Not many people have much experience hiring head coaches. And those who have the most typically aren’t doing a good job hiring head coaches in the first place; otherwise, they wouldn’t be hiring so many of them.
Broncos G.M. John Elway has now hired four coaches, firing two. He admits that his most recent hire before his latest one was a mistake.
“I talked to [Vance Joseph] before the process a couple of years ago [when hiring Gary Kubiak], and knew him, and going in, I had an idea that he was kind of our guy,” Elway told Peter King of Football Morning in America. “I admit it. I was wrong on that one. I don’t like to say it out loud because I don’t want to offend VJ, who is a good football coach. But things didn’t work out.”
They didn’t work out because Elway apparently zeroed in on the other guy he liked when hiring Kubiak, instead of starting from scratch.
“Cover your bases thoroughly and get the best candidates that you can and don’t make your mind up going in,” Elway now explains. “Don’t draw any conclusions before you go into the coaching interviews. Take each interview in the moment and do not pre-draw it. Don’t combine it with the other ones and don’t make your mind up when you walk out. Be as thorough as you can and try to find the right guy that fits your job at that point in time. So that’s what I learned. I’ve probably pre-drawn my thought process going in before.”
He surely did it with Joseph, compounding the mistake by keeping him after a failed 2017 season. Elway may have done it with Kubiak. With new coach Vic Fangio, Elway is surely hoping that his experience in hiring head coaches finally will pay off. If it doesn’t this time, the Broncos may soon be hiring a new G.M.