dragondawg
01-31-2008, 09:43 AM
By Dave Krieger, Rocky Mountain News
If you want to know why the Broncos retain so few of their draft choices, consider the case of Domenik Hixon, who will be playing for a championship Sunday with the New York Giants.
The Broncos made Hixon a fourth-round pick in 2006. In their season opener in Buffalo, he was their kickoff return man. On the opening kickoff of the second half, Bills tight end Kevin Everett hit him and crumpled to the ground, the victim of a serious spinal cord injury.
The incident left Hixon emotionally devastated.
"You basically just changed somebody's life," he said Tuesday. "People say, 'It's not your fault, it's not your fault,' but just being involved in something so traumatic, that was tough."
His closest friend on the Broncos, fellow wide receiver Brian Clark, tried to help.
"We talked about it throughout a lot of the night. Couldn't really sleep," Hixon said. "Just did a lot of praying about it."
Hixon now believes the incident made him more tentative as a return man.
"At the time, I didn't think so, but now that I look back on tape, I'm hesitant doing stuff. It just wasn't me out there playing," he said.
"For example, the Jacksonville game, it's me and the safety, one on one in the hole. He lowers his shoulder and I lower mine but I didn't deliver the blow. I kind of received it more. And you can't do that. You've got to be the aggressor."
Nine days later, Mike Shanahan called Hixon into his office and cut him.
"He just told me that he wanted to give some other guys an opportunity. That was their reasoning for letting me go," Hixon said.
I asked if he told Shanahan about the difficulty he was having in the wake of Everett's injury.
"No, I didn't, because I don't want to use it as an excuse," Hixon said. "Regardless of what happens, even in your personal life, they feel like you have a job to do. So by no means did I want to use that as an excuse."
The Giants signed him the next day.
Even then, Hixon was not over the trauma of Everett's injury. During the season's fifth week, he had a nightmare in which the roles were reversed - he was making the hit instead of receiving it - but the terrible result was the same.
The Giants stuck with him. In the season's final week, against the Patriots, Hixon rewarded them with a 74-yard kickoff return for a touchdown.
When Shanahan did his post-mortem on the Broncos' 7-9 season, I asked if he had any second thoughts about cutting Hixon.
"It's always tough," he said. "We were trying to get him on the practice squad. But we looked at him enough that we felt that Andre Hall was a better look for us than Domenik Hixon. Now, if we knew Andre was going to go down, we probably wouldn't have made that call.
"But just because a guy has a (74)-yard kickoff return, that doesn't mean that the guy's arrived. Let's see if he does it over time. But Domenik Hixon is a guy we looked at, obviously drafted, we liked a lot, and we gambled on the practice squad and we lost. But I still think he's got a ways to go before he arrives."
Hixon is not the only Broncos draft choice that could earn a ring with the NFC champs. Jeff Shoate, a 2004 fifth-round pick, is on the Giants practice squad. Shoate, whom the Broncos cut on Dec. 4, said he could never get a straight answer as to why.
"It was frustrating, especially when you don't have a full understanding of why that change is being made," he said. "They just said they wanted to give some other guys opportunities. For whatever reason, there were a lot of changes going on in Denver this year."
The Broncos now say they want to build through the draft. This requires a certain commitment to your draft picks. When you dump a fourth-round pick such as Hixon after just four weeks - he had missed his entire rookie season with a foot injury - you are giving him precious little opportunity to succeed. And when you fail to take into account the possibility that his play is being affected by a traumatic event, you look like an organization that prefers the quick fix to the long-term building program.
It is true, as Shanahan suggested, that the jury is still out on Hixon as an NFL player. But if you want to know why the Broncos retain so few of their draft picks, his case is a good place to start.
Just before Christmas, Hixon returned to Buffalo with the Giants, met with Everett and saw the remarkable progress he had made since that awful day in September. A week later, he took the Patriots kickoff to the house.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jan/30/krieger-broncos-too-quick-in-cutting-hixon/
If you want to know why the Broncos retain so few of their draft choices, consider the case of Domenik Hixon, who will be playing for a championship Sunday with the New York Giants.
