There’s a good chance Vance Joseph is back with the Denver Broncos next season

The #FireVanceJoseph crowd may not like this news, but reports from multiple sources covering the team indicate that there’s a pretty good chance Vance Joseph is still in Denver’s future plans, and will be retained as the head coach next year.

Eric Goodman and Les Shapiro talked about this on their show today (starting around the 5:00 mark) and the sentiment has also been backed up by Benjamin Allbright on Twitter.

Les Shapiro dropped some interesting nuggets on the show today about how Joseph and John Elway have been meeting daily for about an hour, and Elway really likes Joseph as a talent evaluator.

Elway also, according to Shapiro, recognizes he could use some help in this area, which is why Gary Kubiak was brought on as a senior personnel adviser this off-season, and apparently Elway sees Joseph as someone who can also help.

Shapiro went on to say that John is owning some of his mistakes this season and recognizes that he didn’t put Vance Joseph in the best position to succeed.

Specifically, Elway reportedly regrets hiring both Mike McCoy and Bill Musgrave to help run the offense as the two of them never were on the same page. McCoy of course, was dismissed mid-way through the season which has left Musgrave having to run the system McCoy installed, with minor tweaks; but he can’t fully overhaul it in the middle of the year. Also, my personal suspicion, and Shapiro thinks this as well, is that Musgrave will be retained next year as the team’s offensive coordinator.

Lastly, Elway believes he did Joseph a disservice with the quarterback situation he handed him, to which Eric Goodman quipped that it would be doing Bill Belichick, Bill Walsh, or Mike Shanahan a disservice by giving them the quarterbacks Denver has trotted out this year; which I can’t say I disagree with.

It’s hard for any rookie head coach to win in their first year, but you couple that with the situation Joseph walked into, which Elway is admitting was less than ideal, and the fact that Joseph has seemingly has not lost the locker room in terms of the guys respecting him (players continue to praise his leadership and voluntarily talk about wanting to play and win for him), and it makes sense that Elway would give Joseph another shot.

Now, all of that could go out the window if Denver lays anymore eggs or embarrasses themselves on the field Thursday night, like they have so many games this year, but if they play like they did against the Jets for the next three games, win or lose, expect Vance Joseph to be the Head Coach in 2018.