Broncos free agency: Tracking every move in George Paton’s first year

3. Von Miller’s contract option picked up

If you were a first-year general manager, how would you have gone about Von Miller‘s situation?

Would you want one of your first orders of business to be cutting Von Miller?

That would be a tough sell to a fan base, I’d say. In the end, George Paton made the right decision to try to ask Miller and his agent about potentially re-doing his contract to lower a 2021 salary cap hit that is north of $22 million.

A number of fans in Broncos Country have scoffed at Von Miller’s price, but there are three issues to take with that.

1. It’s Von Miller.

2. It’s not your money.

3. The Broncos are not hurting for cap space.

Keeping Von Miller does not and has not limited the Broncos from making other big moves. While the team did move on from Kareem Jackson and some other veteran players, it would have been a huge mistake to let go of Miller without a big-time addition coming over in his place.

Miller looked like he was about to play out of his mind after the offseason he had in 2020 following a significant bout with COVID-19. Once Miller recovered from the virus, he hit the gym and posted photos and videos looking like he’d been put in the same machine that spit out Captain America.

The Broncos have gotten four games — four games — with both Miller and Chubb on the field and Vic Fangio calling the shots. It would have been a shame if the team had moved on from him just to open up cap space when they had other ways to do that.

Obviously, George Paton saw that.