Gary Kubiak has an anecdote he uses to describe John Elway without describing John Elway. It was a before a playoff game, when they were offensive coordinator and quarterback, respectively, in Denver. What Kubiak doesn’t need to tell you is that this could have been before any game because, well, it’s Elway.

And so Kubiak goes: “As a coach you put together a game plan and there might be 75 to 90 pass plays and you’re coaching your guy, ‘On this play, I want you to do this and on this play I want you to do this.’ You’d have to take a lot of notes, but John is so smart he could just sit and listen to you. We got to Friday afternoon and he brought the game plan to me, which was about three pages, and he took a red pen and he circled like 15 things. He said, ‘Y’all call those plays, we win the game.’

“That’s John Elway.”

That’s Elway, a two-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback who returned to the Broncos in 2011 as general manager to help restore a franchise that had gone off track.

His three-page game plan would be scripted differently. His “coaches” would have corner offices. And his control on the field would no longer be inside the lines, as he likes to say.

In his first year on the job, Elway reformed the Broncos, solving a quarterback controversy and rebuilding a defense that sat in the NFL’s cellar in most categories. In 2017 — six years, five AFC West titles, two Super Bowl berths and one more Super Bowl title later — Elway faces one of his biggest challenges. He heads into the offseason with a 9-7 team that missed the playoffs and is looking for a head coach, with Kubiak having resigned last week.

Elway’s task appears taller and his drive to his next comeback bumpier than ever.

“Challenges excite me. That’s what it’s about,” he said last week. “Things are going to happen, good and bad. It’s all about adjusting.”

“It’s hard to stay on top”

When Elway was introduced by owner Pat Bowlen as the Broncos’ executive vice president of football operations in January 2011, he balanced his first tasks: The team had to get better, he said. The team needed a coach, he knew. The trust with the fans had to be restored, he reiterated.

Within his first two weeks, Elway hired veteran coach John Fox.

Within his first four months, he drafted what would be the backbone of his revamped defense, Texas A&M linebacker Von Miller, and found a diamond from the pool of undrafted players in cornerback Chris Harris. He re-signed all-pro cornerback Champ Bailey. He elevated Adam Gase to quarterbacks coach to work with fan favorite Tim Tebow and Kyle Orton. And he pledged an air of transparency.

He quickly took a red pen to the playbook and circled all the moves he wanted to make in order to move on from the contentious Josh McDaniels era.

“When I came in here, we were coming off a 4-12 year, so there was a lot of stuff we had to do,” Elway said last fall. “When I first got here, it was just a matter of trying to find the best football players that we could and get better.”

Fourteen months into his tenure, Elway made his boldest decision yet in signing free-agent quarterback Peyton Manning. The move altered the Denver franchise, changed the balance of the league and led to a record-setting offense in 2013 in a season that ended in disappointment, a Super Bowl blowout loss to Seattle that exposed the Broncos’ defensive holes.

It was then that Elway, the Hall of Fame quarterback, switched his focus and turned the Broncos into a defense-first team. He spent. He rebuilt. And in the past two years the Broncos have had a championship-caliber defense.

“I know where we were in December 2010 and that was a difficult time for the organization,” said Broncos president and CEO Joe Ellis. “I felt like we lost a little trust with our fans, if not a lot of trust. John has restored that. I think fans continue to have that (trust). Related Articles September 17, 2020 Broncos’ Next Opponent: Pittsburgh defense shut down Giants’ running game in Week 1

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Looking back, the transformation was nothing short of remarkable. Looking ahead, it may have made Elway’s job much more difficult.

The slate is no longer clear. Elway has key pieces still in place with a defense that has at least another year together. But he needs to fill the biggest holes. Manning is gone, having retired last March. Now Kubiak, Elway’s coach and confidant, is gone too.

Elway needs a leader, but needs the right one and needs him soon. He has another quarterback competition on his hands, but Elway said he’s confident and hopeful of the potential shown by Trevor Siemian and Paxton Lynch.

“It’s just as important, if not more important, to get better on defense than it is to get better offensively,” he said. “The offense will come.”

“Dad, Gary and Mike”

The thing that is perhaps misunderstood or overlooked with Elway is that he listens. He’s the competitor who will make a game of anything to try to ensure you’re the loser. Cards? Golf? Washing dishes? He will win and you will lose, and that’s that.

But he also learned something over the years, as a quarterback, a businessman and NFL executive.

“I was around (Ravens general manager) Ozzie Newsome for one year, and if you ask me the one thing about both of those guys is they’re great listeners,” Kubiak said. “Going into a room with a group of men — coaches, scouts, players — they listen to everybody, they don’t talk very much. It’s a special trait that I really noticed in John. John’s always had that.”

That trait was shaped, in large part, by three men whom Elway credits as his biggest influences. The first, of course, is his late father, Jack Elway. Another is Kubiak, his former training-camp roommate, backup quarterback, offensive coordinator and, most recently, head coach. The third is Mike Shanahan, Elway’s former coach with whom he won a pair of Super Bowl titles in the late 1990s.

“My dad was always the guy I looked to as kind of the rock,” Elway said. “Gary was one that I played for. Mike Shanahan had a big part in that with his philosophy when he came in here and I played for him my last four years. The way that he did things had a huge influence. We won two championships in the four years that he was the head coach when I played for him. But I learned so much from him too.”

Now Kyle Shanahan, once a toddler who roamed Broncos headquarters when Elway was quarterback and Mike was a coach, is on the shortlist of candidates to succeed Kubiak. Other known finalists are Chiefs special teams coordinator Dave Toub, who was interviewed by the Broncos in Kansas City on Friday, and Dolphins defensive coordinator Vance Joseph, who will be interviewed next week.

The Denver job comes with high expectations — perhaps the highest in the NFL — and pressure inherent in working for Elway.

“That’s how people win championships. We were there a year ago,” Elway said. “There is no reason that we can’t get back there soon again.”

With the job comes a chance to be a part of Elway’s next red circle.

“After we lost in 2013, he went and got the ‘No-Fly Zone’ and DeMarcus (Ware),” Miller recounted. “When we missed the playoffs in 2010, before I got here, we built up the defense. … (Elway’s) the king of the comeback. I don’t know how he does it. I just know it’s going to continue to happen.”