Crazy turn of events lately with Brandon Marshall. As it stands right now, he’s requested a trade, there are conflicting accounts on whether the Broncos will honor the request, and Brandon has posted a blog entry confirming that he intends to be out of there.

Here’s my sense of it. Brandon’s been rehabbing away from the Broncos because he feels like his body wasn’t treated with the proper respect last season. That sounds legitimate to me, especially when you consider the recent stories about Kellen Winslow and LaDainian Tomlinson. NFL teams don’t exactly have an interest in disclosing their players’ injuries, nor in protecting their long term futures, not as team-switching becomes more contract – the monetary interests are to squeeze as much mileage out of a player as you can during their current contract, at the expense of their post-contract livelihood.

And so, there is a legitimate argument to be made here for a new contract – if the Broncos have a longer-term financial interest in Brandon Marshall, then maybe Brandon would have more trust that they’d be looking out for his medical future.

But he’s playing this badly – the Broncos don’t have a positive reason to lock up his future now, because there is still a court case pending that could lead to a major suspension of Brandon. It doesn’t help Brandon that the court date conflicts with the contract deadline that would extend Brandon’s contractual lockup – if he doesn’t report in August, his free agency gets delayed a year.

The Broncos have two choices – talk up his potential in an attempt to increase trade leverage, or talk him down in an attempt to reduce Brandon’s leverage – and it looks like they are choosing the latter. If they delay, Brandon damages his future. If they talk him down, then it reduces what Brandon could command in a contract, by reducing other team’s appetite for him. And it looks like that is the route they’re going – check out this quote from Woody Paige’s latest column:

I believe (with no supportive evidence) that Marshall is “rehabilitating” in Orlando instead of at Dove Valley because he doesn’t want his hip to be examined, his health might be worse than suspected and he couldn’t renegotiate.

Woody is part of the Broncos’ system at this point. He knows people will assume he knows something even though he says he doesn’t. I believe (with no supportive evidence) that he wouldn’t float that kind of rumor if it weren’t okay with Broncos brass somehow.

And what with McDaniels going public with his promises of being open to dialogue, this looks like a classic hardball carrot/stick approach of negotiation. Come on back into the fold, Brandon, where we’ll welcome you with open arms, because if you don’t, we might just destroy your future.