Elway responds:

Broncos GM says “soft” comment was directed at entire organization, including himself.

Brandon Marshall took offense. Vance Joseph was initially taken aback. Von Miller was a bit, too.

John Elway’s four-letter description of his team — that it got “soft” since the bye — struck a chord with players.

“I felt like if anybody has any type of pride about them, it should have struck a competitive chord,” Marshall said Monday. “I wasn’t taking shots at him. I think everybody said, ‘Oh, he’s taking shots at the GM.’ That’s just ridiculous. I’m a competitive guy and I have skin in the game. I’m out here running around busting my tail, so if somebody said that, it really makes me feel some type of way.”

On Tuesday, in an interview with Orange and Blue 760 radio’s Dave Logan, Elway explained why he said what he did Friday and why he falls under the label of “soft,” too.

“I think first of all if you think about the comment: No. 1, I was talking about everybody. … I wasn’t just talking about the football team and I wasn’t just talking about the coaches. I was talking about everybody in the organization and kind of the track record that we’ve had. And sometimes success will make you soft and you won’t pay attention to some of the details that you need to pay attention to. I put myself first in line there. … ‘Wait, I got to think about this and we’ve got to now put the hammer back down and get back to our winning ways.’ ”

Logan, a former NFL receiver, told Elway that if someone had called him soft, he would have had a similar reaction to Broncos players. He, too, would have been offended.

“Now, if someone took offense to that, I would understand that,” Elway continued. “And you know what? I would have welcomed a response that you just told me, that you would’ve gotten mad. That was the intent, that at some point in time we needed a little jolt and I knew before I said it that some guys weren’t going to like it. But my job is not to be liked. My job is to try to win football games. So therefore, I made that comment and hopefully we can get this thing going.”