John Elway certainly has earned a reputation for playing hardball with negotiations. This has been met with mixed reactions from fans (including myself), and players.
While I don’t necessarily like to see veteran players cut and team stalwarts not retained due to age or salary, I believe Elway has earned a little bit of a a long leash specifically in these types of situations.
I’m not here to claim he’s perfect and the Broncos record over the last three seasons certainly indicate that there are core parts of the job in which he is under-performing.