"With the Broncos' playing days over this season, they are officially in acquisition mode.

Their scouting staff spent this past week in St. Petersburg, Fla., at the East-West Shrine Game practices and will spend the coming week in Mobile, Ala., at the Senior Bowl workouts, where John Elway, general manager Brian Xanders, coach John Fox and assistant coaches will join the personnel staff.

And many have wondered what the Broncos' plan is for the offseason.

At least when Elway and Xanders speak of the offseason play, it is to maintain the discipline to build a franchise through the draft and to put one successful draft class on top of another and another and another as the years go by.

That is also easier to say than to actually do, which is why so many teams try it at times before diving into free agency, checkbook in hand, in an effort to buy their way out of trouble.

Free agency will continue to be a good thing for the most prominent free agents and a hard-earned victory for players in the history of collective bargaining negotiations. It is not, and the Washington Redskins are always the first examples offered by many in the league, a way to consistently put together a team that can compete for the playoffs."