The Broncos made Hixon a fourth-round pick in 2006. In their season opener in Buffalo, he was their kickoff return man. On the opening kickoff of the second half, Bills tight end Kevin Everett hit him and crumpled to the ground, the victim of a serious spinal cord injury.
The incident left Hixon emotionally devastated.
"You basically just changed somebody's life," he said Tuesday. "People say, 'It's not your fault, it's not your fault,' but just being involved in something so traumatic, that was tough."
His closest friend on the Broncos, fellow wide receiver Brian Clark, tried to help.
"We talked about it throughout a lot of the night. Couldn't really sleep," Hixon said. "Just did a lot of praying about it."
Hixon now believes the incident made him more tentative as a return man.
"At the time, I didn't think so, but now that I look back on tape, I'm hesitant doing stuff. It just wasn't me out there playing," he said.
"For example, the Jacksonville game, it's me and the safety, one on one in the hole. He lowers his shoulder and I lower mine but I didn't deliver the blow. I kind of received it more. And you can't do that. You've got to be the aggressor."
Nine days later, Mike Shanahan called Hixon into his office and cut him.
"He just told me that he wanted to give some other guys an opportunity. That was their reasoning for letting me go," Hixon said.
I asked if he told Shanahan about the difficulty he was having in the wake of Everett's injury.
"No, I didn't, because I don't want to use it as an excuse," Hixon said. "Regardless of what happens, even in your personal life, they feel like you have a job to do. So by no means did I want to use that as an excuse."
The Giants signed him the next day.
Even then, Hixon was not over the trauma of Everett's injury. During the season's fifth week, he had a nightmare in which the roles were reversed - he was making the hit instead of receiving it - but the terrible result was the same.
The Giants stuck with him. In the season's final week, against the Patriots, Hixon rewarded them with a 74-yard kickoff return for a touchdown.
When Shanahan did his post-mortem on the Broncos' 7-9 season, I asked if he had any second thoughts about cutting Hixon.
"It's always tough," he said. "We were trying to get him on the practice squad. But we looked at him enough that we felt that Andre Hall was a better look for us than Domenik Hixon. Now, if we knew Andre was going to go down, we probably wouldn't have made that call.
"But just because a guy has a (74)-yard kickoff return, that doesn't mean that the guy's arrived. Let's see if he does it over time. But Domenik Hixon is a guy we looked at, obviously drafted, we liked a lot, and we gambled on the practice squad and we lost. But I still think he's got a ways to go before he arrives."
Hixon is not the only Broncos draft choice that could earn a ring with the NFC champs. Jeff Shoate, a 2004 fifth-round pick, is on the Giants practice squad. Shoate, whom the Broncos cut on Dec. 4, said he could never get a straight answer as to why.
"It was frustrating, especially when you don't have a full understanding of why that change is being made," he said. "They just said they wanted to give some other guys opportunities. For whatever reason, there were a lot of changes going on in Denver this year."
The Broncos now say they want to build through the draft. This requires a certain commitment to your draft picks. When you dump a fourth-round pick such as Hixon after just four weeks - he had missed his entire rookie season with a foot injury - you are giving him precious little opportunity to succeed. And when you fail to take into account the possibility that his play is being affected by a traumatic event, you look like an organization that prefers the quick fix to the long-term building program.
It is true, as Shanahan suggested, that the jury is still out on Hixon as an NFL player. But if you want to know why the Broncos retain so few of their draft picks, his case is a good place to start.
Just before Christmas, Hixon returned to Buffalo with the Giants, met with Everett and saw the remarkable progress he had made since that awful day in September. A week later, he took the Patriots kickoff to the house.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jan/30/krieger-broncos-too-quick-in-cutting-hixon/