Written by A few months ago, I wrote an article about Bill Cowher, a former coach for the Pittsburgh Steelers, saying that “It’s only cheating if you get caught” and discussed taking competitive advantages into the grey area, or worse into illegal territory. It was recently revealed that the Denver Broncos cheated and got caught…and it gets worse.
In November of 2020, the Broncos’ president of football operations, John Elway, made a request to the NFL to postpone their Sunday game as all of their quarterbacks were ineligible to play. Their eligibility came into question during an investigation and was due to being in close contact with each other, not wearing masks, and were not carrying mandated tracking devices. Was Mr. Elway wrong in trying to advocate for his team to be best prepared for competition with their best athletes?
What Mr. Elway neglected to tell the NFL was that their quarterbacks were purposefully ignoring the rules and their organization supported that. With athletes purposefully not following health and safety protocols, was Mr. Elway’s lies bordering the line of cheating? Come to find out, the NFL had video evidence that the quarterbacks were not wearing masks, distancing, or wearing their tracking devices.
How can the quarterbacks, coaches, and the Broncos’ president of football operations recover from video proof of cheating and how will they get the league to trust them again? An even bigger question is if the Denver Broncos organization was willing to lie about health and safety protocols when it came to COVID-19, what else do they lie about? Are their athletes truly safe when it comes to concussions? What about tampering with game equipment or recording other teams’ practices? What kind of morals, values, and ethics does this organization really live by? And is their sole focus to win at all costs?