The Denver Broncos are limping to the finish line of what has been another extremely disappointing season, and Vance Joseph is expected to lose his job sometime in the days or hours after Sunday’s game, but the team’s veterans insist the head coach has not lost the respect of his players.
While speaking with reporters after Monday night’s ugly loss to the Oakland Raiders, Broncos quarterback Case Keenum said he and his teammates are still playing hard for Joseph.
“We all want to play hard. We all want to win for coach Joseph,” Keenum said, per Kevin Patra of NFL.com. “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.”
Star pass-rusher Von Miller echoed those sentiments.
“Like Case said, you want to win. You want to go out there and win every game,” Miller said. “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 are 6-9 heading into their regular-season finale against the Los Angeles Chargers. While that record is technically an improvement over last year’s 5-11 campaign, John Elway and the team’s front office were optimistic heading into the season that Keenum would be the missing link needed to get the team back to the postseason. That obviously was not the case.
We’ve already heard rumblings about one high-profile name replacing Joseph, and it would be a shock if Denver decides to keep Joseph for another season.
