Things have certainly changed with the Denver Broncos, and not in a good way.
For many fans inside Broncos Country, being a fan of the team has always been a pleasure. Those fans have never shied away from declaring their favorite football team. Those fans have always proudly worn their orange and blue.
That is because, for many years, the Broncos were a top-notch organization.
The Broncos struggled through their AFL days in the 1960s but the formation of the Orange Crush defense in the late 1970s gave the team its identity and the Broncos made a Super Bowl appearance following the 1977 season.
In 1983 the Broncos made a trade for John Elway after the No. 1 overall pick refused to play for the team that drafted him, the Baltimore Colts. He would quickly become the face of the franchise and the following year, Pat Bowlen would purchase the team from Edgar Kaiser, Jr.
Bowlen paid $70 million and the Broncos were the highest-priced franchise in the league. They were also among the best ran organizations and the proudest.
Bowlen was one of the best owners in professional sports, there’s little debate about that. He turned the Broncos into a perennial Super Bowl contender and would eventually win back-to-back Super Bowls in 1997 and 1998.
Bowlen was later elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Mr. B, as he was affectionately known, would never have put up with the disaster that has become of the once proud and mighty Broncos. The Broncos are now a team being laughed at and mocked by fans around the league and each week, it seems to get worse.
The team’s 23-10 loss to the Carolina Panthers on Sunday was certainly a low point.
So where did it all go wrong in Denver? It’s hard to point to one thing. But looking at this recent timeline, we can start to put things together.
The destruction of the Denver Broncos: The Pat Bowlen Trust
This is certainly when the cracks in the foundation seem to have started.
In July 2014, it was announced that due to his diagnosis with Alzheimer’s disease, Bowlen had relinquished control of the team to Joe Ellis.
Joe Ellis had various roles within the organization across many years before becoming team president and CEO. Ellis was part of a trust that was put in place to act in place of the ailing Bowlen.
Bowlen passed away in 2019, leaving many questions and plenty of uncertainty regarding the future of the Broncos. The trust seemed to only muddy those waters and it seemed to become clearer with each passing day that the league wanted the team under permanent ownership as soon as possible.
The trust never seemed to do a good job of facilitating such a process.
The team was trying to put a consistent, successful product on the field despite all of the inner turmoil that started in the front office with Bowlen out of the picture.
Elway was a part of many of those decisions and though he showed himself to be a tremendous general manager at times, he made some incredibly bad decisions at others.
Because most Broncos fans still see Elway as their childhood hero, it was hard to want to shove him out the door. But each year, his decisions both in the draft and in free agency seemed to bring the team down another notch.
The destruction of the Denver Broncos: The team has never replaced Peyton Manning
The one move that Elway made that turned out wildly successful was managing to convince Peyton Manning to join the Broncos after the Indianapolis Colts shockingly cut him following the 2011 season.
This allowed Elway to quickly turn the page on Tim Tebow in favor of one of the greatest quarterbacks in league history.
In four years with the Broncos, Manning helped the team win the AFC West every year while also taking them to two Super Bowls and winning Super Bowl 50. But as soon as the dust settled on that Super Bowl win over the Panthers, Manning was ready to call it a career.
Since then, the Broncos have never replaced Manning and have not even come close. Here’s a rundown of the quarterbacks who have gotten that chance.
Mark Sanchez: People forget about this one, but after Brock Osweiler decided to bolt through free agency for the massive contract that the Houston Texans offered him, the Broncos traded for Sanchez, who was supposed to bring a veteran presence to an already good team. He didn’t even make it through the preseason before the team already decided he wasn’t the answer.
Trevor Siemian: A seventh-round pick who was never supposed to be much more than a camp arm, the Broncos ended up having to turn to Siemian when no one else could step up and take the job. You’ll soon see that he was probably the best name on this list.
Paxton Lynch: Easily the worst pick Elway made, Lynch was a first-round draft bust if there ever was one. He couldn’t even beat out Siemian in the preseason and when he was forced into action, he was just terrible.
Case Keenum: Following a successful 2017 season with the Minnesota Vikings, the Broncos jumped on Keenum in free agency. He wasn’t awful, but he was far from good and clearly not a guy who would ever take the team over the hump.
Joe Flacco: Not satisfied with Keenum’s performance, Elway traded for veteran Joe Flacco from the Baltimore Ravens. Flacco was far worse.
Drew Lock: A second-round pick who, in my opinion, never received the proper support from the coaching staff or the front office, Lock had the talent but definitely needed more work. Patience was necessary for him and the team just didn’t have it.
