John Elway returned to the Broncos to win a Super Bowl.
But the Broncos won’t win a Super Bowl unless Elway improves his way of building a football team.
To become champions, the Broncos need to be more than quarterback Peyton Manning and 52 interchangeable parts.
If Denver wants to win the Super Bowl, then the mission of Elway should be to draft a defensive lineman with more tackles in his future than 31-year-old DeMarcus Ware, who will cost the Broncos $13 million this year after being signed as a free agent from Dallas.
Granted, it’s not easy to find an impact player with the 31st selection in the opening round, where the Broncos are slated to pick next month. This just in: Jadeveon Clowney of South Carolina won’t be available when it is Denver’s turn. But my eye has been on Minnesota defensive tackle Ra’Shede Hageman, a 6-foot-5, 310-pound beast with flawed techniques, since I gave him one of three slots on my Heisman ballot in December.
Of course, Elway pays director of player personnel Matt Russell and his scouting department good money to know far more about the pool of college talent than what a knucklehead columnist can bring to the conversation. Cornerback, wide receiver and defensive line, however, seem to be the positions stocked deep enough in this draft for Denver to find a player who can make a significant contribution as a rookie.
And I do know this: Even if you want to blame bad luck or lack of opportunity, linebacker Von Miller, safety Rahim Moore, defensive tackle Derek Wolfe, quarterback Brock Osweiler, defensive tackle Sylvester Williams and running back Montee Ball — the marquee players from the three draft classes of Elway’s reign — have been unable to contribute in a truly big way for a franchise whose attitude is Super Bowl or bust.
Free agency is the quick fix of an NFL franchise. It’s the two-minute drill of building a roster. It’s very dramatic. And it suits Elway perfectly.
The NFL draft builds the foundation and establishes the personality of a team. Scouting is tedious work, best suited for football geeks, which might help explain why Josh McDaniels was better at drafting players than Elway.
It seems like something more than a coincidence that some of the best young players brought to the franchise by McDaniels have been allowed to walk away from Denver. It was nice knowing you, Knowshon Moreno, Zane Beadles and Eric Decker.
Sure, the NFL is transient work. Roster turnover is inevitable and, for the Broncos, it was absolutely necessary to erase a chunk of bad institutional memory after losing by five touchdowns to Seattle in the Super Bowl.
The most prominent feature of the locker room in Dove Valley, however, seems to have become a revolving door, which spins in a blur that swallows Elvis Dumervil, spits out Shaun Phillips and ushers in Ware as the pass rusher du jour.
This is not to suggest giving a $57 million contract to talented veteran cornerback Aqib Talib was a bad idea in the effort to strengthen Denver’s secondary.
But money doesn’t buy loyalty, so it’s hard to expect Talib to become a man who strengthens the fabric of this team’s personality to anywhere near the same extent as cornerback Chris Harris, who fought and scratched his way on the roster as an undrafted free agent in 2011.
Ware and Talib are outstanding football players. But, in the Denver locker room, they are transients. As coach John Fox has taught me, in the cutthroat business of the NFL, even good men will abandon the team’s mission in a heartbeat if losses threaten team unity.
Denver won championships in the 1990s with Elway and Shannon Sharpe, Terrell Davis and Steve Atwater. They were more than great players. They were Broncos.
Elway bleeds orange.
You can’t sign a veteran from out of town and expect him to bleed orange.
Only the draft can put the orange in the Broncos.
Mark Kiszla: mkiszla@denverpost.com or twitter.com/markkiszla
