John Elway has made a mess of Broncos. Now it's time for him to go.

If only John Elway the executive was as good as John Elway the quarterback, the Denver Broncos wouldn’t find themselves in the mess they’re in. Four seasons removed from winning Super Bowl 50 despite having a withered Peyton Manning under center, Denver is in disarray.

The Broncos, with two gut-punch home losses, are one of the league’s six winless teams and are already out of the AFC West race, if they were ever in it to begin with.

Barring a miracle turnaround, Denver (0-4) will suffer its third straight losing season for the first time since 1970-72. The subject of tanking comes up. The merits of trading Von Miller are discussed and debated.

This situation is general manager Elway’s fault, the result of a litany of bad moves spanning his tenure. His failures started to sink the franchise immediately after Manning’s swan song Super Bowl.

Elway, who built the Broncos’ defense around Miller, his first draft pick after taking over as director of player personnel in 2011, swung and missed in his attempt to find a franchise quarterback in the 2016 draft.

The Broncos selected Memphis’ Paxton Lynch with the 26^th overall pick that year, and he was a massive flop, starting four games in two seasons with the team. He was cut before the start of the 2018 campaign.

Lynch was the third signal-caller taken, after Jared Goff and Carson Wentz, and while the group of quarterbacks taken after him is largely uninspiring, two names jump out: Jacoby Brissett and Dak Prescott. Brissett has been rock-solid for the Colts since Andrew Luck’s surprise retirement. He tied for the league lead in touchdown passes.

Prescott has been an upper-echelon quarterback from moment one, and despite occasional ups and downs, he'll be Dallas’ quarterback for the next decade-plus. He wasn’t a sure thing, and neither was Brissett, who still has much to prove. That doesn’t change the fact that one of the best quarterbacks ever -- a Pro Football Hall of Famer --- did a terrible job identifying the best one available to him. The rest of his quarterback draftees? Brock Osweiler, Trevor Siemian, Zac Dysert, Drew Lock and Chad Kelly. The ineptitude is staggering.

Siemian, a 2015 seventh-round pick, eventually won the starting job, and was decent in 2016 and merely mediocre in 2017, before an injury ended his season.

Free-agent signee Case Keenum (two years, $36 million in 2018) got traded to Washington after one season. Joe Flacco (acquired from Baltimore for a fourth-round pick) has underwhelmed. His 90.4 passer rating is below the league average. Osweiler had a decent spell in 2015, going 5-2 in seven starts, but that was it.

Denver’s foundation has crumbled because Elway has burned through significant resources in his quest to find a quarterback. He's not closer than when he started.

Elway’s name recognition and status as a revered figure for his exploits on the field should not obscure what has happened to the franchise because of his shoddy work off it. Not only has he failed to find a franchise quarterback, he’s built a team with considerable flaws, from a porous run defense to an uninspiring offense.

Until they got to Gardner Minshew five times last Sunday, the Broncos managed to go three full games without a sack. That’s an alarming failure for a defense built on the edge-rushing excellence of Miller and the now-injured Bradley Chubb, who's done for the season. Defense, by the way, is supposed to be the forte of head coach Vic Fangio, hired by Elway after Vance Joseph was canned after two awful seasons. 

Two of the 70 players drafted by Elway have made the Pro Bowl. One is Miller, a future Hall of Famer and a three-time first-team All-Pro, and the other is Julius Thomas, who made it to two Pro Bowls as a 2011 fourth-rounder. Malik Jackson, a 2012 fifth-rounder, made it to a Pro Bowl, but with Jacksonville.

It should be noted that the 2011 draft, Elway’s first and by far his best, was one for which he was advised by Brian Xanders, the man he replaced as general manager. When going it alone, his track record is atrocious.

The Broncos’ murky ownership situation, with multiple parties jockeying for control of the franchise, should not deter Joe Ellis, trustee for late owner Pat Bowlen’s estate, from firing Elway. It is overdue. Elway doesn’t deserve the chance to do any more damage.