Note from the editor: When we started Let’s Talk Broncos, it was on a Twitter Spaces. We would discuss and debate different topics related to the Denver Broncos, and include fans in those conversations, which was part of the reason we landed on the name, Let’s Talk Broncos. In an aim to keep that spirit alive, we’re going to be hosting the occasional op-ed, sourced from Broncos Country, via reader submission. We don’t necessarily agree or disagree with the fan viewpoints we will feature in this series. The goal is merely to put our finger on the pulse of what Broncos Country is feeling, not to police those feelings. Without further adieu, let’s get into this first op-ed, from ‘Cal M.’
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‘On Being Doomed, Or The Denver Broncos’
By Cal M.
There’s an unsettling resolve in the air around the Broncos right now. Where there could be familiar movement there is near stillness.
Where there should be preemptively quotable whirring and buzzing there are low hums if any sound at all. There ought to be panic. Something to assure us that this moment is deserving of panic. Comfort in the shared understanding of a problem, the problem. We chatter and prick and hyperbolize and wallow with each other in our various spaces over potential roadmaps and less charted paths but it all seems to come with a reservation towards an inevitability Broncos fans don’t quite have the language to engage with yet.
We’re here in the interim between free agency and the draft with maybe the most talent poor team in the league after years of apathy inducing failure in stillness and low hums and stupid serenity waiting for some indication from the team of how bad and for how long this is going to be. There are so many ways to lose and maybe we’ve exhausted enough of them to bias the odds in our favor. Wallowing is fun, though.
“He’s a grand, ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab; doesn’t speak much; but, when he does speak, then you may well listen. Mark ye, be forewarned; Ahab’s above the common; Ahab’s been in colleges, as well as ’mong the cannibals; been used to deeper wonders than the waves; fixed his fiery lance in mightier, stranger foes than whales. His lance! aye, the keenest and the surest that out of all our isle! Oh! he ain’t Captain Bildad; no, and he ain’t Captain Peleg; he’s Ahab, boy; and Ahab of old, thou knowest, was a crowned king!”
Moby Dick (1851), by Herman Melville
The Denver Broncos are a good team (doomed).
Historically good…(doomed)
Presently good…(doomed)
Good team. (doomed)
It feels there are a couple of ways to refer to the Denver Broncos as a “good team” right now. It’s a risk of flying-too-close-to-the-sun contrarianism, particularly when the contrary I’m trying to be is to a maybe more fringe strain of thought in the fandom. A dour strain of thought. A correct strain of thought. Though I have seen a lot more doomsayers around the outer edges of the narrow communities I’m active in. Generally, I am not a “good team” kind of guy in the best of times. Is this team good? No. Is this a good team?
Yes (doomed).
Maybe it’s less ‘doomed’, and more of a ‘low point’. The history of the Denver Broncos has plenty of low points, low periods, low entire-childhoods, and low US-occupations-of-Iraq, but that’s not how anyone considers a team. That’s not how anyone should consider a team. We live and die clutching to the team’s highest moments as if they were our own.
Why not?
I’m a relative newcomer to football fandom in general, only deciding to commit to watching the sport in 2011, and deciding on a team in 2012, while not being a toddler. My experiences with the legacies and culture have been strange and filled with many conflicting definitions of what is and is not good. If a team has a triumphant enough fragment of history for fans to wave around in their most my-best-friend-is-the-floor moments, they are good (and I would argue that even triumph is unnecessary if the delusion is fun enough).
Perhaps that’s a bit more broad a brush than this specific moment in time calls for but Broncos Country’s great moments and figures — The Franchise, The Drive, The Duke, The Helicopter, The Demaryius Thomas 80-yard OT playoff win, The Mile High Miracle (calling a defeat a miracle is a backhanded compliment in favor of the other team), The No Fly Zone – all are totems of story and meaning that even sustained failure has had a hard time erasing in our collective football culture, much less the tighter-knit community of Broncos fans. There’s no reason to believe this list couldn’t still be added to in a short enough timeline.
Not many teams can even claim a Super Bowl appearance in the last decade — the Denver Broncos have a Lombardi trophy in that span.
To my understanding, the Broncos have never really been a ‘large market’ team, at least, not compared to the legacy clubs with larger media access or fanbases of bandwagoners that span the nation. Nothing was handed to them by way of narrative, excessive prime-time showings, or billionaire-funded apologetics.
There’s a scrappiness to this legacy. A very real sense that the things they have were properly earned, even if the distance to those things now feels immense.
