Much of this Denver Broncos season has been defined by “halves.” A 7-1 first half. A 5-3 second half. Lots of scoring in some halves. No scoring in others. The team has, at times, looked very different from one half to the other. The same was somewhat true for running back C.J. Anderson, who told Eric Goodman of Mile High Sports AM 1340 that this season was a humbling one for him, especially because of his first half.

Anderson, had an explosive second half to the 2014 season, rushing for nearly 850 yards from Week 8 through the team’s Divisional round playoff loss. He expected 2015 to be more of the same.

“I’ve been humbled this season,” Anderson told Goodman in an interview on Wednesday, “and that’s important.”

The turning point this season was the bye week. Anderson returned from the bye for a date with the Green Bay Packers having compiled just 180 yards on 67 attempts. His highest single game effort was for 43 yards against Minnesota. He had not found the end zone through six games and was losing carries to Ronnie Hillman.

Anderson struggled with a foot injury during the early part of the season, but as he told Goodman, the biggest issue was not his health.

“Of course that lingers on,” he said, “but there were other things that were going on during the season that personally I wasn’t doing. But I changed that after the bye week.”

What specifically was missing, according to the 2014 Pro Bowler?

“Just running hard, making people miss when I know I can make people miss. Just being decisive on things.”

Anderson has certainly been more decisive since. His 101 yards against Green Bay started a resurgence that has him averaging 6.35 yards per attempt since the bye. He’s found the end zone five times, including a 48-yard, walkoff touchdown in overtime against the Patriots and a critical 38-yard fourth-quarter touchdown run against the Bengals in Week 16.

What changed for Anderson during that bye week?

“[I] just looked in the mirror and said ‘Hey, this is what we’re going to do.’ And that’s what I did,” he says.

Anderson says has learned from the experience.

“You just have to go out and work and get it every day,” he says. “I’m not saying I wasn’t doing that in the beginning of the season… there was just a lot of things that made it seem like it was going to be easy, and that’s just not the truth.”

Things certainly won’t get any easier for the Broncos throughout the rest of the season. Now into the playoffs, Denver’s competition will only get tougher week-by-week. That begins this Sunday in a rematch with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

If ever there was a game that was defined by two “halves” this year, it was the Dec. 20 matchup that saw Denver fail to score an offensive point in the second half and blow a 14-point halftime lead to lose 34-27 at Heinz Field.

Goodman asked Anderson which half of tape the team looked at in devising this week’s game plan.

“You look at both,” Anderson said. “There were some good things we did in the first half, of course didn’t do some things we wanted to do in the second half … you look back at both halves, you can learn from both halves.”

Anderson certainly has learned from what he deems the two halves of his season. If the Broncos can follow his example and learn from the two halves of the last Pittsburgh game, they’ll reverse the result from last time around and be moving on to the AFC Championship Game.

Listen to the full conversation with C.J. Anderson, plus Eric Goodman and Les Shapiro’s take, in the podcast below…

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