After the Broncos have been semi-officially eliminated (based on their 3-6 record they have about a 3% chance of making the playoffs according to statisticians) it's worth spending a moment to reflect on the future and the way forward. Obviously Elway will evaluate everything to decide who to keep and who to fire, hopefully including the coaching staff.
My take is by no means the only possibility, but here goes:
In retrospect, Elway and VJ simply misjudged their team.
After the 2015 SB the Broncos lost Peyton Manning, their only penetrating DL Malik Jackson, the only ILB on the roster who could cover TEs and RBs over the middle in Danny Trevathan. In 2016 Hall of Famer Demarcus Ware was ineffective due to injury and then he retired. This off-season they cut TJ Ward. This is no longer remotely the same defense. They are still good, but have serious deficiencies compared to the 2015 defense. That's what happens to great defenses. They retire, become FAs or are traded and the guys who take their place are just not as good.
Offensively in 2013 the Broncos had Peyton Manning, TE Julius Thomas, slot WR Wes Welker and Knowshon Moreno caught over 60 passes out of the backfield. None of them are on the roster, and their replacements are pretty much useless. The TEs caught only a couple of passes last game combined.
So, the talent level on this team declined precipitously since 2015, but Elway and VJ kept insisting that they were just one or two players (usually OL) away from competing for a SB. We all believed the hype, but it was just hype. Normally, after you lose your HOF QB you SUCK for years. I was always afraid of this during the Manning years, because I remembered what happened after Elway retired. Shanny basically went 8-8 the rest of his career and won 1 playoff game in 10 seasons.
I thought this could happen again - especially if they couldn't find a real Franchise QB. But, there was all this insistence that you can build a team around great defense, and not spend any money on QBs, (or the offense in general outside Sanders & DT), then go to another SB.
Well that was never realistic at all. Nobody outside Denver could ever understand why the Broncos kept insisting that Trevor was a viable franchise QB. But, that's water under the dam.
Now there is no choice:
They have to do what every 6-10 or worse losing team does: REBUILD with a rookie Franchise QB hopefully drafted in the top 10 because those QBs have really the only substantial rate of success. By no means all top 10 first round QBs succeed, but those top guys have the BEST CHANCE of being good.
And as we saw with Paxton, trying to get a bargain late in the first round, or the second round with Brock, or the 7th with Trevor, is just not likely to work and it didn't.
The Broncos wasted 2 years with QB experiments that didn't work out. Now they will have to do what in retrospect they should have done in 2016. Rebuild with younger players.