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How John Elway kept the Denver Broncos on course through a rocky offseason

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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Plenty of thoughts raced through John Elway’s mind as the confetti fell on his Broncos on Feb. 7 in Santa Clara and, to be sure, jubilation was primary among them.

But as the man tasked with building the team, what was coming next was there too.

“We knew we were in for it in the offseason,” the Denver GM said from his office in the lunchtime hour Wednesday. “Having been through it before (as a player), it’s always difficult when you’re (coming off a title). It’s going to be a rough offseason. And it was. But we battled through it. I’m excited about where we are. We’ve got a long way to go. The AFC West is by far the best division, so we’ve got a dogfight ahead.”

So let’s go through it. The Broncos lost an all-time great at quarterback and his 25-year-old heir apparent; watched two big-ticket free agents on defense leave; went through a sometimes-ugly contract dispute with the best player on the team; and had an all-pro corner shoot himself in the leg at an ungodly hour outside a Dallas strip club.

Were the Broncos metaphorically stumbling home from the championship bar, cruising for a vicious hangover? Not even close.

Denver rolled to a 4-0 start. And after losses to the Falcons and Chargers came four days apart, the Broncos bounced back to blast the Texans on Monday night, which sets the stage for a rematch with San Diego in Week 8 to kick off a run of three division showdowns in a four-game stretch.

But the best part of all might be that all of this happened without Denver moving off its spot in how Elway has charted the club’s long-term course. The temptations were there, too. To overextend for Brock Osweiler. To pay Super Bowl MVP Von Miller whatever he wanted. To mortgage cap space to keep Malik Jackson and Danny Trevathan. Even to overreact to the Talib situation.

Nine months later, it’s clear that standing firm, on every account, was the right call.

“It’s easy to take the easy way out,” Elway says now. “The easy way would’ve been to give in to everything coming off a Super Bowl. And you can make it easy. We could’ve done all that. But to remain good, and remain disciplined, you have to sometimes do the hard thing. It’s more difficult to do it that way, but in the long run, it’s the right way. That’s where my focus was.

“One quote I always remember from my dad: ‘It’s not about taking the easy way out all the time. Sometimes, what makes you better is taking the tough way,’” Elway says. “So we’ve focused on not taking the easy way out, but taking the right way out.”

And so much of that “right way” has run right through the alignment the Broncos have struck with Elway as executive vice president/general manager, and Gary Kubiak as coach. Division of power within the organization—and each guy’s acceptance of that—allows Elway to run the franchise in a cold, cunning manner, and Kubiak to run the team his own way.

In other words, the trust Elway has in how Kubiak manages the most important people, the players, frees the boss to make the tough calls on all of them.

“I watch how close (my relationships) get,” Elway says. “I don’t want the emotional side to fog my decisions. I have to make the best decision for the organization. We’ve got a great football team, and I do have relationships with some of them. But I don’t try to get too close. It’s Gary’s football team. I don’t wanna get in his way either. The bottom line, he’s the go-to guy for those guys and I support Gary on that.”

So while Elway fought all the offseason battles, Kubiak had no blood on his hands, and the chemistry the team had in getting to a world title in February remained unscathed. That meant Miller’s return to the roster was seamless. And it meant the quarterback switch wasn’t as big a deal internally as we made it externally. And it meant the Talib drama was a total non-issue on the club’s ground level.

I asked Elway for his synopsis of each of those situations:

• Quarterbacks: “If you look at way we won as a football team last year, we relied so heavily on the defense that we figured we still had some time to fix the quarterback position. You lose a guy like Peyton and you lose a lot of leadership, so that’s tough. And losing Brock, it was another bump in the road and one where we weren’t sure how it was going to go. We didn’t know who else was interested in him, but you only need one other suitor to make it tough and obviously Houston was out there. At that point, it was to continue to get better offensive-line wise, focus on the draft, getting a quarterback there. And (Mark) Sanchez allowed us a little leeway there. And the great thing is Trevor (Siemian) has come on, and we liked him last year when we drafted him in the seventh. He’s done a tremendous job.”

• Von Miller: “I would’ve told you, from my point of view, that thing was gonna get worked out, period. You’re right, it didn’t go the way we wanted it to. But the bottom line is I had a relationship with Von. I knew Von. And I knew soon as I got a chance to sit down with Von, everything was gonna be fine. There were other circumstances that made that bigger than it should’ve been. Eventually, I knew it’d be done. It was a matter of when. I knew it would go to the deadline. They’re gonna keep asking, they don’t believe you until the deadline, and you say, ‘no’, and that’s the end. I knew Von, I knew a lot of it wasn’t coming from him. So I knew the relationship was not going to be tarnished. It was a matter of getting to July 15 and getting it done.”

Aqib Talib: “The key was we know Aqib, and we know what he’s about and we know what he’s like in this building, how he plays and what he is. And he came in here and he told us the truth. So at that point in time, obviously we don’t have to agree sometimes with where he is, he’s a grown man. Our concern was the fact that he was OK, and we expressed concern that hopefully in the future, he can stay out of those situations. So our concern was him, but once he told us the story, we supported him, knowing what he was about, and we let the league handle it from there.”

Could the Broncos have gotten to 5-2 if Elway handled things “the easy way?” Sure, absolutely.

What’s impressive here is that Denver’s now in an enviable position for the present and future. Elway is quick to heap praise on Kubiak for all he’s done: “Coming in with expectations, and managing a team that’s won four AFC West title and had been to a Super Bowl, then he comes in with a new staff, manages them to where they can win a world championship? That has gone so far under the radar, it’s unbelievable.”

But the truth is, the way the whole operation is set up, considering how sideways so many other clubs are, is more impressive. And it’s why the best may be yet to come.

“To this day, we’ve never had a cross word with each other,” Elway says. “It’s good to be able to air everything out, have an understanding, come out with a consensus and a decision on which way we want to go. It’s a total team. And when we make a decision, we go in that direction, we deal with that decision and we don’t look back.”

Based on how this season’s gone, Elway can sure say that again.

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