Question: What’s worse than watching a Denver Broncos game?
Answer: (think it through; it’s an easy one)
A replay.
That’s right. SportCenter only plays the highlights. The lowlights? The mundane? The unwatchable? Those are tucked away in only the most obscure archives, stat lines and answers to trivia questions that only the nerdiest of sports dorks might know someday. If it’s boring, meaningless or downright bad, we see it once and that’s it.
Unless we’re talking about the Denver Broncos.
In that case, we get to watch them again and again and again. Just in case you haven’t had enough over the course of five seasons, it looks like we’ll be watching this act for another year, at least.
Like a kid knocking on the bedroom door way-too-early on Christmas morning, Adam Shefter woke up Broncos Country on Sunday morning with an equally annoying tweet. Before the sun had even peeked up and over the Eastern Plains of Colorado, it was known: Vic Fangio would be retained as the Broncos head coach.
Yawn.
Flash forward to 3:30 p.m. mountain standard time, and Fangio’s Broncos had yet to score. It was yet another half of nearly unconsumable football. By sunset, the Broncos had dropped another game, pushing their record to 5-10 on the season. Granted, as the Broncos have been known to do this season, things got interesting; the Broncos had a shot to win, but ultimately came up just short. It was known, well before yesterday, that the Broncos would be turning in their fourth losing season in a row, fifth without a playoff appearance. But a 16-19 loss to the Chargers – who entered the game with the same, uninspiring 5-9 record – felt like a fitting end to 2020. Just one more “z” tacked onto Zzzzzzzz.
Forget about it. The Broncos’ season mirrored the year that was. For all things, let’s close the book on 2020 and start fresh in 2021.
Only in Broncos Country, we’ll be starting “fresh” with all the same key parts and pieces.
Oh sure, there will be additions – key players who were injured should be back, like Courtland Sutton; a right tackle who won’t choose not to play due to the virus; and probably a top-10 draft pick who should, in theory, help a lot – but the big question marks in the season, the most critical components for any team, will be back again in 2021.
Ready for this replay?
Fangio is back. Drew Lock, presumably, will be the guy heading into next season. Pat Shurmur will be calling the plays for him.
It’s a team with a bad record led by an even worse offense. The defense is decent – not great, but not bad – but there’s certain to be at least some turnover on that side of the ball. The secondary should get healthier, but the return of both safeties isn’t a sure thing.
Meanwhile, the Chiefs will return Patrick Mahomes and the rest of the 2019 Super Bowl Champions, the Raiders appear to be headed in an upward trajectory after Jon Gruden’s third year at the helm, and the Chargers, who lack a contending defense, have Justin Herbert, the prize of this year’s rookie quarterback class.
There’s reason for optimism everywhere in the AFC West.
Except Denver, where we’ll be watching an instant replay.
That doesn’t mean the Broncos can’t get better. There are plenty of places for improvement. Lock shows signs – often, in fact. Fangio appears to have learned from some of his earlier time management blunders – his usage of timeout Sunday at least gave Lock and Co. a shot to win the game. And Shurmur, it’s almost as if he reads the papers or social media – it looked as if his entire gameplan was centered around getting talented receiver Jerry Jeudy the ball. Against the Chargers, Jeudy dropped seemingly everything – there’s no doubt he’ll be better in 2021.
There’s certainly an argument to made for continuity. In fact, that’s the one the Broncos are banking on. They’re also hoping that we are buying into the fact that continuity is the best bet in 2021. Unless there are bigtime changes on the horizon, there’s nothing really to market for next season, other than, “We’ll be back and we’ll be better.”
That very well could be the case. And by already making the decision that Fangio will return, it seems that’s precisely what the Broncos are telling us.
Here’s hoping they’re right. Here’s hoping there’s a twist to the replay we’re getting ready to watch in 2021.
“It’s all about how you respond, how you get back up,” Lock said after the game.
He was specifically referring to Jeudy, but the words are applicable to the quarterback, the coach and the team.
It sure looks like the gang’s all back. How they respond might be the only difference between now and then.