“Dance with the one who brung ya.”
— Darrell Royal, former (and legendary) University of Texas football coach

There’s an old bit of wisdom oft-attributed to legendary Texas football coach Darrell Royal, who believed that when the big dance finally came around, you ought to stick with the people who had gotten you there in the first place. Not go looking for a prettier partner, or someone with fancier shoes, or a better set of moves. Just remember who brought you to the party, and give them the dance they earned.

It’s an admirable sentiment, and one that more of us could follow in the grass-is-always-greener department. So often the upgrade is simply not one.

And the sentiment is a good one. Loyalty. Trust. Familiarity. Knowing that the people around you have already demonstrated what they can do, and believing they’ll be able to do it again when the music gets a little faster.

The Denver Broncos are about to find out how well that philosophy holds up.

After weeks of trade speculation that had Broncos fans mentally fitting everyone from Jonathan Taylor to Trey McBride for orange-and-blue jerseys, Denver’s trade deadline came and went with considerably less fireworks than many had anticipated. As a Fort Collins kid and CSU alum, the McBride rumor had me swooning for a second. The one actual addition, Los Angeles Chargers linebacker Daiyan Henley, looked to be a smart bit of depth-building for an already formidable defense. Not the superstar many had dreamed of, but a solid, capable player who could make an excellent group even better.

And then… poof. He was gone. Or, more accurately, never quite here.

The Broncos had agreed to send the Chargers a fourth-round pick in 2027 and a fifth-rounder in 2028 for Henley, a 26-year-old linebacker who had already accumulated more than 300 tackles in his young career. He was an established starter, a two-time team captain, and a player who would have given Denver another reliable option.

For a team with championship aspirations, that’s precisely the sort of move that makes sense. You don’t really need another superstar when you’ve already got a few, as attractive as that sounds. Sometimes you just need the guy who can step in when someone else gets hurt, or just so your defensive coordinator has another way to make the other guy’s quarterback even a little more miserable.

But Henley’s physical reportedly raised concerns, and the Broncos tried to renegotiate the deal. The Chargers weren’t interested in taking less, and the whole thing fell apart after the trade deadline had already passed. Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh has since suggested Denver was exploiting a loophole in the rules, while reporting from Denver indicates the medical concerns were legitimate, and so wanted to see if there were options. The Chargers said it was pass/fail. Okay, cool. Fail, then. Simmer down, Jim.

Whatever happened behind those closed doors, the result is pretty simple. No Henley. No Taylor. No McBride. No shiny new toys. Just the guys who were already here. The ones who, uh… brung ’em.

Which, when you stop to think about it, might not be the worst thing in the world.

These are, after all, the Denver Broncos who went 14-3 last season. The same Broncos who won the AFC West, earned the conference’s top seed, and came within three points of reaching the Super Bowl. That last bit with Bo Nix standing on the sideline with an injured ankle, watching his teammates lose a 10-7 heartbreaker to New England. Tell me Bo doesn’t get you at least four more points. It was that close.

And truthfully, I don’t ACTUALLY know that a healthy Nix automatically changes that outcome, but it’s hard to imagine he wouldn’t have changed the complexion of the game. Three points is a pretty narrow gap when your starting quarterback is missing from the equation. Especially one who has demonstrated an almost preternatural ability to pull wins out of situations where wins have no business being found.

And that brings us to this season, where Denver has opened at 7-2, sits atop the AFC West, and has apparently decided that the most entertaining way to win football games is to give its entire fan base a collective cardiac event nearly every Sunday.

Sixteen cardiac events, actually.

You’ve probably heard by now, but that’s how many consecutive regular-season games decided by eight points or fewer the Broncos have won. Sixteen straight one-score victories, a new NFL record, and an accomplishment that is simultaneously one of the most impressive and most terrifying things I’ve ever witnessed as a football fan. Danny Glover knows what I want to say next.

The latest came against Carolina, where Denver needed a fourth-quarter comeback, a remarkable interception by Devon Key, and a game-saving strip-sack from Nik Bonitto to escape with a 26-21 victory. In between, there was even a late fumble that threatened to turn another hard-earned win into a rather spectacular disaster.

Somehow, the ball bounced Denver’s way. Again.

And this is where I have to put down my orange-and-blue pom-poms for a moment, because there are some fairly uncomfortable numbers lurking behind all these happy endings. Are those pom-poms or defibrillation paddles? I’ll never tell.

Through nine games, the Broncos have been outgained by 699 yards. That’s not a typo. Seven hundred yards, give or take a trip to the refrigerator. According to CBS Sports, it’s the worst yardage differential in NFL history for a team with at least seven wins through nine games.

As a comparison, when they had the same 7-2 record last season, Denver had outgained its opponents by 607 yards. That’s a swing of more than 1,300 yards between two teams with identical records. Oof.

Denver’s offense has also struggled with third-down conversions, and has had stretches where moving the ball seems about as difficult as moving the Rockies a few feet to the left. Which left? That’s right. For all of Bo Nix’s late-game heroics, it would be lovely if he and the offense occasionally decided to put a game away before the final two minutes. Just for variety. Or the continued health of my cardiovascular system. And my pom-poms.

