A question will have to be asked now that Elvis Dumervil has signed with the Baltimore Ravens, leaving the fiasco with the Denver Broncos behind him, eventually getting a better offer from the Super Bowl champions. Did the Broncos even want him back?

While the first few days after the fax incident it looked like Dumervil’s agent, or former agent to be exact, Marty Magid, was the bad guy, things look a little bit different now. The Ravens, who lost almost every battle they went into this off-season, losing dressing room leaders (or releasing) like Bernard Pollard and Ed Reed while giving up on younger, more promising talent like Paul Kruger, Cary Williams and Dannell Ellerbe, made the better offer eventually, for 5 years and $35 million, winning a linebacker who loves playing in the 3-4, usually good for a double digit sack number each season.

So where did the Broncos mess this up? From the $8 million they were willing to give Dumervil, the offer was reduced to about $6-6.5 million for less time than the Ravens were willing to give him, claiming that cap acceleration (something that can be fixed by setting money and penalties aside to future years) forces them to offer an inferior offer to the original one.

There are also the claims that Denver made a chance to the draft of the contract on March 15, an hour or two before the deadline. Magid did mess up, there’s no doubt about that, but the Broncos turn out to be just as bad as him, and maybe a team that just took the long way in showing Dumervil the way out of the team, knowing, or at least hoping, he wasn’t going to take the lesser offer from them. Now we understand what he meant by feeling wanted by a team – he didn’t get the feeling he was being toyed round with like he did from the Broncos.