailback, doesn't appear to have the build of an every-down guy and, well, just doesn't seem like the type of guy who can get it done.

He's not alone among Denver players with a lot of confidence in themselves. Brandon Marshall says he's totally fine after severing the artery (and several other important doodads) in his right forearm during some offseason tomfoolery with his brother and that he's poised to post some big numbers.

"I'm still going to catch 100 balls this year," Marshall said following the conclusion of the Broncos' offseason minicamps Thursday.

If you had to bet on one or the other reaching their goal, it would have to be Marshall. For one thing, he caught 102 passes last season so he's not trying to reach a new height. For another, he's easily the best receiver on the team and won't have too much competition when it comes to catching Jay Cutler's eye. Young will have to split time with Michael Pittman and others in the backfield.

Marshall has been pretty limited in practices this offseason. He should be ready to go full speed come training camp which is a necessity if the Broncos hope to return to the playoffs this season.

The ongoing saga of Jake Plummer's retirement has finally come to an end, as Plummer, who retired after the Denver Broncos traded him to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for a 2008 seventh-round draft pick more than a year ago, has agreed to pay the Bucs $3.5 million.

It's a complex, often misunderstood, part of NFL contracts -- when players get signing bonuses, they only get to keep the money if they fulfill the terms of the contract. Plummer chose to walk away from his contract early by retiring, which meant he couldn't keep his entire signing bonus. When the Buccaneers traded for Plummer, they traded for the rights to get that bonus money -- even though the Bucs didn't pay it to him.

Now the Buccaneers get that money, but it's important to remember that this is about more than a millionaire writing a $3.5 million check to a billionaire. That $3.5 million will actually be credited to the Buccaneers' salary cap for the 2009 season.

So look at it this way: If the Bucs sign a free agent next year to a contract that pays him $3.5 million in base salary, that player is really who they acquired with that 2008 seventh-round draft pick. And since the kind of player who makes $3.5 million a year is almost always a better player than a seventh-round rookie, you'd have to say the Bucs made a good move when they traded for Plummer, even though he never played a down for them.