“Plan B?”
In 2011, the Denver Broncos had just finished an 8-8 season, sneaking into the AFC playoffs on the back of the NFL’s 23rd-ranked offense, 20th-ranked defense and a division where no team had a winning record.
The leader of the team, or at least the guy snapping the football, was Tim Tebow, who had become something of a cult hero in Denver, going 7-4 in games he started that year. Tebow, almost single-handedly—while playing every position on the field at once if memory serves—defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers and their bail-out-and-dare-him-to-beat-us-with-a-pass defense on the first play in overtime of the 2012 Wild Card playoff round, vaulting Tebow to a level few in Denver had reached.
He wasn’t John Elway, but for one game, Tebow was close.
A week later, Denver was trounced 45-10 by the New England Patriots, ending their 2011 season, and giving the team the unenviable task of replacing a guy that the entire city—hell the entire country—had fallen for.
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“Plan B? No, we don’t have Plan B. We’re going Plan A.”
When Peyton Manning was released by the Indianapolis Colts after a year in which he didn’t take a snap because of a broken neck and the Colts in line to draft Andrew Luck, Denver had their Plan A. Manning was a free agent for the first time in his career, and Elway had his answer to the Tebow hysteria, as the only way to replace a cult hero without backlash is to replace him with a legend.
Manning, injured or not, was the best quarterback Denver would have on its roster since Elway, himself, retired. Really, even if the plan to replace Tebow with Manning didn’t work, it was brilliant. Only, getting rid of Tebow wasn’t the plan. Winning a Super Bowl was, and Elway and the Broncos agreed to pay Manning $96 million, so they really were banking on that part of the plan working too.
Many said at the time that Elway’s cocksure attitude and toothsome grin in response to that question might prove to be his undoing as a Broncos executive. Elway, himself, was named Executive Vice President of Football Operations and General Manager of the Broncos just one year earlier, in January 2011. He hired John Fox less than two weeks after being put in charge by owner Pat Bowlen, and after one season, Elway tore apart the entire roster in hopes of building a real Super Bowl contender.
Denver, and Elway, jumped all in on Plan A. In 2012, the team went 13-3, with the league’s fourth-ranked offense—and second-ranked scoring offense—and the second ranked defense in the NFL. But they lost, in overtime the Divisional Round of the playoffs, to Baltimore, going no further in the playoffs than Tebow had the year before.
A year later, Denver went 13-3 again, powered by the best offense in football and a defense that dropped off—ranking 19th—but did enough to help Denver advance to the Super Bowl.
Plan A actually worked. It really, genuinely worked, and without a plan B in sight. Brock Osweiler, the team’s back-up quarterback those two seasons, was a combined 13-for-20 passing in 2012 and 2013. Manning wasn’t just healthy, he had two of the best years of his career.
And yet, the Super Bowl was a disaster, so bad that people openly started to question if Manning would ever win another Big Game, and if Denver’s plan—and Elway’s Plan A—was going to end with another Lombardi Trophy in Denver after all.
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Manning came back in 2014 and led Denver to the fourth-ranked offense in football, second in scoring. The defense rebounded as well, ranking third in yards against, while a bit pedestrian 16th in points allowed. And yet, for the second time in three years with Manning, Denver lost in the Divisional Round, falling to Peyton’s old team Indianapolis, while the rival Patriots went on to win another Super Bowl.
What was Plan A at that point? What did Manning have left in the tank after that season, and wasn’t it time to map out a realistic Plan B?
Instead, Elway doubled down on his plan. He fired John Fox—to this day Elway says they mutually agreed to part ways, and Fox did land another job four days after his ouster in Denver, but, well, come on with that, John, you fired the guy—and replaced him with Elway’s old back-up quarterback in Denver, Gary Kubiak, who finished a mediocre stint in Houston that went terribly south a year earlier and was working as the Baltimore Ravens’ offensive coordinator at the time Elway reached out.
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Fox was let go after a 58-22 record, four AFC West titles and a trip to the Super Bowl. But it was the 3-4 record in the playoffs that had Elway looking for a change. For Elway, Kubiak had better become one helluva Plan B; unless getting rid of a coach with the best winning percentage in franchise history was still part of Plan A?
One thing was for certain: winning with Manning under center was always Plan A for Elway.
He convinced Manning to stay for one more rodeo and when he was the worst quarterback in the NFL for much of the season—clearly Manning’s body was failing him this year—Kubiak benched him, to give him time to rest and heal, before bringing him back just before the playoffs, helping Denver secure home field advantage in the AFC and, on the backs of the defense, a Lombardi Trophy.
Plan A was never going to be a disaster for Elway, not once the Broncos made the Super Bowl two years ago, no matter how that game went for the franchise. But winning a title, and doing it with the roster he built and Manning under center, was the real plan.
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A month ago, it looked like it was officially time to move on to Plan B or, as it were, Plan B(rock). But Kubiak rolled the dice on Manning, just like Elway rolled the dice on Kubiak, and the three quarterbacks shared a stage Sunday night, hoisting the Lombardi Trophy on the backs of a stout defense and solid running game like Elway did as a player almost two decades ago.
On Sunday night, Elway stood on the field with the trophy in his giant hands and said, “this one’s for Pat,” but everyone knows this victory was every bit as much for Elway as it was for Bowlen, Manning or any of the other players on the field.
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Let’s not forget, Elway’s first draft in charge of Denver was in 2011, when the franchise took Von Miller second overall, behind Cam Newton. Elway said this week that if Newton had fallen to second in the draft, Denver would have seriously entertained taking him.
For Carolina, the decision to draft Newton changed the course of that franchise. For Denver, the decision to draft Miller, then a year later link up with Manning, brought home another title for the city, and the first for Elway as an executive.
Plan A may not have gone exactly how Elway planned it, but he was right. He didn’t need a Plan B.