Even without the CBS article’s stats, there’s a legitimate question about whether all these narrow victories are sustainable. Footballs bounce strangely. Officials make mistakes. Opponents drop passes. A kicker who misses from 43 yards one Sunday might split the uprights from 55 the next.

Even the best teams get lucky sometimes, and the Broncos have certainly had their share of fortunate moments. And that’s where the statistical nerd in me remembers a Stat 101 quote from a white-haired old prof. Bent to this situation, the idea is this:

The streak is evidence of a repeatable strength, not a guarantee of repeatable results.

That’s an important distinction, because winning close games isn’t necessarily proof that you’re better than everyone else. Sometimes it simply means you’ve managed to avoid being worse at exactly the right moment. And if Denver continues to surrender yards at its current pace, eventually those mistakes may become too expensive for even this truly remarkable bunch to overcome. But…

Sixteen? At what point do we stop describing something as luck and start recognizing it as a skill?

If we’re actually mathing it out, and making up words in the bargain, the odds of winning 16 consecutive games decided by one score, assuming each game were a genuine 50/50 proposition, are one in 65,536. That’s roughly a .0015% chance. Now, those games aren’t coin flips, and the Broncos haven’t faced identical circumstances or opponents each week, so that number isn’t a scientific measurement of how lucky Denver has been. But it does illustrate just how extraordinary the accomplishment really is. And how deeply unlikely it is that this is luck any longer.

But there’s more to it than the mathematics. Bo Nix has demonstrated an unusual ability to remain composed when the pressure gets almost unbearable. Nik Bonitto and Pat Surtain II lead a defense that has repeatedly made its biggest plays when the alternative was losing. Alex Singleton, Quinn Meinerz, Courtland Sutton, and a host of others have helped build a team culture where nobody seems particularly interested in panicking when things go sideways. With the Broncos, all the ice water seems to be in their veins instead of the Gatorade jugs.

And it’s not just on the field. Sean Payton has built a coaching staff and a roster that seem to understand something important about winning football games. You don’t have to be perfect for 60 minutes. You have to be better than the other guy was when the clock hits zeroes. That’s not a substitute for playing better football throughout the game, but it’s a damned valuable skill to possess.

After the Carolina victory, Payton pushed back on the idea that his team’s success in these situations was simply good fortune.

“When those things keep falling your way, then that’s not by accident.”

I think he’s right. Sure, not entirely, because even Payton can’t coach a football to bounce in a particular direction. But you can coach players to be in the right places, to keep their heads when things are going wrong, and to trust that the guy standing next to them will do his job when it matters most.

That sort of trust isn’t something you can necessarily pick up at the trade deadline, no matter how many draft picks you’re willing to spend. Maybe none of that grass actually was greener.

Which brings us back to Daiyan Henley, and the superstar shopping spree that never quite materialized.

Would Jonathan Taylor have made Denver’s offense more dangerous? Almost certainly. Would Trey McBride have given Nix another spectacular weapon? You bet. Would Henley have made the defense deeper, more flexible, and better prepared for the inevitable injuries that come with a long NFL season?Probably all of the above. God, imagine if we’d landed all of the above. As long as we’re wishing, I’d like a pony.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed that Denver couldn’t add at least one of those pieces. There’s no particular virtue in being shorthanded, and championship windows don’t usually stay open very long.

But this group has already accomplished an awful lot together. They’ve won a division, reached a conference championship, and built a remarkable record of finding ways to succeed when the situation looks bleak. They’ve also got a young quarterback who is still learning, a defense capable of changing games in a single snap, and a coach who has already demonstrated that his confidence in this group wasn’t misplaced.

They got better as last season went along as well. Growth isn’t always linear. And this isn’t a team desperately searching for an identity. They’ve already found one. Maybe that’s what makes this whole failed trade deadline a little easier to swallow. The Broncos didn’t need a new cast of characters to become contenders. They already were contenders. And so they still are.

I’d love to see Denver start winning a few games by 20 points. I’d love to spend a fourth quarter with my feet up, enjoying a comfortable lead instead of wondering whether the next snap is going to send me looking for the blood pressure cuff. I’d love to know that the offense is going to find the same rhythm in the first quarter that it so often discovers in the fourth. I’D STILL LOVE THAT PONY.

But mostly, I’d love to see this group finish what it came so achingly close to finishing last season.

I don’t know if they’re good enough to do that. The numbers offer some legitimate reasons to doubt it, and the rest of the AFC isn’t going to politely step aside because Denver has become exceptionally good at winning ugly.

There’s something awfully appealing about the thought of these particular Broncos, the ones who have fought and scratched and survived together, being the ones who finally get to hoist that Lombardi Trophy. They’ve surely earned the chance to find out. And now, they’ve got little choice but the way they were already headed.

So, Coach Payton, it looks like you’re going to have to dance with the ones who brung ya. Ugly or no, just keep on dancing and hanging up those W’s.

After everything the Broncos have already done together, I kind of like their chances. Does anyone happen to know a cardiologist who might like to watch the games with me? Possibly one with a pony?