Von Miller might be lost for the season, but his impact will still be felt
Sep 10, 2020, 9:03 AM
There are things we say in football that I am about to say to you, whoever you are, and I don’t want this to hurt your feelings. I want you to understand that this is simply the only way forward for this Broncos team. While they may be thinking exactly what you are, they must never say it, because that would spell their demise. The team must keep their gaze ahead on the choppy seas, and not on their comrade who has fallen mortally wounded at their feet.
Before I say what needs to be said about this football team, a word about the comrade. Never has a man fought more valiantly or with such ferocity than Von Miller for the city of Denver. Every man comes in to the NFL with high expectations. Few fulfill them.
Professional football has a way of taking your lofty expectations and paring them all the way down until you are a small puzzle piece in a big picture. If a man is lucky, he becomes a part of that picture, no matter how tiny or imperceptible his puzzle piece; no matter how quickly it burns out and is replaced.
How many first-round picks have fizzled out? Shown promise and then sputtered? Gave you three good years? Four?
Von gave you nine masterclass seasons. Team captain. All-Pro. Super Bowl MVP. The accolades go on forever, but it is not the awards or titles that make Von who he is. It was his presence on the grass, as a player on the team, as No. 58 with shoulder pads and a helmet getting down in his stance and coming off the edge to impose his will on the football moment.
Each play he made rippled into eternity as the next week’s opponent adjusted the game plan to avoid a similar fate. This “Von ripple” is what gave the Broncos the advantage whenever he was on the field. And now the ripple must exist in his absence, because Von is gone.
Now, here is the thing that must be said. Von is gone but the season is not. Von is gone, but the Broncos can still win just as many games — maybe even more. How? Well, that’s the magic part.
When a large, powerful energy force vacates a controlled environment, an equally powerful energy force moves in to replace it. That is football. That is life. Von’s injury has created a vacuum. Nature will fill it back up.
The beauty of the NFL is that this massive void will be filled by a professional football player with his own sense of destiny. He who feels the gravity of the moment. Who feels the weight of that void. The essence of what Von left behind and the heroism with which he protected the edge. And this man, or men, whoever he/they may be, will break their backs to honor Von’s legacy. They will devote themselves to the task, in mind and body, and will be imbued by the football gods with the magic that Von left behind, even without No. 58 on the field.
Von’s voice, his locker, his heart — they do not disappear from Dove Valley. If anything, he now looms larger. Von’s absence demands even more from his teammates, who now understand that they can’t lean on Von to make the play. Someone else will have to make it instead. And someone will rise from general obscurity to do just this, and of what essence he can’t fully capture, the rest of the team will fill in the gaps.
New moments will emerge, new schemes will take hold, the coaching staff will adapt and the team will move forward. One day at a time, like usual, focusing only on the one job you have, and that which you can control. And from this uncertainty will spawn a new resolve and a new sense of pride in finding a way to win without Von.
We will not be defined by one man, however great he is. We will not let this one man’s legacy be defined by his injury. We will not let this man down. We will continue what he started and adapt the message that he has so recently embraced — greatness through accountability.
Von has always made plays. His whole career, he was always the best football player on the field. But this offseason, he became something else, and his teammates noticed. Somehow, while the rest of the world was lost in the uncertainty of a pandemic, Von was crystalizing a new perspective on football and life. When he came back to Dove Valley for camp, he was a changed man, and everyone who saw him knew it.
If Von has played his last game as a Bronco, then his final gift to his teammates was his most profound. On his way out, Von has shown his team the way forward.
It is not enough to simply make plays on the football field — it’s who you are in between those plays that make the difference. For Von Miller, the answer is clear. For the rest of us? Follow the ripple.
