On Tuesday, long-time Denver Broncos punter Britton Colquitt was released by the organization in order to make room for rookie Riley Dixon and save over $3 million in cap space.
It was a purely business decision on the Broncos’ part, but for Colquitt it was much more than that.
“It’s very disappointing,” Colquitt told Eric Goodman and Les Shapiro on Afternoon Drive on Mile High Sports Radio. “It’s very sad. It’s very tough. We fell in love with it, and we’ve got a great neighborhood, friends. We’ve got an amazing church down in Castle Rock that we love. You name it. We came out here, Nikki and I weren’t married, and now we’ve got three kids. It’s a lot more than football, and it’s hard.”
While it wasn’t a shocking move — the writing was on the wall from the moment John Elway selected Dixon in the seventh round — it wasn’t necessarily expected, either.
Colquitt had clearly outperformed Dixon throughout training camp, and reports were that they had discussed a contract renegotiation (A.K.A. a pay cut) earlier in the week. In fact, Colquitt had taken a bit of a discount last year to remain on the Denver Broncos — a haircut, you could say — but he claims that wasn’t the case this time around.
“It wasn’t a haircut. It wasn’t like last year. Last year was a haircut,” Colquitt said. “I’m willing to do a haircut. I’m willing to do a one-year thing. But what they wanted was a three-year thing, and that three-year thing was pretty hair-cutted. With my family and things like that, the guarantees, we couldn’t come to an agreement on that. So it wasn’t like ‘Hey, I’m just going to reduce like last year.’ That wasn’t an option, I guess.”
At the end of the day, Colquitt reiterated that he had all the respect and admiration in the world for Elway, Gary Kubiak and the Denver Broncos organization, but it simply wasn’t in his best interest to accept their deal.
“I think the way that potential deal was, it was going to hurt me in my future,” Colquitt said. “It would have put me in a place where it was not far from my vet-minimum anyway, so it what would have told every team for the rest of my career that I’d play for (the minimum).”
To hear more from Colquitt, including the exact details of the contract and his fondness for Denver, listen to the podcast below.
Catch Afternoon Drive with Goodman and Shapiro Monday-Friday from 4p-6p on Mile High Sports AM 1340 | FM 104.7 or stream live any time for the best local coverage of Colorado sports from Denver’s biggest sports talk lineup.
