ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — On Tuesday, hours before the NFL’s trade deadline, Broncos general manager John Elway traded one of the all-time best to ever don the Orange & Blue, sending wide receiver Demaryius Thomas to the Houston Texans.

“It’s never easy trading a guy that’s been a household name here for a long time and done a lot of great things — not only on the football field but also in the community,” Elway said, praising the longest-tenured player in the organization. “He’s a good man.”

In the trade, the Broncos received a fourth and seventh-round pick from the Texans, while Denver also sent a seventh-round pick along with Thomas to Houston.

With “three-to-four teams” interested in Thomas — including the Eagles and Patriots, according to reports — the Broncos wouldn’t have accepted anything less than a fourth-round pick for Thomas, according to an additional report. They would have, however, still traded Thomas regsrdless of the outcome on last Sunday’s game, with one caveat.

“We were not hellbent on trading Demaryius. If the value was there that we felt, the value was there,” Elway said hours after executing the trade. “We got the value that was fair and that was the most important thing.”

Yet despite being applauded for the impressive return for the 30-year-old receiver, that was only part of the reason for trading the Broncos’ second-leading receiver on the team.

“We felt that it could help us that way as far as the draft next year and that we thought with the young guys behind him that we could make up for the space that he would leave,” Elway said.

“Courtland [Sutton’s] played very, very well and Tim Patrick played very well last week. And Emmanuel [Sanders] is obviously playing very well, too. We thought that this could give Courtland a chance to go out and play more and become a bigger part… Hopefully, this accelerates his maturity.

Elway did admit the team will “lose a little bit” as the youth movement hits the receiving corps and it may not be replaced “right away,” but ultimately, he didn’t think it would hurt the Broncos ability to turn the season around and have a better second half.

“I told him that we did the best we could to try to take care of him as well as take care of the Broncos,” the general manager said. “It’s a good spot for Demaryius, going to a good football team that’s in the pennant race where he’s going. It will be good for him.”

As fate would have it, Thomas’ first game with his new team will be Sunday against his now-former team in Denver.

“I think that, ultimately, we had to look past that and thought that it wouldn’t affect our game and the outcome of the game and we felt that we could make that move,” Elway said, admitting he thought twice about trading Thomas to his team’s next opponent.

The Broncos first-round pick in 2010 is second all-time in the franchise’s receiving categories in yards (9,055), targets (1,095) and touchdowns (60), while being third in receptions (665). He hadn’t missed a single game for the team in the last seven seasons.

“Like I told him, he’ll always be a Bronco,” Elway said. “The Broncos will be eventually be reunited with Demaryius.”