ENGLEWOOD, Colo. -- Don't say John Elway didn't try to tell you ... and everybody else.

As ESPN's Todd Archer and Adam Schefter have reported, Tony Romo is headed to retirement and likely to a television network to be named later. And the most talked-about quarterback for many in the Denver Broncos' offseason becomes what the team consistently said he was all along.

A "non-issue."

Broncos coach Vance Joseph tied a tidy little bow around the topic last week at the league meetings, saying: "Romo, for us ... is a non-issue. We haven't had one meeting about Romo. ... That's a non-issue for us."

Bottom line is the Broncos' interest in pursuing Romo, the Dallas Cowboys' former starter, was vastly overstated since the end of the 2016 season. The feeling inside the Broncos' suburban Denver complex has consistently been that the team had other plans, even as Romo was likely interested in the Broncos on some level.

And why not? The team has an elite defense, led by a secondary with four Pro Bowl players to go with a perennial Defensive Player of the Year candidate, linebacker Von Miller.

The Broncos have also been to the playoffs in five of the last six seasons, won five division titles, been to two Super Bowls and won Super Bowl 50. The "down" year of 2016, the first playoff miss since 2010, still included nine wins.

Since the start of the 2010 season, the Cowboys had won at least nine games just twice. So there was always plenty of "interest" stirred up by those who said they were close to Romo, who said they were locked in on what the quarterback was thinking. Call it the ghost of Peyton Manning.

The Broncos showed when they signed Manning in 2012 that they were willing to dive into the free-agency market to spend big on a veteran quarterback who had a résumé like Manning's. As Elway put it: "I like signing Hall of Famers with chips on their shoulders."

Manning changed the direction of a franchise before he retired after four seasons. And that was, and always will be, a once-in-a-franchise-life opportunity.

This was different. Despite Manning having missed the 2011 season after neck surgery and facing an uncertain future about what his recovery would be, the concerns were greater about Romo's ability to stay healthy in any future football endeavors.

In 2012, the Broncos had already decided to move on from Tim Tebow at quarterback and were trying to make a long-term plan at the position when the Indianapolis Colts turned Manning into the most accomplished free agent to ever arrive on the open market.

And even as folks kept waiting for the punchline or focused on when Elway tagged any discussion about quarterbacks with "right now," Elway and Joseph never really wavered in what they said this offseason. They consistently said they like their potential with Trevor Siemian and Paxton Lynch on the depth chart at quarterback.

They said those two will battle it out in training camp to be the team's starter. And Joseph even said that one of them "will be No. 1 and the other will be No. 2."

At one point last month, Elway went as far as to say, "I will just tell you this: There have been a lot of things out there that aren't true as far as what is going on with our quarterbacks. That is what happens. Everything gets frothed up there. We just continue to go down our plan."

Elway never rules anything out and at some point he almost certainly did a little what-if in his head about Romo, even as the two posed for a photo at a GOP event earlier this year.

But, in the end, Elway wasn't bluffing, wasn't posturing, wasn't trying to cover his tracks.

And Romo, from the Broncos' perspective, was always somebody else's quarterback because the Broncos believe they have two of their own.