If you draft someone knowing it's going to take a few years for them to be NFL ready, you don't cut them after one year. Two, maybe. After training camp in year 3? I think that's appropriate. I mean, have a little patience, especially if it's a project kind of guy.
One other point here: 1st round rookie contracts have a lot of guaranteed money baked in. Had Elway cut Lynch last year, he would have been looking at $5M+ in dead money. Hell, it's over $4M in dead money if he cuts him today.
That's not a huge number, but Elway had done a fantastic job of managing dead money since he took over. On 3 of the past 4 years, Broncos have had been one of the 5 best teams in the league in terms of lowest amount of dead money on the books.
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