Of the 32 franchises in the NFL, 19 have been crowned Super Bowl champions.
Of those 19 franchises, only seven, including the Denver Broncos, have completed the difficult task of winning back-to-back Super Bowls. Denver was the last team to do it, nearly 20 years ago, in 1997 and ’98.
The difficulty of going back-to-back goes without saying. There is a reason that only seven franchises have done it, and only the Pittsburgh Steelers have done it twice.
Failing to repeat can boil down to a number of things. Wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders wasn’t shy in sharing that the infamous ‘Super Bowl hangover’ might have been more literal than people may have known.
“I never thought that was a real thing,” linebacker Brandon Marshall said of a Super Bowl lull. “You would see teams that win a Super Bowl and then next year didn’t make the playoffs. I never thought that it would happen to us because of who we have on our team.”
Following Thursday’s OTA practice, Marshall shed some light on why he believed the Broncos, and himself, took a step back in 2016.
“I wouldn’t blame it on one specific thing,” Marshall said. “I think there were some distractions and maybe a Super Bowl lull. At the end of the day, nobody cares about that. All they care about is, did you make plays or not? And I didn’t. I want to reverse that this year.”
Due to a lingering hamstring injury, Marshall played in only 11 games in 2016, totaling 52 tackles, a sharp drop off from two consecutive seasons in which he amassed over 100 tackles and forced two fumbles in each.
This season, though, Marshall is doing al he can to make sure there isn’t a repeat of 2016.
“Just being out there and being able to execute and getting my feet and legs up under me, feels good,” Marshall said. “I did a lot of hard training this offseason and came back and continued that. I feel like I’m playing really well right now.”
While the Broncos dealt with their fair share of injuries in 2016, so did every other team in the NFL. Marshall wasn’t afraid to admit that the Broncos’ 9-7 record could have been a result of a lack of motivation.
“One of my old trainers put it to me like this, ‘When you reach all of your goals, or when you have something that you work for your whole like and you reach it, naturally, you take a deep breath,'” Marshall said. “Even though you reached that, we have to set new goals and new aspirations and work towards that. Once you reach those old goals, I guess those goals won’t do it for you anymore.”
Having just reached the mountain top, it’s easy to stop and enjoy the fruits of your labor. It could be that the Broncos’ may have enjoyed their accomplishments a little too much, and that factored into the season they had. If the motivation wasn’t there last year, it certainly is this year.
“We don’t want to be 9-7,” Marshall said. “That’s not us. We still believe that we’re the best team in the AFC West. So being in third place was not acceptable.”