ENGLEWOOD, Colo. -- The Denver Broncos are now on the hunt for their fourth head coach in a span of six seasons and their fourth head coach in John Elway’s tenure as the team’s chief football decision-maker. Those in and around the NFL should be asking: Just how difficult is it to work for Elway’s Broncos?

Vance Joseph was fired Monday after just two seasons on the job with two years left on his contract. The Broncos lost enough games this season to miss the playoffs for a third consecutive year, and fair or not, it cost Joseph his job.

Among the three head coaches who have worked for Elway, John Fox was let go after a disappointing playoff stumble, even after four consecutive AFC West titles; Gary Kubiak stepped away because of health concerns; and now Joseph was fired after 32 games.

Vance Joseph (left) lasted only two seasons working for John Elway. Ron Chenoy/USA TODAY Sports

And though it's not fair to dump all of that at Elway’s feet, some prospective head-coaching candidates could certainly ask him about his history of coaching changes in the weeks to come. Because while the best candidates rarely doubt that they have what it takes, they do like to know they’re going to get a fair chance to show what they can do.

Elway and Ozzie Newsome of the Baltimore Ravens are the only Hall of Fame players who currently have control over the day-to-day decision-making on the football side of an NFL organization, and Newsome is set to retire. They are not figureheads, not consultants. Each has won a Super Bowl as a team executive.

Elway is the franchise’s greatest player, a Super Bowl-winning GM and, still to this day, the biggest athletic presence in a sports-crazy city. Peyton Manning challenged that in his four seasons with the Broncos, but Elway’s presence is everywhere in the region.

On any given day, folks can see his car dealerships, visit his restaurants, see his face on billboard after billboard, view his picture at a variety of spots at Denver International Airport and walk past untold thousands who still wear No. 7 jerseys.

Elway is routinely described by those who know him the best as the single most competitive person they know in all facets of life, and running a pro football team just happens to be the most high-profile thing he does.

He sweats the details, considering himself “a numbers guy” when it comes to the salary cap and the role of analytics in the game. He is willing to do almost anything and everything to make the Broncos better, and the team has some of the best facilities in the league.

But his larger-than-life presence and his intensity can be a lot for some folks to handle. Apparently, being the team’s head coach is a rise-and-grind job, and the position is now open for the fourth time since January 2011.

Joseph, a former University of Colorado player and assistant coach, understood the landscape better than most. He’s seen the passion an entire region has for a team that has sold out every game it has played since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970.

But the team Elway assembled (which later in the season lacked wide receiver Demaryius Thomas, who was traded to the Houston Texans on Oct. 30) didn’t perform well enough for Joseph to keep his job, despite many of the players involved consistently saying it wasn’t a coaching issue. The Broncos did sometimes lack the edge they possessed in their 2015 run to the title, and they even sometimes lacked the edge they showed in 2016 in a 9-7 finish.

2017 and 2018 became an almost constant search for answers as players, as well as Joseph, kept lauding the team's grit, fight and work ethic. The Broncos did everything they were supposed to do, it seems, except win.

Could that be attributed to the players wondering if they would soon be on their third head coach, to an almost constant churn at quarterback after Manning retired, to a talent issue, or to all three? This is among the hard questions Elway now has to ask himself.

But the bottom line is that the Broncos just finished their eighth season with Elway in his current job. They have had three head coaches, five offensive coordinators (including two in 2017) and four defensive coordinators, and now more change is coming with Joseph’s firing.

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That is the kind of turnover seen in teams that don’t win, teams that are constantly trying to find their way. And recently, the Broncos have been that kind of team.

It’s pretty clear that the Broncos, Elway and the head coach to be named later need to figure out what they want the team's identity to be and commit to the plan. Otherwise, all parties involved will be going through this exercise once again, far sooner than they’d like.