Maybe every gunslinger eventually grows gun shy. But in the reboot of the Broncos, when a struggling football team cries out for bold moves, has John Elway lost the nerve to pull the trigger?

While Odell Beckham Jr. and Nick Foles have stolen the headlines in the NFL’s silly season, it feels as if Elway has sat on the porch instead of taking his best shot. What passes for big news in Denver is Joe Flacco and Ja’Wuan James? Please, tell me that is not the plan for returning the Broncos to the Super Bowl discussion, because it won’t do the trick.

Drink the Kool-Aid until your tongue turns orange, and maybe your vision grows blurry enough to regard Elway’s moves as grounded in tried-and-true football logic. I’m not bashful about saying: New coach Vic Fangio is a rock-solid football man.

But let’s keep it real. The Broncos are not only a bad team, what they’re doing to fix it is boring. Any way you cut it, Fangio has more in common with John Fox than Sean McVay. That’s not innovation. Since when did Elway, the old comeback kid, go conservative on us?

Flacco is an average Joe, and has been for a long time. Apologists in Broncos Country, however, rationalize the wisdom of trading for Flacco instead of pursuing Foles like this: Flacco will be cheaper to jettison if this turns out to be another failed quarterback experiment for Denver.

“I think we’re getting Flacco at the right time,” said Elway, attracted to a 34-year-old quarterback that wants to prove he’s not done yet. “He’s got a chip on his shoulder.”

In nine starts for the Ravens before being replaced by rookie Lamar Jackson last year, Flacco fashioned a very pedestrian quarterback rating of 84.2, which ranked him 28th in the league, only one slot of Case Keenum (81.2 QB rating), dumped as Denver’s starter.

But Elway explained why he thinks Flacco is the right quarterback right now for the Broncos.

“Even though he hasn’t had all the flashy stats lately, the best year he had was when he was with Gary Kubiak, when Gary was there (as Baltimore’s offensive coordinator in 2014). This is pretty much the same offensive system in Denver, except it has evolved.”

If Kubiak is a big reason why Flacco is here, then the fingerprints of Gary remain all over this team, even though he has departed for a job with the Minnesota Vikings. Does that make sense?

Pardon me for viewing Flacco as Keenum 2.0, a stopgap measure allowing Elway to search for a true franchise QB. But the Broncos won’t trade up in the draft for Heisman winner Kyler Murray, because he’s short and needs to play in the shotgun? Sorry, that seems to be a short-sighted mentality.

The addition of Kareem Jackson was money well spent, because he brings both strong tackling and useful versatility to the secondary, although adding a player that soon turns 31 years old seems more like a temporary patch than a true rebirth of the No-Fly Zone. Meanwhile, in the AFC West, the Raiders swung for the fences by gambling on the immense talent of receiver Antonio Brown. And the Chiefs, in desperate need of an upgrade their defense, signed a combo defensive back in Tyrann Mathieu, who is four years younger than Jackson.

But the real head-scratcher for the Broncos is the $12.75 million salary they gave James to make us forget all the errors Elway has committed in his search for a tackle to keep the peace on the right side of the offensive line. James is one ridiculously expensive Band-Aid. He is a former first-round draft choice of the Dolphins that has never made the Pro Bowl, yet Denver gave him stupid money, making James the league’s highest-paid right tackle. I thought offensive line coach Mike Munchak was hired to develop young draftees rather than fix overpaid free agents. Silly me.

Yes, NFL free agency was created as a market place for “Get out of Jail” cards, and it’s never cheap to fill roster holes. But whether buying a house, a bottle of bourbon or a right tackle, it’s seldom good business to overpay for average. An overheated market always favors the seller, so if you’re going to pay a premium, it better be for such Grade-A quality that price proves to be no object.

For example: The signature move of Elway’s front-office tenure was gambling on a broken-down quarterback, backed with a $58 million guarantee Peyton Manning could rediscover the Hall of Famer inside him. It was big. It was bold. It was very Elway.

And it worked. I miss that swashbuckling general manager, don’t you?

Now, we still trust Elway hasn’t lost his fastball. Deep down, No. 7 hasn’t forgotten what it takes to win and hates losing as much as ever.

Losing, however, does take its toll. Go 11-21 over two seasons, and doubt can creep in. It can turn a general manager who has won a Lombardi trophy painfully conservative in his ninth year on this stressful job. Related Articles With foundation built last December, Broncos QB Drew Lock leaned on 2 coaches for offseason instruction to flourish in 2020

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At a time when the peeps demand instant grades on personnel moves, let’s remember Elway can still score big extra credit points in the draft. For now, let’s give this grade for the offseason moves: B. That B is for boring. And that’s bad.

What Elway has done thus far to reshape his roster hasn’t moved the needle or moved the team any closer to first place in the division.

I recall back in the day, when Denver was a destination city for top-flight NFL players and Cleveland was the league laughingstock. Well, now the Browns have Baker Mayfield, OBJ and better odds of making the Super Bowl than the Broncos. Cleveland is 15/1 to win the championship. Denver? 50/1.

At least we still have better mountains.