The Denver Broncos are quite familiar with their current situation

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. – If you’re into the patterns of history, last night’s Denver Broncos loss to the San Diego Chargers was actually a predictable outcome. Since Gary Kubiak took over, bad things have come in twos.

Last season the Broncos had two two-game skids. After dropping their first game of the season to the Colts, they immediately turned around and got shellacked by the Chiefs. Everyone in Broncos Country panicked, except, of course, the Broncos themselves. Denver then strung three wins together before dropping two more to the Raiders and Steelers, once again sparking a bit a panic.

After those two losses, though, the Broncos put together a run that will not be forgotten anytime soon. Two wins to finish the regular season and clinch the No. 1 seed in the playoffs and, of course, three wins in the postseason to hoist the Lombardi trophy in Santa Clara.

They even followed that up with four more wins to start 2016. In total, a nine-game winning streak, with a World Championship sandwiched in the middle.

So as the team licked their wounds in the raggedy San Diego visitors locker room on Thursday night, interim head coach Joe DeCamillis had a simple message.

“We’ve been in this situation before, we have to make sure that our resilience and our team stays together,” he said. “We lost two games in a row twice last year, and it turned out pretty good.

“I think our guys have really good perspective,” DeCamillis told media on Monday. “They’re prideful, they want to come back and show they can do a better job, just like us coaches do.”

Luckily for the Broncos, at a time where they could use some reflection, the will get 11 days to do just that. 11 days to look themselves in the mirror and figure out what went wrong the last two weeks. Even a few days to get away from football, as the team is not required to be back at the facility until Monday.

“We’re really at the halfway point when you look at it with preseason and all that stuff, so it’s a great part of the schedule for us to get some rest, both players and coaches,” DeCamillis explained. “We need the rest, and I think when we come back in on Monday, everybody is going to be refreshed. We have a group of pros that are going to come back and go to work.”

When they come back, the team will use that refreshment as a chance to start fast when they get back into the building, something they are looking to do when they get out on the field, too.

The Broncos currently have the worst first-quarter point differential in the NFL. The vaunted defense has given up more points on opening drives than any other ‘D’ in the league. In fact, the 31 points they’ve given up on opening drives in just six games has already surpassed the 24 points they gave up all of last season on the first drive of the game.

“They made some plays at the start, they kept the drive going, they did some good things,” DeCamillis said of this particular slow start. “They got some matchups early on in the game, but then those matchups kind of went away defensively. I think they got 90 yards on that first drive and then 90 yards after. When you hold [Phillip Rivers] to 180 yards that’s a pretty good day but unfortunately, it all started at the start of the game. We’re going to have to keep addressing that and find out wat’s causing the slow starts for us.”

It has reached the point where the coaching staff has even considered no longer deferring to the second half when they win the coin toss, but they aren’t quite ready to make that change, yet.

“I still think, with our defense, I’m going to put my money on them stopping [the offense] every time,” DeCamillis said.

So they’ll go back to the drawing board with things to fix, things to chance and questions to be answered. All the while knowing what they are capable of and knowing that—while under Kubiak—they’ve never lost a game without losing a second one but they’ve also never lost a third.

NOTABLE

DeCamillis said that Russell Okung and Cody Latimer have both entered the NFL concussion protocol and that while Emmanuel Sanders missed the end of the game with a hip injury, “He looks like he’s going to be okay.”