Give Elway credit for ignoring the outside chatter and credit Joseph for tunneling his focus on the next practice, the next film session and the next game.

ENGLEWOOD – When John Elway said he was going to “stay the course,” Broncos Country let out a collective groan.

The Broncos were 3-6 going into their bye week and coming off a 5-11 season in Vance Joseph’s first year as head coach.

At various points through the first two months of this season, the question wasn’t whether the Broncos would remove Joseph as head coach but when.

Give Elway credit for ignoring the outside chatter and credit Joseph for tunneling his focus on the next practice, the next film session and the next game.

On the other side of the bye, the Broncos have so far beat the 8-3 Chargers on the road and 7-3-1 Steelers – the toughest opponents, on paper, among their seven remaining games. Suddenly, the Broncos are in the AFC wild-card playoff hunt.

“I kind of ignored it,’’ Joseph said about the local fandom that wanted a coaching change. “I don’t read much, Patrick (Smyth, the Broncos’ PR boss) tells me what’s out there in small doses. I really don’t care. My focus is the players and the coaches, honestly. That’s my attitude.

“I knew it was going to turn. We’ve played too much good football. We’ve worked too hard not to have some success. I knew it was going to turn eventually.

“It took us some time, but again we’re 5-6. We’re 5-6, and that’s it. We’ve done nothing up to this point, in my opinion. We don’t win Sunday, we’re 5-7. That’s ugly, right? We want to focus on the Bengals and try to become even. Be 6-6, and that feels better than 5-6. We’ll see. As far as my deal, never a concern—not one moment.”

Run to Darkness!

In good times and bad, Joseph has always used his press conferences to bring unique insight to various aspects on the game of football. Here is how he explained the diminutive Phillip Lindsay’s effectiveness in running between the tackles:

““It’s speed and it’s courage,’’ Joseph said. “You’ve got to have courage to run through darkness and that’s what it is inside.

“In this league, the holes open and close. He has the courage and the speed to run through darkness and to run through the smoke, so to speak. He’s so fast through the hole that by the time the linebackers see him, he’s so close to them it’s hard for those guys to tackle him. He gets into the secondary really fast. I think it’s a combination of speed and courage.”

Perhaps, Vince Lombardi and W.C Heinz should have dubbed their 1969 best-selling book, “Run to Darkness!” (For all you youngsters out there, it was called, "Run to Daylight!")