Von Miller is a Ram. Broncos will be better off for it. Cheers to GM George Paton for doing what John Elway wouldn’t.

Shed a tear. Raise a glass. A toast to The Vonster.

Then celebrate, Broncos Country.

No more living in 2015. No more running in place. The road to the next era of Broncos football, to forging the next Super Bowl champion, is finally underway.

Take a bow, general manager George Paton, for doing what John Elway wouldn’t. For moving on by moving Von.

On Monday morning, not long after the team’s weekly media access ended, the penny dropped: reports surfaced that Von Miller was being traded to the 7-1 Los Angeles Rams for a second-round and a third-round pick in the 2022 NFL Draft. The Broncos have to pony up $9 million of the remaining $9.7 million left on No. 58’s contract this season.

Just like that, a team forever running in circles has a clear path again. Paton, in his first year, doesn’t have to carry the water for Super Bowl 50 anymore. Or the baggage.

Draft picks are precious jewels to NFL front offices. Moving Miller off a 4-4 team in a brutal division and a slew of intradivisional matchups left now gives Paton more flexibility. Especially when it comes to either acquiring or developing that elusive, holiest grail: A franchise quarterback.

The uncomfortable truth, the bottom line, hasn’t changed. The Broncos will be closer to winning a title with an A-list quarterback than with the 32-year-old Miller coming off the edge.

The Vonster wasn’t getting any younger. And the gap between the Broncos, endlessly trying to replicate the final season of The Peyton Manning Era, and the rest of the AFC West wasn’t getting any smaller.

We know, we know. The Broncos won this past Sunday. They’re .500 after the season’s opening eight games for the first time in five years. Why blow up everything that you were trying to tweak? What message does that send to the guys in that locker room?

It tells them they’re serious about change. About turning the page.

Paton realized the same thing most of you did after that uncomfortable 17-10 victory over the woeful Washington Football Team. The four teams his roster has beaten — the Giants, the Jags, the Jets, and the WFT — took a combined record of 7-22 into Monday night. Why push for 9-8 now when you can start lining up the chess pieces for 13-4 or 12-5 in the future?

I’d asked the Vonster last Thursday how, given everything he’s already been through since Super Bowl 50 — three different head coaches, all those starting quarterbacks — how he’d feel about a genuine rebuild here.

His answer, in retrospect, was a little telling.

“I can’t really control any of that,” Miller replied. “I’m here with these guys and I love all these guys — whether we lose or not. I can say that all these coaches, all these equipment managers, the media guys, everybody, I genuinely love these guys.

“I spend more time here with these guys than anybody else and that’s throughout the last 11 years. While I’m here, while my key card still works, and while I’m a Denver Bronco I’m going to continue to keep trying to fix it. I’m going to continue to try to do my part to put us back on the mountaintop. I’m going to continue to try to be the type of franchise that this franchise has been historically. I’m going to continue to do that. I go to sleep trying to do it. I wake up trying to do it, and I’m going to keep doing it until I’m not here anymore.”

Tuesday, he’ll wake up a Ram. No. 58 gets to raise Cain next to Aaron Donald and Jalen Ramsey. He gets to compete for a championship immediately. The Broncos get to pile up assets that will help them rebuild.

All parties have something to look forward to. And for the first time since 2016, the franchise’s last winning season, so does Broncos Country.

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