According to John Elway, ignoring quarterback Josh Allen in the 2018 NFL draft was likely his biggest mistake as general manager of the Denver Broncos.
“Last year I played [golf] “I was like, ‘I was with him and I wondered, ‘How long is it going to take him to realize that I let him go and took Bradley Chubb?’ And it took him two and a half holes,” Elway recalled during a recent appearance on Barstool Sports’ Pardon My Take podcast. “And I thought he was great. But it just didn’t work out. He was my type. That was probably my biggest mistake in my GM days, not taking Josh.”
Elway passed the quarterback, who completed 56 percent of his passes in his two seasons as a starter in windy Wyoming.
Instead, Elway selected Chubb, the North Carolina State pass rusher who struggled to stay fit in Denver and was eventually traded to the Miami Dolphins, with the fifth overall pick that year.
Elway had just signed Case Keenum, who was coming off a successful season in Minnesota, and he was still reeling from his first-round pick of another tall, powerful QB from a small school two years earlier.
Not long after celebrating the franchise’s third Super Bowl title, Elway drafted Paxton Lynch out of Memphis with the 26th overall pick in the 2016 NFL draft – in what turned out to be the worst decision of his decade managing the Broncos roster. Lynch was passed over twice by seventh-round pick Trevor Siemian and started just four games before being cut by the Broncos in 2018.
Elway’s double-whammy of selecting Lynch and bypassing Allen set a long path for the once-proud franchise, which has failed to reach the playoffs since their Super Bowl triumph following the 2015 season.
The Broncos have had 13 different starting quarterbacks since Peyton Manning retired, and that number will climb again this season unless veteran Jarrett Stidham fends off rookie Bo Nix and redo project Zach Wilson in a three-way QB battle.
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Elway, who concluded his Hall of Fame career with back-to-back Super Bowl titles in the late 1990s, returned to the franchise in 2011 as director of player personnel. A year later, he was named executive vice president of football operations, replacing Tim Tebow with Manning, who led Denver to two Super Bowls in his four seasons with the Broncos.
Elway went 64-26 in his first five seasons at the helm, but fell to 32-48 in his final five years before stepping down after the 2020 season.