Opinion: The Denver Broncos And The Power Of Belief
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Any given Sunday.
It’s one of the most famous sayings in a sport chock-full of famous euphemisms. It’s a phrase that exemplifies the fickle nature of this game, and how nothing is guaranteed on the gridiron. Any team, at any time, can do anything on any given Sunday.
No team has demonstrated that mantra quite like the 2023 Denver Broncos. A month ago, they sat dead in the water at 1-5. Now, riding a three game winning streak, they sit one game below .500 and have a legitimate path to the playoffs in a madhouse AFC. The credit for Denver’s remarkable turnaround has to be split a million ways: Vance Joseph’s scheming has been significantly better, every player on defense has raised their level of play, Sean Payton has put his players in better positions to win, and so forth. It’s hard to put into words just how crazy it is that we’re now discussing a team that was this bad a few weeks ago as a sneaky postseason squad.But the Broncos are not satisfied with being a “potential” playoff team. This team wants to make a run.
To do so will be no easy feat. The Broncos are through the worst part of their schedule, but they will still be tested almost every week from here on out. It starts with a Sunday night date against the only team in the league that might be hotter than the Broncos: The Vikings. After that are games against the young, talented Houston Texans, as well as the Browns and their vaunted defense. Denver also has games against the Lions, Chargers, raiders and Patriots on tap. The Broncos probably don’t have to win all those games to get into the postseason, but they do have to win the vast majority of them to have a chance. That will be easier said than done, especially for a team that still has kinks to work out with its passing game and is very dependent on turnovers.
But the Denver Broncos have done a lot of seemingly impossible things over the last month. They’ve taken a defense that gave up 70 points and turned it into a respectable unit. They took an offense that looked discombobulated and crafted it into an efficient group. They went from a team that was playing undisciplined football to a team that makes very few fundamental mistakes. Whenever these Broncos have been hit the hardest, they’ve always managed to pick themselves off the mat and hit back. They absolutely have their weaknesses. They wouldn’t have been 1-5 if they didn’t. But these Broncos have a degree of toughness and resilience that I’m not sure I’ve seen from a football team. It makes them easy to root for, and even easier to believe in. I don’t know how Denver’s 2023 season ends; I don’t know if it ends in one of the most stunning playoff runs in recent memory, or if it ends with a disappointing regression to the mean. What I do know is that I’ll always remember this team for how much they believed in each other, and how much they believed in themselves- even when no one else did.
