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The original was posted on /r/nfl by /u/BlueHighwindz on 2026-03-22 17:25:48+00:00.
32 Teams/32 Days, Denver Broncos
Division: AFC West (1st)
Record: 14-3 (5-1 division)
Playoffs: Oh, yes (W vs Bills in Divisional , L vs Patriots in Championship)
Pro Bowlers: Zach Allen (DT), Garett Bolles (T), and Quinn Meinerz (G), Pat Surtain II (CB), Nik Bonitto (OLB), and Courtland Sutton (WR).
Introduction: Or Why Have the Broncos in Lieu of a Personality
This is my first year doing one of these 32/32s, and I don’t think I could have gotten a better subject.
The '25/'26 Denver Broncos had one of the most exciting, unlikely, and wonderful seasons of football that I can remember as a fan of this team. In the future, people might remember only an ankle injury, followed by a stupid 4th and 1 end zone decision, followed by a white-out blizzard. Don’t let that overshadow the narrative. The ending sucked, but that’s sports, man. This season was a great journey to go on. The cliché is that journeys are not about the destination. 31 teams every year end in misfortune one way or another. Some teams are miserable and tragic the whole way through (you know who you were ). Some teams feel special from August to January, and arguably even into February.
These Broncos felt special. I’m going to miss this Broncos Team specifically. For better or worse, it seems like the '26/‘27 roster will be much of the same, even considering a trade this week that means I have to revise this draft yet again. But if you tell me I have to watch these same Broncos again, then I’m damn excited as a fan. Last season’s Broncos were never boring, their victories were never assured, they were a work in a progress that found ways to win. They had the number one seed locked up through December and I didn’t know if they were good yet. This was a team that was impossible to define from beginning to end, the Haters had plenty of ammunition to doubt us, and despite good facts, figures, and even logic, the Haters (nearly) always came up short.
And even then, we have to put an asterisk on the point because we still don’t know how far these Broncos could have gone. How many teams end their season on such an air of mystery? Is this a Super Bowl team that was robbed, or an over-achieving gang of scrubs that got lucky on Mahomes’ gap year? The fact I’m not still not 100% sure is what makes this team so cool to follow. I might be slightly disappointed next year when we’ll finally have to get a definitive answer. What will I have to root for if Bo Nix wins a Super Bowl? It will send me into an existential crisis.
I saw this team play in person three times: one surprisingly dull game, one surprisingly amazing game, and one predictably tragic game. I regret none of those tickets or adventures. If you just wanted a team that could put up an interesting and fun football narrative every week, there were few teams last season that were more exciting than the '25/'26 Broncos. They usually never won a game the same way twice. This team ended its season having lost one testicle, shed off its Wilson debts, but gaining a good argument for being the actual best team in its conference.
And let’s get the important thing out of the way before I rewind the clock: yes, it was 100% an interception, I have no idea how that was even in dispute.
Part 1 – Winter 2025: The End of the Carousel?
It’s funny being on the Bronco subreddit this month. People are panicking that the lack of free agent signings means we are “doomed” to a 10-7 record next season. Go back 15 months, these same fans are over the moon for a 10-7 team.
The '24/'25 Denver Broncos entered last January doing something they had not done in almost a decade: making the post-season. You could put a dozen qualifiers on that post-season ticket. They were the 7th seed which arguably should not exist at all, we were only there thanks to the Chiefs resting their starters in Week 18, and maybe the scrappy Bengals team who had beaten us were robbed of a post-season berth. Worse, the playoffs did not go well. The Broncos were booted out of the Dance in less than half a game by the Bills, who proved that Denver, mid-reconstruction by head coach Sean Payton in his second year, were not ready for prime time. Our rookie QB Bo Nix, a questionable 12th pick in the draft, largely considered the runt of the litter by many experts, put up one incredible touchdown throw to Troy Franklin, and then that was that. Our season was over with 57 minutes on the clock.
