Here’s an interesting theory regarding the recent decision of the Denver Broncos to dump media relations director Paul Kirk and Andrew Mason, the managing editor of the team’s web site.

As a reader has pointed out, might Kirk and Mason have been targeted not because of budget cuts, but because they were deemed to have not done enough to respond to mounting criticism from beyond the organization of coach Mike Shanahan?

For both Kirk’s and Mason’s positions, there’s a line item in the budget.  The team will have employees in these jobs for 2008.  So could it be that Kirk was selected for termination simply because he wasn’t sufficiently aggressive and effective in controlling the spin as it relates to the team’s head coach?

It’s also possible that Kirk and/or Mason expressed direct or indirect resistance to the party line regarding the termination of G.M. Ted Sundquist.  Some (many) outside observers regard the move as an effort by Shanahan to identify a scapegoat for the team’s struggles.  But the team claims that the move was the result of a personality conflict between Sundquist and Shanahan, which for some reason had allowed the men to coexist for more than a decade in the same organization — and which didn’t prevent Sundquist from being elevated to G.M. in 2001.

Stay tuned on this one.  We have a feeling that there’s more to it than meets the eye.