AP

Broncos G.M. John Elway hasn’t been bashful about the reasons for his decision to move on from coach John Fox after the 2014 season.

“This is why we made the decision,” Elway said this week. “This was the idea — to get better and get past the first round.

In an interview with Phil Simms of CBS that aired during an endless pregame show (yeah, NBC did the same thing last year — and will do it again in two years), Elway was even more specific in his criticism of Fox.

“I just didn’t like two out of the last three years we lost in the first round with home field advantage,” Elway said. “And so to me that hurts. If you can’t get guys excited about playing in the playoffs that time of year, something’s wrong.”

That last sentence was the most potent. And it meshes with what receiver Demaryius Thomas told PFT Live in the days preceding last week’s Super Bowl.

“I feel like some guys, you know, didn’t have the fight or whatever it was,” Thomas said. “I think one thing was, I feel like guys kind of looked over the Colts. You had guys always talking the night before the game, you had, ‘Oh, I don’t want to go to New England and play New England.’ And I think that was one of the big things.”

Elway saw it, and so Elway decided to make a change. And Elway has decided to be incredibly candid about that, given that the change has taken the Broncos back to the Super Bowl.