Has John Elway broken the flawed Broncos' championship window?
The former Denver quarterback helped mastermind his team’s Super Bowl 50 victory. But his inability to replace Peyton Manning has cost the team dear
On 20 March, Denver Broncos general manager John Elway wrote a letter on team stationery endorsing Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, for a seat on the highest court in the United States. “Neil is a big Denver Broncos fan, and I can tell you that I am a big fan of his,” the Hall of Fame quarterback wrote. That letter was released exactly two months to the the day that Elway attended Trump’s inauguration in Washington DC. But eight months after the inauguration and five months after endorsing Gorsuch, Elway released a statement that read: “Hopefully as we go forward we can start concentrating on football a little bit more. Take the politics out of football.” An interesting plea coming from a man who only recently had weighed in on politics below his football team’s logo. But even more peculiar given that how bad the Broncos are, Elway would be wise to want people to talk about anything but the football team he has built.
Elway’s Broncos, two years after winning the Super Bowl in dominant fashion over the Carolina Panthers, sit dead-last in a middling AFC West at 3-9, three games behind the Chiefs, Chargers and Raiders who are all bunched at 6-6. Denver have now lost eight games in a row; only the Cleveland Browns have a longer losing streak.
After the Broncos named Elway executive vice president of football operations/GM in January 2011, the organization’s fortunes embarked on a steady incline to a Super Bowl title in February 2016. But Denver have been on an even steeper decline ever since. Don’t believe it? This year’s Broncos offense is 27th in the NFL in points. The 2011 Bronco offense from Elway’s first season on the job? The one that was run by current minor league baseball outfielder Tim Tebow? That unit was 25th in the league in points.
Elway’s earliest moves on the job, jettisoning Tebow to Jets damnation included, all worked. After inheriting a 4-12 Broncos team run by an overmatched Josh McDaniels, Elway turned over Denver’s talented roster to veteran coach John Fox. He then used the No2 overall pick on linebacker Von Miller and, after Tebow helped the Broncos to a division title at 8-8 and into the playoffs (and shockingly won a home playoff game over the Steelers), Elway bid the folk hero QB farewell and went out and signed Peyton Manning, who had missed the 2010 season with a neck injury. While Elway undoubtedly deserves credit for selling Manning on the Broncos over all the other teams that wanted the quarterback’s services, wanting one of the greatest players of all-time on your roster is not exactly the mark of genius. If it was, everyone who calls their local sports radio show to say their team should trade for Tom Brady would be deserving of a high-paying GM job.
The four years of Manning were very good to the Broncos and Elway. The team went 50-14 and extended the run of AFC West division titles to five in a row. After a humiliating 43-8 loss to the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLVIII, the Broncos won it all two years later with a diminished Manning, but a dominant defense, 24-10 over Carolina. Yet when Manning chose to retire after the season after winning it all at age 39 – the same decision Elway had made in 1998 at age 38 – Elway the GM somehow had little plan for a successor in place.
Elway had spent a second-round pick on Brock Osweiler in the 2012 draft, the last QB taken before Russell Wilson went off the board, and Osweiler started seven games during the 2015 season while Manning battled injuries and poor play. After Manning retired, Elway felt Osweiler was the future and offered him a reported $15m a year to stay on. But Osweiler instead took four years and $72m from the Texans, leaving the reigning Super Bowl champions in the hands of one Trevor Siemian.
Good teams have limited championship windows. Elway knows that himself from his playing career. After reaching the Super Bowl three times between 1986 and 1989, Denver didn’t get back again, and didn’t win, until 1997 when Elway was winding down his career. Yet by handing his championship team over to Trevor Siemian, a seventh-round draft pick who completed just 58.9% of his passes and threw 27 touchdowns to 24 interceptions at the collegiate level, Elway slammed his team’s championship window and locked it tight.
Despite having one of the league’s best receiver duos in Demaryius Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders, the Denver pass offense fell to 21st in the league with Siemian at the controls and the Broncos failed to even get back to the playoffs at 9-7. So with Miller, Thomas, Sanders and others still in their prime, Elway went out this offseason and made a point of upgrading the weakest position on his roster? Nope. He doubled down on the quarterback he had, Siemian and Paxton Lynch, his 2016 first-round pick. While 2016 first-rounders Jared Goff and Carson Wentz are already running high-powered offenses – and mid-round picks Dak Prescott and Jacoby Brissett are also starters – the Broncos have shown little confidence in even putting Lynch in the lineup. He has appeared in four games over two seasons and has yet to even hit the minimum criteria of “shows some promise.” So far he’s looked like little more than a tall version of Siemian.
Elway’s other picks since hitting on Miller in his first draft haven’t been much better than the Lynch selection, especially on the offensive side of the ball. Running back Montee Ball, receivers Cody Latimer and Carlos Henderson and tight end Jeff Heuerman have all made little to no impact. Unless Lynch suddenly develops or Elway manages to land another future Hall of Famer in free agency, the future doesn’t look bright for the Broncos. Even sunlight isn’t passing through that championship window now.
Only the angriest Broncos fans are already calling for Elway’s weathered head. This disaster of a season apart, his tenure has resulted in five division titles in season years, two Super Bowl appearances and one Super Bowl title. And as a franchise legend, he’ll get more time than your average floundering GM. But if things keep trending the way they over the next season or two, a future release on Broncos letterhead won’t be about supreme court appointees. It will be announcing that John Elway has been relieved of his duties.
