Broncos front office changing how they review the season

One very interesting piece of information came out of the Denver Broncos end of the year press conference that could be one of the most impactful changes the franchise has seen in quite some time. President of Football Operations/GM John Elway casually noted that they’ll wait a month before reviewing and coming to decisions on this past season.

He credited Head Coach Vic Fangio for recommending the change. The extra time will allow the emotions of the season to be removed from the equation and gives coaches a chance to full review the film.

“I think it gives us a chance—it gives us a better look at it once we get away from it,” Elway said of the change. “I think you get—especially with a coach’s view—for them being in the middle of it and as hard as they work, to be able to take some time, get some rest, get away from it, and then maybe at that point in time you have a different view point, probably a better perspective. The farther we can get away from this year and then look back and then go evaluate our guys like we evaluate free agents or college kids coming out—go through it, look at each one of them and go through it and evaluate each player. That gives us more time to do it the right way. Rather than doing it on a personal side, because the coaches get connected with them. I think you get a better objective view when you get away and you’re able to go back and look at it individually.”

This seems like a huge change from how most teams evaluate a season and build an offseason plan. The Broncos front office, now, will reconvene in early February to build that offseason plan in tandem with the coaching staff.

I love that Elway and Fangio are working closely on evaluation and decision-making on the personnel side of things. As a casual fan, I find this change incredibly interesting in a positive way. Fangio expanded on the reasoning behind the extra time.

“I have found that when you—like if we were to spend the next 10 days evaluating our players and writing them up and putting a so-called grade on them and then you go—and every team does this—we’ll watch the cutups from the season,” Fangio said. “I’ve found out that you may have mis-graded some guys after you have a chance to go and watch the season in its entirety and the emotional level—good and bad—has disappeared. You make a better objective grade after you watch the entire season again in a logical manner.”

It would seem Fangio, over the years, has found that evaluating players quickly and slapping grades on their seasons through the cutups they have available leads to poor roster decisions. With the extra time, Fangio knows he’ll be able to watch film on every players from every game and better analyze the seasons from each.

There is little argument I could make here to suggest this will not work out to the Broncos overall long-term benefit. What do you think of this change to how the Broncos are doing their end of the season roster review?