John Elway digs at Osweiler, hints he didn’t want to be a Bronco

Something is telling us that John Elway isn’t worried about his quarterback situation.

The Denver Broncos have lost their two top quarterbacks with the retirement of Peyton Manning and the free-agent defection on Wednesday of Brock Osweiler, the only two men who have started games for the team since Tim Tebow was the starter in 2011.

[NFL free agency starts Wednesday. Here are Shutdown Corner’s free-agent rankings for offensive players and for defensive players and specialists. Here are the top needs for all 32 NFL teams.]

But it doesn’t appear Elway is too upset. He threw some thinly veiled shade at Osweiler in a statement released on the team’s official website shortly after Osweiler left Denver for the Houston Texans on a four-year, $72 million deal.

“We’ve stayed true to our philosophy of building a team with players who want to be Denver Broncos and want to be here. That’s been a successful approach for us,” Elway said.

Pretty clear what Elway was getting at. 

“While we did offer a very competitive and fair long-term contract to Brock, we ultimately had to remain disciplined while continuing to assemble a roster that can compete for championships,” Elway said.

Translation: We think Osweiler is decent but hardly great. Oh yeah, and this: We’ll be fine without him.

To be fair, based on reports, those competitive offers from Elway to Osweiler were north of $16 million per season, which sounds like a lot to you and me. But that’s on the lower end for respectable starting quarterbacks, and Elway just had no interest in going north of a certain point for a player he deemed to fit in with that group and not, say, the top 10 quarterbacks in the leagie, as the Texans were willing to pay him.

The Broncos won the Super Bowl last season with their quarterbacks combining for a 74.3 passer rating, well below the league average. You think Elway is sweating losing a quarterback with seven career starts who might not be a perfect fit in Gary Kubiak’s system? Think again.

So we don’t know who the Broncos’ starting QB is — and no, it won’t be Tebow, y’all, so shut it down right there — but we do know that whoever it becomes will have a championship-caliber defense and two pretty good receivers alongside him.

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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm