At the time, it seemed like a relatively inconsequential moment. It was, after all, only August, in the middle of training camp.
Who knew it would turn out to be a powerful, season-changing catalyst that built a symbolic bridge from that unsavory mid-summer moment to Super Bowl XLVIII against the Seahawks Sunday at MetLife Stadium?
The Broncos had just been embarrassed by Seattle, 40-10, in the second preseason game, and the next morning executive vice president of football operations John Elway stood before the players and coaches in a team meeting and ripped into them with an urgency that suggested it was late December with the season hanging in the balance.
“If you want to win a world championship,’’ Elway told the team, “you don’t go anywhere and lose 40-10.’’
Broncos linebacker Shaun Phillips said being scolded like that after a preseason game was a first for him in 10 NFL seasons.
“John never comes into team meetings, so to see him in a morning meeting was definitely a little different,’’ Phillips said. “But it made us understand the importance of it, how much it means to him and that it can’t mean more to Mr. Elway than it does to us. Having your boss come down to say something to you puts a little spark under your butt.’’
It helped spark the Broncos, who won their first six games en route to a 9-1 start and a regular-season record of 13-3 with the No. 1 AFC playoff seed.
So, upon further review, the Elway stand-down turned out to be highly consequential.
“If you’ve got to have a team meeting in the middle of the season, it’s usually too late by then,’’ Phillips said.
You never know when turning points arrive, and sometimes when they do you don’t even recognize them as such at that moment.
“John asked to speak to the team and he lit into them pretty good,’’ head coach John Fox said. “I hope he pissed them off a little bit. I think it shook them up, woke them up. I thought it had a good effect on us. We came back a little grittier and a little more determined. It got us going.’’
The preseason debacle featured a laundry list of poor plays that raised red flags for Denver — plays that gave no one the impression the Broncos were bound for the Super Bowl five months down the road. Among the lowlights:
BULLET: Seattle linebacker Bobby Wagner, untouched on a pass rush, slammed Peyton Manning to the ground.
BULLET: Seattle’s Jermaine Kearse returned a kickoff 107 yards for a TD.
BULLET: Denver running back Ronnie Hillman fumbled while trying to dive into the end zone, turning a Broncos TD into a Seahawks TD when Seattle’s Brandon Browner returned it 106 yards the other way.
BULLET: Seattle tight end Sean McGrath ran wide open for a 23-yard TD thanks to a busted coverage in the Denver secondary.
Generally, a sloppy preseason game is passed off by the players as, well, just a preseason game. “We’ll get all that corrected once the games count for real,’’ players always say.
But Elway decided he had seen enough and could not stomach any more.
“It was just one of those things where you think something needs to be said at that time,” Elway recalled. “We want this team to have a mindset that they want to be world champions. To me, it seemed like some people thought it was OK [to get blown out in a preseason game], so I made sure to say it wasn’t OK.’’
Defensive end Robert Ayers said the team initially “kind brushed’’ the blowout “under the rug, being that it was preseason,’’ but Elway said, “it’s not acceptable’’ regardless of when it happens.
“John pretty much laid it on us after that game,” Manning recalled. “He talked about what he thought our potential could be and didn’t want to see that wasted. Everybody in that room, I think, got the message. I was taking notes, a lot of players were taking notes. I thought it was important.’’
Five months removed from that turning-point moment, the Broncos — with everything on the line now — revisit that same opponent that caused such consternation in the first place. What better way to see how far they’ve come?