Denver Broncos greatest needs have already been filled

1. Coaching

Though John Elway didn’t have to do it, he gave Vance Joseph a second season as head coach of the Denver Broncos after the disastrous 2017 campaign. He would have absolutely been justified in cutting ties with Joseph after 2017, but he didn’t do it.

It’s possible his idea of bringing Mike Shanahan in (an idea that was shut down by Joe Ellis) was the only alternative he truly preferred to Joseph at the time, but it was clear that Joseph was on borrowed time from the very start of the 2018 season.

The Broncos’ second-straight season with double-digit losses and third consecutive year missing the playoffs after winning the Super Bowl resulted in a drastic change at the head coach position as the Broncos hired Bears defensive coordinator Vic Fangio — the NFL’s assistant coach of the year in 2018 — to be a first-time head coach at 60 years old.

After Fangio was brought in, the Broncos hired Mike Munchak to run the offensive line. Though the offensive line was vastly improved last year with the hiring of Sean Kugler, Munchak is considered one of the best offensive line coaches in the game, up there with New England’s Dante Scarnecchia.

Along with Munchak, the Broncos hired a first-time offensive coordinator Rich Scangarello, the 49ers’ quarterbacks coach and former college offensive coordinator.

Scangarello is a disciple of the Shanahan coaching tree and has truly grown his roots in play-calling in that system.

It doesn’t feel like hyperbole to say that Denver’s coaching staff in 2019 is markedly improved from the one they had in 2017-18.

This need was not only addressed, the Broncos made wholesale changes and remarkable improvements.