72 wins, five consecutive playoff berths, five consecutive division titles, two AFC titles, one world title. The golden age of Denver Broncos football has come, and as of Sunday night in Kansas City, the golden age of Denver Broncos football has left.
In a sense, it went out the same way it came in, behind a horrible offense, just like the one Tim Tebow led in 2011 when the Broncos’ division title streak began. In the most crucial three-game stretch of the season, the offense mustered a total of two touchdowns—one on a 39-yard drive in Tennessee and one on a six-yard drive on Sunday in Kansas City. Even at Tim Tebow’s worst, his offense never had such a stretch of ineptitude.
All offseason, Broncos fans and believers claimed that Denver had a new way to get it done in the NFL, that offense didn’t matter with a defense like the one John Elway—the orchestrator of this golden age and the one before it—had constructed. “Detractors” warned that no great defense had ever repeated as champions and that the string of breaks received by the 2015 Broncos was not a sustainable formula for success. Those detractors, if they survived the vitriol, were officially proven right on Sunday as Denver was eliminated from playoff contention.
“Last year was kind of like the same,” cornerback Chris Harris Jr. said after Sunday’s loss. “I mean, we won those tight games, we had close games we pulled out, this year we lost those tight games. That was the difference.”
With a Lombardi in the case and rings on their fingers, all achieved behind a struggling offense, the Broncos’ brass believed they had uncovered a new formula in the NFL. They constructed an unbalanced squad built on the second-highest paid defense in the league and the fourth-lowest paid offense in the league.
It failed them. The front office discovered that good pitching beats good hitting, but failed to realize that even Cy Young himself needed run support.
Blame it on the idea of starting a second-year, seventh-round quarterback, blame it on unwarranted faith towards over-valued draft picks on the offensive line or unwarranted faith in over-valued free agent pickups on the offensive line. Blame it on the failure to realize that their $100 million receiver duo isn’t worth half that much in an offense that can’t get them the ball downfield or that a “run-focused” offense that can’t run the ball might struggle to put up points.
Wherever you personally like to place the blame to help you go to sleep, it’s likely you’ll agree that the Broncos failed to properly address last season’s offensive issues, and that eventually proved to be their undoing in 2016. 17 teams scored more points in Week 16 than the Broncos scored in weeks 14, 15 and 16 combined, no NFL team scored fewer points—not even the Browns—than the Broncos did in that three-week stretch and during that crucial time, the Broncos lead their opponents for exactly zero minutes and zero seconds.
At one point, early in the offseason—before Manning retired or Osweiler bolted—a local journalist (it was me) joked that the Broncos should try and start somebody like Charlie Whitehurst at quarterback just to prove a point. In the end, they basically did just that, but the point proved unprovable. In the end, what was proved is that the 2015 Broncos were a team of destiny, and as soon as everything stopped going their way, the wheels came off.
The Broncos set out to show that you could give a linebacker your “quarterback money,” that you could cut the only veteran QB on the roster, that you didn’t need an experienced backup in your running back corps, that a failure of an offensive line could be patched rather than overhauled. The Broncos set out to show there was a new way of doing things in the NFL and it came back to bite them right where it counts.
In a sense, 2016 was a bit of an experiment for the Orange & Blue, but in the science fair that is the National Football League they got a big fat ‘F.’ A failure like that doesn’t fly in Denver, though, so now the scientists that work in the corner offices at the UC Health Training Center are faced with the task of creating a new formula, and they’ll need to do it fast.
When the dust settles, John Elway and the boys will be given a pass for this 2016 but a Super Bowl trophy doesn’t quite buy the same time it used to, such is evidenced by fans already calling for Gary Kubiak’s head. The fact of it is Gary Kubiak can coach, and this team has a core of players that can lead them back to the promised land, but this season should serve as a notice that the Broncos have to start doing a bit of adapting to the league, rather than thinking the league needs to adapt to them.
