[FloridaMan88]

Sounds like Elway is a real joy to work for...

Excerpts from a new book coming out...

Link: https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/09/14/mm...an-daily-cover

In the months after getting the new contract, Fox seemed to recede from the challenge instead of responding to it. Fox’s deference to Manning also got on Elway’s nerves. Manning essentially ran the entire offense. While that was extraordinarily successful in the 2013 season, Elway saw the Super Bowl as a referendum on what the Broncos really needed to do. There needed to be more balance to the offense with an emphasis on the running game.

Just as Elway needed a running game at the end of his career, he felt like Manning needed the same thing. In addition, Elway thought Denver should have been playing to the strength of its improving defense. With Fox giving Manning carte blanche to run the offense, the overall approach wasn’t going to change. That led to flare ups during the 2014 season. Elway started to criticize Fox more openly around the Broncos facility. At one point, Del Rio got wind of it and criticized Elway during a team meeting. When that got back to Elway, the two men had a loud disagreement some people thought might end in a fistfight.

“I was just defending my boss,” Del Rio says, diplomatically referring to Fox. “I think some things were said that didn’t need to be said and I’ll just leave it at that.”

The tension got worse after Manning got hurt. By the end of the 2014 season, the Broncos offense was in trouble and everyone knew it. When Chicago fired coach Marc Trestman and General Manager Phil Emery and hired Pace to replace Emery, Fox saw the situation as a golden parachute out of Mile High City.

As the team readied for the playoff game against Indianapolis, other reporters were getting wind of the full rift between Elway and Fox. [Mike] Klis was asking questions about Fox’s future on the Friday before the game. [Jay] Glazer confirmed the story and put it out on the pregame show early Sunday. Denver’s flaccid effort against Indianapolis meant that three consecutive seasons under Fox had ended in vast disappointment in Elway’s view. Worse, Elway had seen this show in the first 10 years of his career. What the Broncos needed was a bold overhaul of the entire coaching staff in his view.

By the next day, Fox and the Broncos announced they had agreed to a “mutual parting,” a polite way of saying the team had fired Fox and he was content to leave. That’s when Elway went back to his roots. While he wasn’t going to hire [Mike] Shanahan, he was going to get the next best thing: Shanahan’s long-time lieutenant and Elway’s long-time friend [Gary] Kubiak. Kubiak had spent eight years with middling results in Houston and had spent the 2014 season as the offensive coordinator with Baltimore.

What Elway wanted was a disciplined approach to the entire operation. He wanted someone who would stand up to Manning and put in a running game Manning needed.

First, however, there was going to be a meeting of the minds between Elway and Manning and a bitter pill for Manning to swallow. Shortly after the season ended and Kubiak was hired, Elway and Manning met in Elway’s office. Elway described to Manning his disappointment with how the season ended. Manning expressed he was disappointed Fox had been let go and believed the team could still have won a title under Fox. At one point in the conversation, Elway referred to how he believed Fox, Del Rio and Gase were distracted during the playoff loss.