The 2022 season has been immensely painful for the Denver Broncos and Broncos Country, thanks to the team being an extreme letdown, relative to expectations.
How can we fix this mess and ensure the survival of the holiday spirit in the Mile High City? By handing out some magic gifts of course.
Here, we’ll take a look at three gifts we wish we could give the Broncos, in order to help them get out of this rut. What should we give them? Let’s take a look.
Gift No. 1: A Dre’Mont Jones extension
The first gift we’ll have Broncos Country open is a lucrative contract extension for Dre’Mont Jones.
Jones has been a force this season and has paired with D.J. Jones to create one of the fiercest interior defensive lines in the league. The homegrown Jones has tallied career-highs in sacks (6.5) and pressures (45), despite only playing 13 games this season, and is among the top 20 players, regardless of position, in total pass rush wins.
As a result, the former third-round pick is set to cash in in a major way this offseason, and in our reality, there’s a healthy chance he’s playing elsewhere in 2023.
He was very open about his delicate relationship with the Denver Broncos following the Bradley Chubb, expressing that he was in Denver “for now,” which is about as ominous a statement as he could make.
Therefore, squaring that situation away, getting Jones his well-deserved raise, and keeping him in Denver for the foreseeable future is the first gift we’ll hand out.
Gift No. 2: A full recovery from Javonte Williams
Arguably the most heart-wrenching of the Denver Broncos’ miserable 2022 campaign was Javonte Williams suffering a devastating knee injury in Week 4, against the Las Vegas Raiders.
On the play, Williams tore his ACL, LCL, and PLC, making it one of the more damaging knee injuries we’ve seen in recent NFL history.
According to Pro Football Focus’ injury analyst, Mario Pilato, a former NFL and college strength and conditioning coach, players return to play from multi-ligament knee injuries around two-thirds of the time, and they only return to pre-injury form 30% of the time.
Oh boy, multi-ligament knee injuries are devastating. Research shows RTP rate is 64% for NFL players, but return to preinjury levels is just 30% for those suffering MLKI. https://t.co/csXysvDdWg
— Mario Pilato (@mario_pilato) October 3, 2022
This is somehow made even more saddening upon considering Williams’ play style.
On top of being arguably the most fun player to watch on the Denver Broncos roster, Williams was a powerful, bruising runner, whose game was predicated on power and contact balance. Both of those strengths could be harder to rely on now following his injury. And, considering his ball-carrier vision was still a work in progress, he can’t fall back on more technical skills either.
To avoid a potentially depressing outcome, we’re gifting Broncos Country with a full recovery for Javonte Williams from his knee injury. He’ll be back to carrying entire packs of defenders before you know it.
Gift No. 3: A functional Denver Broncos offense
Around 538.8 million years ago, in Earth’s oceans, there was an explosion of life and genetic diversification, known as the Cambrian Explosion, that saw animals and plants become more and more proliferated throughout the globe.
From 2016-2022, the NFL has undergone a similar explosion and expansion with their offenses.
NFL offenses are more explosive, more dynamic, more creative, and more fun than they’ve ever been, and yet, during this period, the Denver Broncos have been stuck operating like a Cambrian volcano. Derelict and completely devoid of life. They’ve averaged just 19.0 points per game over that stretch, and only the New York Jets and Giants have been more pitiful.
It’s been painful for Broncos Country to sit idly by, watching the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles nuke their opponents on a weekly basis, as Denver is forced to hope and pray they can gut out a 10-9 nail-biting victory.
The addition of Russell Wilson was supposed to propel the Denver Broncos into modernity, and yet, it plunged them to new lows.
It’s not fair.
That’s why, for Broncos Country’s third and final gift, we’re giving them a functional offense for the 2023 season.
Now, we can’t promise elite offense, or even good offense, but we can promise that this offense won’t make you tear your hair out on a weekly basis, nor will it embarrass you, and that signifies quite a bit of growth for the Broncos.