John Elway settled into his chair at the front of the Broncos’ auditorium, wished a crowd of reporters a happy New Year and told the truth.

“There’s nobody happier than me that 2017 is over. Maybe Vance,” he said, looking over to his head coach sitting next to him.

Less than two days after the Broncos bid farewell to a 5-11 season they’d like to forget, and less than 24 hours after they fired six assistants, the team’s general manager, along with coach Vance Joseph, began to turn the page to 2018 while hoping to assuage disgruntled fans still flabbergasted by two years of disappointment.

The Broncos have fallen from the very top of the NFL, and they fell fast. And now, two years removed from Super Bowl 50, they’re starting from the bottom without a set plan at quarterback, without an offensive identity, without a complete coaching staff, and without a clear path back to the postseason.

“I think when you’re 5-11 there are obviously some issues and that we’ve got to get handled,” Elway said. “That’s our goal. That’s our mindset. Whether we can get there or not — I don’t want to raise the expectations, but … our goals have not changed as Denver Broncos as far as what we want to do, and that’s to compete world championships.

“Can we get back there? Sure we can. That’s our goal.”

Elway believes he took the first step to achieving that when, after some long days of contemplation, he decided to retain Joseph for another season as head coach.

“With Vance being here a year and getting a chance to go through things as a first-year head coach, I’m sure that, as I told him many times, that he was drinking through a fire hose,” Elway said. “When you go through learning what it takes to be a head coach in this league, there’s so much to it. … We thought about different options, but ultimately my goal was to stay with Vance and give him that shot and give him the best opportunity to be successful. And I don’t feel like we gave him that chance.”

In an effort to create a better arrangement for Joseph in Year 2, the coaching staff was gutted, including longtime running backs coach and assistant head coach, Eric Studesville. Bill Musgrave was promoted to full-time offensive coordinator in large part because his management of the offense following Mike McCoy’s firing fit Joseph’s original vision.

“When you go 5-11 it wasn’t good this year as far as our football team,” Joseph said. “You have to make some changes. In my opinion, it was time to move on to change the culture in certain rooms. … It was time to change the culture so we could get back to pushing our players to be the best they can be (and) getting our best players to play at their best all the time. It was more about the overall culture of the offense, and getting back to being a dominant unit.”

But to get there, further and bigger changes await.

The Broncos have three quarterbacks under contract for 2018 — Trevor Siemian, Paxton Lynch and Chad Kelly — and no clear starter or backup among them. They will have options, with the No. 5 pick in the upcoming draft and with money to spend in free agency. They could have even more options should they move on from some veterans who are currently set to earn hefty salaries in the coming year.

The Broncos have a puzzle and plenty of pieces to rearrange. But even they don’t know the final picture yet. Their work to find it includes not just revamping the roster and the staff, but also altering the inner workings of both.

“Early on in the season I didn’t do a good job of pushing our coaches to make the proper changes that I thought could have helped us,” Joseph admitted. “I allowed guys to obviously coach — that was my goal — but I wasn’t very good at coaching the coaches. So I’ll get better at that. That was one of my shortcomings.”

Around this time a year ago, Joseph stood in the same spot as a freshly hired rookie head coach with grand visions of creating an offense with swagger. He said then that the Broncos didn’t require a rebuild but “a reboot.” Just tweaks, he said. The Broncos had a foundation with a defense to envy. They had veterans to lead the way. They had a pair of young quarterbacks in Siemian and Lynch who had potential.

“That position didn’t perform as well as we wanted it to,” Elway said. “I thought it would perform better than it did. And it’s not just on them. I think there are a lot of circumstances that went into that, that put them in tough situations. But we didn’t perform as well as we’d like to, so that’s obviously a position where we feel like we have to get better.”

In making his mark on the team, Joseph made many marks within the Broncos’ facility, with signs that read “TRUTH” and “CHAMPIONSHIP HABITS” adorning walls and T-shirts. The team’s three Lombardi Trophies were encased and placed on display in the team’s locker room in 2016, shortly after the Super Bowl 50 win. And championship banners and jewelry still reside in the team’s lobby.

Maybe, team president/CEO Joe Ellis wondered, the bigger picture became blurred and the focus lost.

Ellis said he had recent discussions with Joseph and Elway and will do so with the rest of the organization about a tenor of complacency throughout the organization, and that the long-held goal of “being No. 1 in everything” might have morphed into an assumption. Related Articles Broncos’ Phillip Lindsay ruled out for Sunday’s game in Pittsburgh as running back deals with toe injury

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“Expectations are fine. We should always have them. But we shouldn’t make assumptions,” he said, reiterating a letter he penned to fans. “I feel like there are times where I just a get sense that as an organization maybe we’re making a slogan on the wall or three Super Bowl trophies in the locker room or a Super Bowl banner at a stadium facing our audience and we kind of assume that’s the way it’s going to be. If I let that creep into the organization, then I’m the one that has to stop that mindset. … I feel responsible that I allowed that. And I’m not saying it’s widespread. But if it is in there, and my sense is that at times it became that way, that needs to stop, and I’m in charge of doing that.”

Minutes later, Ellis offered the honest truth.

“Nobody is more upset about this year than John Elway. I can assure you that,” he said. “I might be a close second.”