Denver Broncos president Joe Ellis during the game against the San Diego Chargers at Qualcomm Stadium. (Kirby Lee/Image of Sport-USA TODAY Sports)
This is one week that the Broncos are happy to put in the books.
After two DUI charges and boatloads of embarrassment, the Broncos are going to be looking internally a lot more often. This comes after director of pro personnel Tom Heckert was charged with a DUI in June, and director of player personnel Matt Russell was arrested and jailed for driving while under the influence and slamming into a police car last weekend.
Team president Joe Ellis said that an apology doesn’t do this justice. He said that the team has to clean up this mess quickly.
"We’re not perfect. We’ve made our errors. We admit it. You can say we apologized for it — but I think an apology rings hollow when you run into the back of a police car or you’re blowing a blood-alcohol limit that’s three times the legal limit. I don’t think fans, I don’t think the public, I don’t think anybody wants to hear an apology.So, I think you have to acknowledge your mistakes and you have to fix them and you have to do that the right way,” Ellis said. “There’s a lot of things we do. We offer programs, we offer a lot of help, there’s a ton of stuff the National Football League makes available to all the teams in an effort for them to avoid this kind of thing. In this case, we had two guys that couldn’t do it. And that’s just sad. That’s too bad. But we’re going to move on and our hope is that you won’t see this kind of incident from an employee again. – Joe Ellis (via ESPN)"
Russell and Heckert aren’t expected to be fired, but this could have repercussions on this season and next season when it comes time for player evaluations.
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