There’s been more than a little bit of attention on the quarterback position in Denver this offseason.
Signing Peyton Manning and jettisoning Tim Tebow has completely changed the identity of the Broncos and led plenty of people to believe that the Broncos are going to be an aggressive passing team this season. That might be the case, but John Elway, the team’s executive vice president of football operations, isn’t only thinking about the guy playing his old position.
In an interview with Ian Rapoport of NFL.com, Elway stressed the need for the Broncos to be a balanced offense even though they have one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks. Elway called it the key to winning the Super Bowl and used his own experience as a player to back that up.
“Yeah, no question,” Elway said, “If that’s one thing that I ever learned, having been through three Super Bowls where we didn’t run the football very well. Then, once we did get it and win Super Bowls, we had great balance and were able to run the ball as well as throw it and play good defense and special teams. To be able to get a football team that’s capable of competing for world championships, you always got to get a little bit lucky, but you got to have all phases to win it all.”
Balance was a big problem on the Denver offense last season, albeit in the other direction. There’s been a lot of questions about how Manning will hold up physically after missing all of last season, but much less attention has been paid to how much the league’s leading rushing attack will be able to do without Tebow in the fold. Neither question can really be answered until games start, but it seems the Broncos will be doing their best to keep things fairly when that point rolls around.