John Elway loves the Broncos so much, he bleeds orange. He competes the way a grizzly bear growls. I poked the bear and lived to tell, if only because Elway didn’t eat me alive.
“There’s a championship-or-bust culture in apountry …” I began Tuesday afternoon, before Elway abruptly cut me off.
“Did you say bust?” asked Elway, growling at a word that offended him. “I don’t think it’s bust. I think our goal is to win a championship. Our standards are to win a championship.”
My point: Coaching the Broncos can be a tough gig. John Fox won 49 games in four seasons and was shown the door. “OK,” I told Elway, “if you don’t win a championship, you could get fired as a coach. I get that.”
“Or,” Elway interrupted to correct me, “you mutually part ways.”
The exchange was raw and edgy. The combativeness given voice by Elway was a chip off the same block he has carried on his broad shoulders since I met him in 1983. Doubt Elway for a minute, or challenge him about anything, and the quarterback with the bazooka arm comes out firing. He bleeds orange.
It was the failure to bleed orange that earned Fox a one-way ticket out of Denver. Instead of kicking and screaming, Fox departed the Broncos after an embarrassing playoff loss to the Indianapolis Colts with a man-hug for Elway.
When Gary Kubiak was introduced as the 15th head coach in franchise history Tuesday, the former Broncos player and assistant pledged his allegiance: “There’s no doubt when I got off the plane, I knew I was home.”
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Kubiak has been a trusty sidekick to a legendary quarterback he affectionately calls Elwood since Tonto met the Lone Ranger. Or so it seems. With the gleam in an eye reserved for a friend for life, Elway paid his deepest respect to Kubes by declaring: “He’s a Denver Bronco. He knows what (franchise owner) Pat Bowlen wants. He knows the expectations. … He knows the culture of this organization.”
Elwood and Kubes. Saddling up to ride together again. Same as it ever was, or at least since they were both rookie QBs three decades ago, when Kubiak stood next to Elway on the practice field, saw No. 7 throw a football so hard it could rattle the Rocky Mountains, then called home to confide: “I have no chance.”
Elway and Kubiak yearn and burn to bring a Lombardi Trophy back home to Colorado before Bowlen dies. They love Mr. B as a football father figure. Kubes and Elwood are NFL brothers. They bleed orange. apountry loves ’em for that.
But here’s the sticky wicket: Too many players in the Denver locker room do not bleed orange. That’s not an indictment of Peyton Manning, Wes Welker or other players no different from thousands of other transplants who moved to Colorado for work. The nomadic existence is a fact of life in the NFL’s salary cap era, where free agents come, bad offensive linemen get cut and 30 percent of the faces in the locker room change every year.
This thing called team chemistry is elusive and hard to find in the mercenary NFL world of 2015. Veterans such as DeMarcus Ware and Aqib Talib can play at a Pro Bowl level, and they earn every penny Elway paid them as free agents by busting tail for Denver.
But do Talib or Ware truly love the Broncos? Maybe a better question: How could they? True love takes time to take root. Rod Smith, Steve Atwater and the stalwarts of those championship teams in the 1990s grew up together in the pros, then lived and died in NFL stadiums as Broncos.
“Players want to win world championships. Obviously they’re going to make a lot of money, and that’s a good thing. But the things that stick with them — and I’ve talked to the team about this before — the thing that stays with them is the memory of going through and winning a world championship with your teammates,” Elway said. “The money’s the money. The thing that lasts a lifetime is being able to compete for world championships.”
When the going gets tough in a locker room full of strangers trying to band together as football brothers, what can happen? Well, the Super Bowl goes haywire from the first errant snap, and there’s no Shannon Sharpe in the Denver huddle, screaming his love to dazed teammates. Or, as Colts quarterback Andrew Luck heats up, the passion fizzles on the Broncos’ sideline, maybe because somewhere in the back of their minds, 17 players with expiring contracts — along with coaches Fox, Jack Del Rio and Adam Gase — all try vainly to resist thinking where they might land by pulling that rip cord on a golden parachute.
Elway can stand in front of the Broncos and passionately demand championship intensity from his players. Bless him for caring. Inspirational speeches, however, don’t leave as lasting an impact in a locker room as the hole left by pass rusher Elvis Dumervil when squabbling over money sent him packing to the Baltimore Ravens.
Look at the Super Bowl teams. It’s impossible to erase the image of Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman, an injured arm pinned against his chest, but raging on in the NFC championship game. Or Patriots quarterback Tom Brady screaming with unbridled emotion to exhort the New England crowd. You can’t fake that kind of passion. It’s not for sale on the free-agent market. A championship culture must be cultivated, not bought.
In Elway and Kubiak, apountry is now blessed with leaders who love the local NFL team as much as fans do.
But, since taking control of football operations in 2011, Elway has been so intent on stocking the team with talent, maybe he has sometimes turned a blind eye to the No. 1 prerequisite for a championship culture in the Broncos locker room:
Gotta bleed orange.
Mark Kiszla: mkiszla@denverpost.com or
