A message to Von Miller and Broncos Country: Step back from the ledge, my friends

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Chances are, this will still be the Month of Good Feelings for the Broncos.

Memories of the Slaughter in the Snow will fade. The Broncos will likely be favored against the Detroit Lions and could be favored over the Oakland Raiders in the games that bracket Christmas.

For a team playing out the string for a third consecutive year, it is a long December — as long as it gets, with five games this month. Two more wins would offer hope that this next year would be better than the last.

However, in a 23-3 loss Sunday, the Chiefs dealt the Broncos a cold reminder of how far they have to go.

Sure, long-term history still belongs to the Broncos. They have as many Lombardi Trophies as the Chiefs have postseason wins at Arrowhead Stadium.

But this moment, and all of the other recent moments, belong to Kansas City.

It’s excruciating for Von Miller and other players who created, tasted and devoured Denver dominance in the series that produced every AFC West champion in the 2010s. Miller was a part of seven consecutive wins over the Chiefs — and, including a rookie-season split, a run of eight wins in nine games.

Now he’s endured nine consecutive losses. Most of them haven’t been close; five were decided by double digits, including Sunday. And when adding in the 30-6 loss in Denver in Week 7, the Broncos’ minus-44-point deficit in two games to the Chiefs is their worst in a single season to them in 51 years.

This is also their longest losing streak to any division rival since the Raiders defeated the Broncos 14 consecutive times from 1965-71.

“It’s hard. I really don’t even know what to say. I don’t know how we got to this point,” Miller said.

Well, we’ve chewed up a lot of airtime and bandwidth detailing how the Broncos reached a state in which a two-game winning streak to finish 7-9 would actually represent improvement. The sort of season that Broncos fans used to mock could now be a step in the right direction.

But Miller wasn’t seeing that. Not yet.

“I don’t know why we went in like this. I really don’t know what to say. It’s tough,” he lamented. “It’s tough being where we’re at. It’s tough being 30 years old and going out there with whatever issues I’m dealing with and still coming up so short. It’s tough playing nine years with Chris Harris and it’s tough dealing with these last couple of ones, especially with the type of standard that we had when we came into the league.

“We went to the playoffs five [years] straight. And I know I’m getting ahead of myself, and I’m talking about more than just the game, but this is tough.”

If one uses the Kübler-Ross model detailing the five stages of grief, Miller would appear to be in stage 4: depression. He’s completed or otherwise skipped denial, anger and bargaining.

Next is acceptance.

“We’ve tried everything — on and off the football field. We’ve tried all different coaches,” Miller said. “We’ve tried everything. I really don’t know what’s going on. If I did, I would be the first to execute whatever plan it is to get everything better, but I’m at a loss for words.”

But the truth is that Broncos haven’t tried everything.

Yes, they’re on their third head coach, fourth offensive coordinator, third defensive coordinator and seventh quarterback since Super Bowl 50. And they’ve turned over the entire offensive line and complement of tight ends and wide receivers on the 53-man roster since then.

But they haven’t tried sticking with a promising early-round quarterback from the draft.

Not until now.

They tried to wring something out of Trevor Siemian — and given his seventh-round pedigree and limited ceiling, what the Broncos got from him wasn’t bad. In fact, if Bennie Fowler goes down at the 2-yard line in November 2016 instead of waltzing into the end zone, the Chiefs likely do not drive down to a game-tying touchdown and two-point conversion, since they were out of timeouts and already trailed by one point.

But Siemian wasn’t a rookie when he got a shot.

And then came the parade of sadness: Paxton Lynch, Brock Osweiler, Case Keenum, Joe Flacco, Brandon Allen. From has-beens to false promises to never-will-bes to players suited to be career backups.

None of them had as much promise as Drew Lock.

This is the part of “everything” that the Broncos are now only beginning to try.

Next week, Lock is expected to make his fourth start. No Broncos rookie quarterback has made that many starts since Jay Cutler in 2006. That game against Detroit will come after he experienced true on-field adversity for the first time as a pro.

Sunday, Lock’s pass protection collapsed. Kansas City’s defenders sent the product of nearby Lee’s Summit, Mo. tumbling into the snow 10 times, including two for sacks. His receiving targets struggled; even Noah Fant, who had another solid day and turned in the Broncos’ longest play with a 43-yard catch-and-run, noted the difficulty of tracking a football in the air through the heavy snow. Lock’s third-quarter end-zone interception was a teachable moment; as Lock noted, he tried to “force something to happen.” It’s the sort of gamble that you take when you’re down 20 points against a team that has had you in a four-year headlock.

But these days happen with every young quarterback. Now we get to learn how Lock responds after being smacked in the mouth and shoved into the snow.

The resilience shown by Lock during four seasons at the University of Missouri shows that he might be up to the task.

Still, this is the NFL. And in that realm, Miller seemed broken by the defeats, the darkness, the despair, the distance that still exists between the Chiefs and Broncos, which matches the physical mileage between the two home cities.

“It deflates my soul,” he said.

Yet he offered those sentiments at a curious moment. If he said that late last season, or during the 0-4 start, it would make sense. But Sunday, even through the heavy snow, you didn’t need binoculars to see a path out of the gloom.

The Broncos are a .500 team since their 0-4 start. Lock is far from perfect, but he has shown flashes. Their front seven, shattered by injuries to the point that they had to pluck players off the street and practice squad, will get healthier and stouter for 2020, starting with the return of Bradley Chubb. They will have five of the first 100 draft picks and upwards of $80 million in salary-cap space.

There’s hope.

December can still be a dawn. Even if it’s hard to see through the falling snow.

Step back from the ledge, Von. There’s a long way to go, yes. But for the first time in the “World of Suck” era, the Broncos are not heading backwards.

The Chiefs are far away now. But the Broncos have the resources, if properly used, to close the gap fast.