Kubiak combine quotes: Backing Manning, Flacco "Elite"

New Broncos head coach Gary Kubiak met with the media in Indianapolis today during the NFL Combine. With hundreds of young athletes assembled the questions were mainly directed about a 39 year old quarterback.

“No doubt I want him to be. I think all indications are that [through] everything he said and through his conversations with John he feels good. He’s had his self-assessment or however you want to label that and he feels good about moving forward. We’ll just continue with the process.”

Manning and Kubiak have reportedly met multiple time but of course haven’t discussed football as that would be against the NFL’s CBA. Sure.

“I don’t think there have been any assurances or anything. It’s been about a process that he and John have been working through during the course of the last month. When I came in–I think it will be a month tomorrow that I’ve been in town–I knew all along that Peyton was going to take some time away. John obviously has a lot of things to do. He’s helping me put together a coaching staff and those types of things. So I think the process has worked the way that John and Peyton intended it to work. I’ve had the chance to visit with him quite often here in the last couple of weeks and it’s been very good. We visited about a lot of things but no football. He’s very positive in his talking to me, he was very positive with John when he came to town last week. So we continue to move forward and I’ll let him and John work that out.”

Kubiak also talked about some of the other changes schematically his team is facing this offseason.

“I think a 4-3 team that plays an under front, I mean, that’s no different than playing the 3-4. So I think there are a lot of similarities right there. But obviously through my conversations, my dealing with Wade, some of the personnel we think that fits very much with what Wade wants to do, with Von having the ability to play on the edge as well as play some off the ball. So we just think it’s an easy transition with him and Ware, and where we want to go. I don’t think it’s that big of a change, really, because of the under front.”

There has been speculation that there will need to be a massive over-hall on the offensive line but Kubiak appears confident in his unit.

“They’ll definitely fit. That’s not an issue. There’s a lot of movement. The biggest thing I can see, there was a lot of movement because of some injuries to guys having to move outside, those types of things. And there are some good young players in the building that I know that John and his staff think very highly of. So we’ve got to get our hands on them and see what we have but I think being good offensive and defensively always starts up front. So I think we’ve got some work to do and hopefully we get it settled down a little bit with some of the movement that took place because of the injury situation.”

Peyton wasn’t the only quarterback brought up, Kubiak had this to say about his most recent starting QB.

“Is Joe Flacco elite? You bet he is. That’s why I’m standing up here today. Joe is tremendous. I really enjoyed working with him. He’s as talented a young man I’ve ever coached and he’s as good a person as I’ve ever coached and I think we’ll be talking about Joe for a long, long time. So I really appreciated my time with him and I wish him the best.”

The combine will go through Monday the 23rd then Kubiak and company will shift their focus towards free agency.