Latest loss appears to have shifted Broncos' goals

ENGLEWOOD, Colo — Less than one week ago turkeys were being stuffed, families and friends were gathering, Black Friday deals were just around the corner and the Denver Broncos almost entirely controlled their own destiny, all the way to the No. 1 seed in the AFC.

Now, just a weekend later, Christmas season is in full swing, winter weather is finally here, and the Broncos’ outlook has completely shifted after a 30-27 overtime heartbreaking loss to the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday night. Suddenly, a division title and a No. 1 seed aren’t as in the crosshairs as they once were.

“We just got to get in the playoffs,” cornerback Chris Harris Jr. said. “I feel like if we get in the playoffs, we can be scary for anybody and that’s the main goal right now.”

As it currently stands, Denver is on the outside looking in. The Broncos (7-4) are tied for the sixth and final playoff spot with the Miami Dolphins (7-4), but Miami’s 5-3 conference record gives them the tiebreaker over Denver’s 4-3 conference record.

“Right now we have to win out to get the AFC West and have a little help from those guys,” Harris said. “Right now we just have to win every game. We’ve already been in a do or die mode. So we need to stay in the same mode and hopefully get a win.”

Although making the playoffs is very much still in the cards for Denver, the division is slowly slipping away as the Oakland Raiders (9-2) have a two-game lead on them as well as the tiebreaker.

“It has been gut check time, it’s been do or die for us for a couple of weeks with the Raiders balling like they are,” Harris said. “We know we can’t afford to lose no games to make the playoffs.”

Winning every game will be no easy feat. Four of the final five games are against potential playoff teams: the Tennessee Titans, New England Patriots, Kansas City and Oakland.

If the Broncos make the playoffs, it would almost certainly mean that they won a handful of the last five games, if not all of them, which would bode well for them once the playoffs rolled around.

“We’ve beat a lot of teams that are in the playoffs, so we know that if we get in we have a great chance too,” Harris said.

However, as the Broncos would say, the most important game is the next one on the schedule

“These last five are all must wins, so we got to be ready for Jacksonville,” safety Darian Stewart said.

Fortunately for the Broncos, they start their final ‘must win’ stretch this Sunday against by far their weakest opponent, the 2-9 Jacksonville Jaguars.

As of right now, the most realistic road for the Broncos to make the playoffs would come as one of the two wild-card teams, which would mean playing the entire playoffs on the road. If it came down to that, running back, Kapri Bibbs believes the Broncos have the right team to accomplish such a difficult feat.

“We are all champions,” he said. “If we have to go on a playoff run and play every game on the road to win a Super Bowl we can do that. That isn’t against any other team, but we just believe in ourselves like that, we don’t care what the circumstances are, it’s one goal at the end of the day.”

Whatever the road will end up being once the playoffs arrive, it’s clear that the Broncos will need to take care of business in the final five games of the regular season.

“We definitely didn’t win a war [on Sunday against the Chiefs],” Bibbs said. “We might have lost a battle, but we got those guys again, we got Oakland again, and we got a lot of guys again that we can definitely change the tide of this whole thing.”

The narrative on the Broncos future has certainly changed in less than one week, but who’s to say that won’t happen again after this coming weekend.