Before the coaches and personnel staff left for vacation, General Manager Brian Xanders said the club is ready for free agency.

We thought we’d ask him to delve a little deeper into the club’s preparation, and below is what the general manager had to say.

On being ready for free agency since December:
“We have internal boards and rankings we’ve worked on since December. We’ve actually been ready for it since December. But we’ve watched it over and over in January, February and May. We’ve gone through and cleansed the board. What was interesting was having the draft before free agency, which changed the specific team needs. For example, if we draft three linebackers and we feel good about our group of nine linebackers for camp, it wouldn’t make sense to go out and sign a big-time money free agent at linebacker. What that did is the draft filled in some team needs before free agency at a different pricing level.”

On whether this year’s free agency will be any more stressful because it could come at a moment’s notice:
“We don’t know the rules and right now we’re not allowed to talk to any agent for anybody. The players that are on our target list, they don’t even know that we like them. So we’ve got to wait until they create some rules and system rules for free agency. I think it will be regimented — I don’t think there will be chaos. I think we’re going to be really specific with who we’re going after, and we’re going to try to get those guys in the first day. That’s NFL free agency and the college free agents.”

On whether the team will be aggressive in free agency:
“What it is is specific positions. The media has been good about picking out what positions those are likely to be, but it’s really groups of positions of players. The high-level money, the mid-level money and then back-end money. So that’s how we’ve done it. We’ve ranked them, we’ve gone through the tape again, we’ve got market analysis of their pricing — what their production values over their career match up to what other guys got with similar production. So we’ve done the cost analysis studies for their contracts, we’ve done their scheme fit for our football systems and our team, so we’ve really tied that together. We’re ready for all three levels. It’s really like a domino effect — if you miss on a high-level money guy here, then it allows for more money elsewhere.”

-Gray Caldwell, DenverBroncos.com

Tags: Free Agency, General Manager Brian Xanders

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