As a front-office evaluator, what does one look for in one's team playing it’s season finale with no hope of advancing to the playoffs? The 6-9 Denver Broncos will host the 11-4 L.A. Chargers in Week 17, having been officially eliminated from playoff contention two games ago.

It’s an even more pressing question coming out of Christmas Eve’s impotent loss to the Oakland Raiders in which the Broncos appeared to lack any intensity or urgency.

GM John Elway is the man who has to continue to evaluate this roster, even if it’s through the prism of a relatively meaningless game. The day after Christmas, Elway appeared on Orange and Blue 760, where he explained what he’ll be looking for in the Broncos’ players and coaches this coming Sunday.

“I think the big thing is you find out in these situations what kind of workers they are and how hard they play,” Elway said via 760 AM. “I don’t think it’s going to wipe anybody off the board.. But I think for the most part, we find out what we’re made of and what kind of workers we are and what kind of competitors we are, because we’re given a chance to go out to play and obviously our goal is to win the football game and that’s really the only thing that we have to go for. We’re not playing for anything else, unfortunately. So I think that’s part of it but we’d like to find what’s in the heart and what’s in the soul. Bottom line is, they’re still getting paid this week, so we expect them to go out and perform well.”

Publicly, Elway is saying that a poor performance wouldn’t necessarily kill a player’s chances of sticking on the roster next season, but we saw what happened with Aqib Talib a couple months after he so obviously gave up on his team in the season finale last year. Elway's public message must come across measured and even-keeled.

Privately, however, pride and professionalism are all the Broncos have to play for, so how a player performs within that scope likley means everything to Elway, whether it be a highly-paid veteran, a young Draft pick, or a bubble guy barely clinging to the roster. Despite back-to-back losing seasons, Elway has a never-ending, burning competitive drive, and that passion trickles down to inform the expectations of the fanbase.

“We’re all excited about the opportunity to see if we can get through this one last week and go out and play well,” Elway said. “That’s what our fans expect and that’s what we expect from our players. That’ll be the expectation going in and hopefully we can be the spoilers. And once we get through this game, we’ll get excited about trying to get better and get this thing turned around for next year.”

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The Chargers still have the chance to win the AFC’s No. 1 playoff seed, but they’ll have to beat the reeling Broncos to give themselves the best odds of snagging it. There’s that, as far as motivation for Denver.

Plus, there’s the pride of playing a Divisional opponent, whom the Broncos defeated in Week 11 earlier this year. From a team perspective, there’s the fact that this is the final home game for the fanbase, so punctuating a disappointing losing season with a win would at least end this campaign on a positive note.

Then there’s the Vance Joseph situation, which Elway eluded to indirectly at the end of his last remark. The Broncos aren’t expected to retain Joseph for a third year, which means that a head-coaching search is likely to begin in earnest for Elway and the team brain trust by this time next week.

“We’d like to go out and win, that’s why we go on the field,” Elway said. “The goal is to go out and win the football game and hopefully play well… Obviously, it’s been a disappointing season. We’re not excited about where we are but we’ll find out what we’re made of this weekend.”

Indeed. Professional pride is most certainly on the line, but so are jobs. This is the NFL. It’s a ‘what have you done for me lately’ type of league.

In the ultimate production-based business, teams who finish with consecutive losing seasons typically undergo extensive roster makeovers in an effort to turn the ship around. For the Broncos, there are several veterans left over from Super Bowl 50 who will likely be suiting up in the Orange and Blue for the last time in Week 17.

The season finale offers those vets, along with any player who appears in the game, the opportunity to add to their resume an impressive individual performance. NFL GMs watch the film, which is why quitting on a play, like some say Bradley Roby did on Monday vs. Oakland, is highly inadvisable.

“I’m actually in the process of looking at the tape now,” Elway said. “We’ll see. Someone had mentioned that that [ESPN Analyst Jason] Witten had mentioned something about Roby, so I’ll take a peek at that. But I think overall [the team effort] was fine. I think that it’s never perfect but we’re looking at the process now, so we’ll see. But bottom line, it’s up to us to be pros at this point in time… It’s always a tell-tale about how you play when it’s your job (on the line). There’s not a whole lot on the line for us except pride, so that’s why we’ll find out where we are.”

There are only a small handful of veterans who are untouchable on the Broncos’ roster. Von Miller, Bradley Chubb, Chris Harris, Jr., Phillip Lindsay and a few of the 2018 rookie class don’t have to worry about losing their job.

All bets are off for everybody else. Elway’s message should cut through all the din and disappointment of this season. Before the players start planning their offseason vacations, they’d better focus on the task at hand and absolutely put their best product on the field, or they might find themselves out of a job within a few months’ time.