Elway thinks team has gotten “soft”
John Elway experienced losing seasons and losing streaks and bumps along his Hall of Fame career as the Broncos’ quarterback. But the one he’s experiencing now as general manager is much more difficult.
Because as an executive, you can only watch.
“It’s very frustrating for me, and that’s why the players have to understand they’re the ones that are going to bring us out of it,” Elway said Friday evening at a ceremony honoring Pro Football Hall of Famer Terrell Davis and Broncos Ring of Famer Red Miller. “Not the coaches, but the players are going to have to bring this team out of this. So hopefully we’re prepared for that challenge.”
The Broncos are mired in a fivegame losing stretch that has included their first shutout loss in nearly 25 years and back-to-back blowout losses, to the Philadelphia Eagles and, most recently, the New England Patriots. Denver’s list of problems is long and seems to grow longer with each outing.
The Broncos opened the season 3-1 but returned from their Week 5 bye seemingly a shell of themselves. The answer to what went wrong and when is hotly debated and will be scrutinized more when the season ends.
“We’ll look back once the season’s over,” Elway said. “At this point, we’re still trying to figure out how we can get through it. There’s no question at the end of the year we’ll evaluate it, look back and see what happened.
“But I will tell you, I think we got a little bit soft. To be dead honest with you, we got a little bit soft. We went 4-0 in preseason, we started out 3-1, we get a bye week and if you exhale in this league, you’re in trouble. To be dead honest with you, I think we exhaled and it’s hard to recover from that. It’ll be a lesson that hopefully we all learn and prevent from happening in the future.”
Despite the Broncos’ struggles, Elway said he still has confidence in coach Vance Joseph.
“There’s going to be growing pains as a head coach, especially as a firstyear head coach, (and) we got a lot of youth on staff when it comes to coordinators, too. So there’s growing pains there. Just like with players, we have to give them a chance to grow and get better and learn from certain situations. Obviously it’s been a little bit tougher situation, but sometimes you learn a lot more in tougher situations than you do when things are going good.
“Vance, in my mind, is doing just fine and continues to get these guys to play hard and the energy is still there. So we’ll work our way through.”
This week the Broncos gave second-year quarterback Paxton Lynch more repetitions to gauge his shoulder and to see if he’s ready to serve as Brock Osweiler’s quarterback Sunday against the Cincinnati Bengals. The prevailing thinking is that if the season continues to spiral, the Broncos would want to see what Lynch can do with more than two starts before they look ahead to 2018.
Asked if he would like to see Lynch play, Elway deflected and said they’re “going to take it one day at a time.”
“I will say this — and I mean this when I say it — I’m not looking past Sunday,” Elway said. He added: “Everybody has an answer. Everybody has a solution. But the bottom line is, those aren’t that easy. Bottom line is how you get out of these slumps is you go to work hard day in and day out. So that’s why we’re not looking past tomorrow. We’ll continue to do that — we’ll worry about Saturday and hopefully we can come here on Sunday and we can play like we’re capable of playing.”