The Broncos were still the team they had been for far too many seasons: a dominant defense that could hold up for a time but would gas out, because an incomplete offense could not hold up its end of the bargain. Maybe it was all just an aberration, a rookie QB getting lucky, whose peak we had already witnessed. Certainly not unheard of. Broncos fans were just happy to be there. But how long does that last?
Lots of teams are little mirages who have one solid season and then revert right back into irrelevancy. The Broncos were coming off a decade of terrible QB play, a Carousel of nightmares whose names will haunt me for the rest of my life: Siemian, Osweiler, Lynch, Keenam, Flacco, Lock, Bridgewater, and of course… him. Russell Wilson had been gone one year but his legacy lingered as a nasty reminder of the biggest mistake the Broncos had made in decades, perhaps franchise history, and whose draft capital would help grant Seattle a Super Bowl win just a few weeks ago. Even into '25/'26, we’d be paying thirty million dollars of cap hit for… nothing. Head coach Sean Payton had brought a level of stability and ambition to the Broncos that the other Carousel of Losers at coaching could not. However, this was this still the AFC, packed wall-to-wall with mighty QB talent, and this was still the AFC West, with the evil empire known as the Kansas City Chiefs waiting for us twice a season. The Chiefs, let’s remember, were going to the Super Bowl in February 2025 – to lose, in hysterical fashion as some other unworthy undeserving Super Bowl teams have since – the Broncos were going home. The smart money was to bet that the Chiefs would be back in the playoffs in '26 as they always were, and to think the Broncos were just part of the meaningless statistical noise that sometimes sneaks into the Dance.
Unless say, the Broncos were going to massively improve in some parts of the game, or the Chiefs would have an unbelievable nightmarish season, or several other major powers in the AFC would collapse. Unless that very unlikely scenario were to pass, there was no promise the Broncos were going back to the post-season. Certainly very few people would dream of a 14-3 season with a Super Bowl appearance being a mere 3 points away.
Part 2 – The Off-Season: I Think I’ve Heard This Story Before
Legitimately I struggled writing this 32/32 to figure out why the Broncos actually did improve in '25’26. I saw this season, I saw every game, I traveled thousands of air miles to see games in person, and I’m not sure I’ve figured it out.
I don’t think we were victorious in the off-season, at least.
Let’s review basically everything we did. George Paton is a GM who has suffered a lot of grief for his Russell Wilson trade, but otherwise has been a very strong drafter of talent. His greatest weakness is free agents, they almost never work out, which might be why we were quiet on that front recently. And his big trades have been Titanic-level disasters (but that won’t be the case for Jaylen Waddle! We will not hear otherwise! But that’s for next year’s 32/32, assuming you let me do this again).
Last off-season, the major players we lost were flash-in-the-pan RB Audric Estime, Quinn Bailey (OT), Devaughn Vele (WR), Javonte Williams (RB), Riley Dixon (P), Lil’Jordan Humphrey (WR), and who could forget some team’s future Super Bowl winning reclamation project Zack Wilson (QB)? You could have green eyes about Javonte, who found his groove again in Jerryworld, but otherwise, these were all replaceable losses. The actually worst missing pieces might have been linebackers Cody Barton and Zach Cunningham.
Lil’Hump ended up right back here mid-season after a failed stint in New York. So don’t miss him for too long.
Paton is good at the draft, but 2025 was not his masterpiece by any means, or if it will be, that’s going to be a future narrative. Writing in March 2026, it seems like the Broncos did not massively over-achieve in this Draft. A year later we can see these picks are at best B-tier, productive pieces, but certainly not superstars, not yet.
- 1.20, Jahdae Barron – CB: A borderline miss, at least for the draft value. Ja’Quan McMillian ended up taking the job he was supposed to have in a lot of ways. You could be a huge fan of the Broncos and not know Barron’s name. Still played every game last season. He’s going to compete with CB Riley Moss for a bigger spot this off-season, and last season he was there to help fill in when Patrick Surtain II got injured even without much distinction, and he did nab one of Dak’s balls for his lone INT and big season highlight.
- *2.60, RJ Harvey – RB…
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