ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Speechless. Disbelief.
After the Denver Broncos fell to the Las Vegas Raiders in Week 16, which sent their playoff hopes crashing below one percent, Melvin Gordon couldn’t believe he and the Broncos were in the position they were in.
Again.
Another year of not making the playoffs.
“It’s tough, I’m not going to lie to you,” the veteran running back said, opening up on Monday, a day after Denver’s playoff chances officially ended.
“A couple of my years with the Chargers, we had some really talented teams. This team was probably just across the board,” Gordon tapered off before switching gears, hinting at the 2021 Broncos being the most talented team he’s been on.
In 2018, the only year Gordon has made the playoffs, the Chargers went 12-4 behind a top-10 offense and top-10 defense. Melvin wasn’t afraid to put the 2021 Broncos in that same conversation in terms of talent.
“It’s such a well-built team. Like it’s a Super Bowl team, you know,” Gordon said, putting an extremely high bar on Denver’s talent level. “You just sit back and you just get so frustrated because we’re just so much better than what our record shows. And we know that. We showed glimpses of just amazingness sometimes. And to not consistently put that out there, it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating as a player. It’s frustrating as coaches, as an organization, it’s tough man. We’re such a good football team. I mean so talented across the board. It is ridiculous. And for us to be sitting here and not having a chance at the playoffs, is just, all that work you put in the offseason, it’s tough to say the least.”
After Denver blew the doors off the Detroit Lions in Week 14, the Broncos had all of their goals sitting in front of them at 7-6. A three-game losing streak ensued, causing the Broncos to not only miss out on the playoffs for a sixth-straight year, but guarantee their fifth-straight losing season.
“I was just really frustrated the last game, I’m not going to lie,” Gordon continued. “After the Raiders game I was just so mad just cause I’m just thinking about—from the dline, to the secondary, from the receivers, tight ends, the lineman we have—young, but just lot of moxie—running backs, I mean, even the ones, the twos, the threes, even the guys that don’t get as much love—the linebackers—I mean, it was just so frustrating.”
Over a 11 minute Zoom press conference, the 28-year old was lost for words and searching for answer multiple times as he couldn’t wrap his head around how this team was 7-9 entering the final week of the season.
How? What went wrong? These were the questions Melvin was trying to wrap his head around.
“If I knew the solution, we would have the problem fixed. So I can’t really say what the problem is,” Gordon stated. “We just got to go out there and make our plays. We just haven’t been making enough plays… We got to be better. Hands down. We’re too talented. Especially in the month of November, we made too many mistakes as a ball club to put ourselves in a position to win. Just too many mistakes honestly that you can’t make.”
If talent isn’t the issue, then what is it? The first thing that comes to mind is coaching.
But Gordon didn’t point the finger at his coaching staff that is currently on a scorching hot seat.
“If Coach [Pat] Shurmur calls a play that’s bad, it’s our job to make it good. If he calls a good plays, it’s our job to make it great,” Gordon stated, not blaming the coaching staff. “Not to put it on us, but players got to make some more plays at the end of the day. We make the offense go. We just did’t make enough plays and we just played too sloppy I think in the back half to be the team that we wanted to be and those mistakes kind of cost us.”
“We just got to make our plays, man. We haven’t made enough of them,” he continued. “We haven’t really been converting on third downs. We struggled with that a little bit. We shouldn’t. We have too much talent. We have to catch the ball whether it’s a bad throw, you have to make it a great throw, you have to make it a great play.”
Forget the Super Bowl. Forget the division title. Forget the Playoffs. Forget a winning record.
For a second-straight season, despite the presumed talent level—which Gordon classified as “Super Bowl” talent—in Denver, the Broncos will finish last in the AFC West.
