Vance Joseph appears set to be pushed off the plank in Denver. His eventual firing seems all but assured following Monday night's flop against the Oakland Raiders.
Players in the locker room, however, insist they haven't quit on their coach.
"We all want to play better. Nobody likes not winning. We all hate it. We all want to play hard. We all want to win for coach Joseph," quarterback Case Keenum said Monday, via the team transcript. "We all love him. He's an incredible human and a great football coach. I want to play hard for him, I want to play hard for everybody in that locker room. That's a big part of our team and our identity. We've stayed together and we all love and like and respect each other and we want to fight for each other. It's a production league and when you're not winning, it's tough."
At 6-9, the Broncos are assured of their first back-to-back losing seasons since 1971-1972.
"Like Case said, you want to win," Von Miller added. "You want to go out there and win every game. It's tough especially being apart of an organization that's so used to elite play and get elite wins. It's just tough man. That's the story of the season. We play tough. We play every game tough. We play every game for our brothers and our coaches. We just came up short."
The Broncos have come up short too many times under Vance Joseph. In two seasons the coach has an 11-20 record -- a worse percentage than Josh McDaniel's rocky year and a half in Denver (11-17).
After a 3-6 start to the season, the Broncos appeared poised to save Joseph's job with a late-season playoff run. Three straight wins got Denver back to .500 with a favorable inside draw to a possible postseason bid (versus San Francisco, Cleveland, Oakland). Instead, the Broncos lost three straight games, sealing their fate and likely Joseph's.
"The message is we'll have to keep fighting and finishing," Joseph said after Monday's loss. "That's all we can do right now and we have one more game left. Our team has fought all year and we're going to keep fighting."
After that one game, changes will be made in Denver.