Teddy Bridgewater: A good backup quarterback, but not a starter. However, Vic Fangio made him the starter in order to preserve his job because he was the “safer” option over Lock. Fangio was fired and the team moved on from Bridgewater after just one year.
Russell Wilson: To say it’s gone bad with Wilson so far would be way too nice. He’s just been incredibly bad, shockingly bad, actually.
If you don’t have a quarterback that can be counted on to consistently carry his team to wins, it’s a difficult league to win in. Wilson was supposed to be that but he’s not better than anyone on this list.
The destruction of the Denver Broncos: Terrible coaching hires
Gary Kubiak led the team to a victory in Super Bowl 50 and then stayed around for the 2016 season. It seemed that differences between he and the front office led to him stepping down.
Since then, the team has gradually gotten worse at one of the most important spots on the team: head coach.
Vance Joseph was chosen after a relatively simple interview process despite not being anything better than an average defensive coordinator. But he did play at Colorado University and had that connection with Matt Russell who at the time, was the Broncos’ director of player personnel and Elway’s right-hand man.
Joseph’s tenure as head coach was laughable. He was also chosen when names like Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay were available.
But the guy who replaced him, gave him a run for his money to be even worse.
Vic Fangio was the team’s next head coach despite being in the league since the mid-1980s and never being offered a head coaching job. The team allowed him to stick around for three miserable seasons.
General manager George Paton decided to conduct a widespread search for a successor, interviewing no less than 10 candidates. He settled on Nathaniel Hackett, a young, offensive-minded guy who fit the trend of the direction the league is heading in.
Yet Hackett has been far worse than either Joseph or Fangio and it’s unbelievable to say that.
Hackett’s struggles have put Paton in a bad position. If he fires him now, he admits what a horrible mistake he made in hiring him. If he sticks with him, he certainly puts his future on the line there, particularly since the new ownership group didn’t hire either of them.
A change absolutely has to be made between Paton, Hackett and Wilson though and it’s not going to be Wilson.
The destruction of the Denver Broncos: The trade to acquire Russell Wilson
This trade has been so bad that it could easily be a feature on ESPN’s 30 for 30 someday.
Remember how excited Broncos Country was when the Broncos made this deal? It was madness, chaos really. Many of them were making early Super Bowl plans.
Hopefully, by now all of those have been canceled, cause it’s not happening. In fact, the team may not win another game this year.
This trade is bad because the Broncos gave up too much to get Wilson based on what they perceived he could do for them. The team gave up its first-round picks in the next two drafts and as of right now, the Seattle Seahawks would have the No. 4 overall pick in the draft as a result.
That’s ridiculous. But it’s not even the worst part.
Paton’s decision to extend Wilson’s contract as early as he did, to the tune of $245 million, looks worse by the moment. Why not at least see what he does on the field first?
The Broncos let Wilson sit out the entire preseason all the while touting his corny catchphrases and seemingly fake attitude. It’s nauseating.
Yet this is the guy right now because he has to be. The Broncos can’t get out of this deal anytime soon because the dead money and salary cap hit the team would take in if it tried to move on would be impossible to overcome.
Right now, that cap hit sits at $107 million. Ouch.
The destruction of the Denver Broncos: The sale of the team
Because of unfortunate circumstances within the Bowlen family where the Pat Bowlen Trust deemed that no one in the family could meet the requirements to be the team’s new owner, the Broncos were put up for sale.
Because of the price tag attached to such a sale, only a handful of people on the planet had the resources to purchase the team. Just prior to the start of this season, a group led by Rob Walton agreed to purchase the team for a record $4.65 billion.
What do we know about this group? Well, not much. We know that Walton is the heir to the Wal-Mart fortune. The rest of the group includes Carrie Walton Penner, Greg Penner, Mellody Hobson, Condoleezza Rice and Lewis Hamilton.
Greg Penner, who is the chairman of Wal-Mart, is now the CEO of the Broncos and it seems that it will be he who is tasked with making a major decision soon. Does he have the kind of football savvy to make the right decision though? That is a major question.
This ownership group did not hire Paton as its general manager. That is key. They may have their eyes on someone who could come in and put together a plan to get this ship turned back around. Or, they could be much more interested in how Wal-Mart performs and just have the Broncos as a fun little hobby, who knows?
One thing is quite certain. The machine that Pat Bowlen built is gone… and it may never come back.