ENGLEWOOD, Colo. -- When the Denver Broncos fired offensive coordinator Mike McCoy on Monday morning after their sixth straight loss, Bill Musgrave became the fourth different offensive coordinator in the past seven seasons.
It's the fifth change if you count McCoy's two stints with the team. Over that time, they've also had four defensive coordinators, three head coaches and six different starting quarterbacks. And for four years, it was all cloaked behind Peyton Manning being Peyton Manning at quarterback.
And if you look through the shattered pieces of this season, you will see that change has been the only real constant over the past seven years.
The Broncos lack an identity on offense, or at least they have up to this point, and their defense has surrendered the most touchdown passes in the league (22, tied with the Houston Texans). The development, as well as impact, of their recent draft classes has been stifled as each change in decision-makers on both sides of the ball has brought tweaks, alterations and new additions to the playbooks.
In short, the Broncos keep trying to hit a moving target in free agency and the draft as they try to fit players into schemes that have changed, at least some, almost every season.
Cornerback Chris Harris Jr. was angry after Sunday's loss -- angry at the score, angry at the losing streak the Broncos can't snap, angry at Elway's comments that the Broncos had been "a little bit soft" since their bye.
But through that anger, he may have spoken for all involved at the Broncos' current situation.
"Everybody in this organization is accountable for how we're playing right now," he said.
When Pat Bowlen spent all day, every day, in his office on the second floor of the Broncos' suburban Denver complex, and before Alzheimer's disease cruelly robbed him of the opportunity to do his job, there was always one prevailing thought when things didn't go well.
And during Bowlen's time as the team's owner, things rarely went wrong. The Broncos have more Super Bowl appearances than losing seasons in his more than three-decade tenure, and some of those who know him the best often said Bowlen knew ups and downs were part of pro football. Losing happens sometimes, no matter how hard you try to make it not happen.
But those same people also said the one thing Bowlen can't stomach is for the Broncos to be ... irrelevant.
With Denver at 3-7, one of the more passionate fan bases in the NFL with a sellout streak that dates back to the 1970 NFL-AFL merger, has showed up to games as its duty more than its passion. The Broncos aren't anybody's top story for touchdowns or wins these days.
They aren't legitimately in the playoff race, no matter what the odd math of the AFC standings say. And after a run of five division titles, two Super Bowl appearances and one Super Bowl win since Bowlen selected John Elway as the team's top decision-maker in 2011, it's now abundantly clear last year's 9-7 record wasn't a blip before a rebound. It was a last gasp.
Because the Broncos, despite the strenuous efforts of all involved, are not relevant. They have always lived with a Super Bowl-or-bust mentality. It is the way things are in the building, and in their culture, and it creates the kind of pressure not every team is ready to take on each season.
Sometimes all of those expectations push back -- hard.
"We've always won at least nine games, you know what I'm saying?" linebacker Brandon Marshall said after Sunday's 20-17 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. "It's tough. ... We've had so much winning, nobody's happy about it right now; us, the fans, anybody in this organization."
And more changes are coming, to be sure, far more than the usual roster turnover, unless they find some level of play they haven't reached since Week 2. Denver is headed for its first season of double-digit losses since 2010. But somewhere in there, in that desire to fix those things in desperate need of repair, the Broncos have to find some consistency in what they do, how they do it and what kind of players they're looking for at all of the positions. If not, that mark of "more Super Bowl appearances than losing seasons" will soon be in the rearview mirror.