So, maybe nostalgia is enough. Maybe all instances of the terrible ‘now’ are the destinations we’re told to disregard for the remarkable and already-having-happened journey. Maybe a complimentary listing of experiences and adulations makes for an easy segue trap into a tonal pivot. Maybe isolated quotes ostensibly about strength and pedigree can be recontextualized by the subsequent line…
Are the Broncos a good team?
(doomed)
“And a very vile one. When that wicked king was slain, the dogs, did they not lick his blood?”
Moby Dick (1851), by Herman Melville
The Denver Broncos are doomed.
I say this with glee. I say this with malice. I say this knowing full well I have likely become more villain than relatable author, in which case I’ll assure you that there’s a non-zero chance I get what’s coming to me, whatever that is.
What is good about this team? Eight years of no playoff appearances, seven of no winning seasons, and coming off what is objectively the most funny worst trade in NFL history with Russell Wilson lasting only two years of a seven-year contract — five being from an extension, which, he never even saw an OTA of, and was presumably necessary for the trade to happen at all. The team now has to swallow $85 million over the next two years (gross).
Plus, he was Russell Wilson the whole time. In the wake of the Wilson release and the tethered cap woes, the Broncos cut fan-favorite, All-Pro safety Justin Simmons, traded starting wide receiver Jerry Jeudy to the Cleveland Browns for two Day 3 picks in this year’s NFL Draft, and nameable contributor Chris Manhertz is a Giant now. All while letting the “quality” backup QB market run dry and signing really only two presumptive starters in safety Brandon Jones and defensive tackle Malcolm Roach — upgrades in a very technical sense.
The 2024 draft has anywhere from two to five (gross) first-round QBs and, at the 12th overall pick, the Broncos are poised to grab maybe the fifth-best of them, gross, no parenthesis. Jarrett Stidham is the starting QB. By organizational dictate. Doome-
This is all just a one week snapshot of the Denver Broncos’ current situation. More? Could I say more doomed things about this team?
lol…lmao
The once-wunderkind-now-probable-sacrifice general manager George Paton can’t draft or scout with any consistency.
Three years in, and he has two noteworthy draft selections, one of which was a top-10 pick and barely contested as the best defensive player of the 2021 draft –Patrick Surtain II (though, he did good job with Meinerz, that’s just a good pick). The free agents have been mostly old and/or hurt and/or bad, with all due respect to K’Waun Williams and none of it to Alex Singleton.
Even morale has been an issue across these Elwayless years (gross). Nathaniel Hackett was the head coach (gross).
That ill-fated/conceived/planned/orchestrated/executed/prolonged/concluded plan to coax Aaron Rodgers away from politics led to the most embarrassing head coaching tenure ever, if we only account for the play and not the sordid and outwardly evil stuff that got chalked up to some version of coaches will be coaches throughout the NFL’s history.
Plus, he looked like the farmer from Babe.
I have a certain umbrage with George Paton (grossly doomed). Looking at broad strokes, he’s not the only reason this team is doomed but, when we narrow the scope to actionable moves within both temporal and metaphorical reach, yes he is.
If there is a lesson to be learned from the last eight years of Broncos fandom, it should be that, the people in charge, who are sold to us as smart and respected as can be, more often than not are dumb as hell.
Not drooling while speaking isn’t the bar for intelligence. Don’t sell yourself short on your own abilities to see things the ways Peter Principled competitively impotent cliques of professionals do. Don’t get carried away with that notion, but don’t make your default position one of deference to George Paton (gross) either.
So, doomed.
The team is virtually devoid of talent. The talent that is still there don’t provide much foundation, as it includes merely a receiver and a cornerback and a guard. The architect, whose job it is to build a team with an eye towards the future, might be blind.
The immediate doesn’t have much to offer.
A toothless first-round draft pick, as it currently stands; they exist in the AFC West; LTB’s Bri is ennui posting — the dogs are licking the blood from the remaining bones. And there is no guaranteed or even obvious plan to move to a place of competence and meaningful success. I have never been more certain that a team is actively trying to be bad and the only way anyone could convince me that there will ever be hope of joy or fun with this team again is if there was plenty of scroll bar left and the last third of that quote waiting to be finessed into a point.
The Denver Broncos are doomed (gross and doomed).
“Come hither to me—hither, hither,” said Peleg, with a significance in his eye that almost startled me. “Look ye, lad; never say that on board the Pequod. Never say it anywhere. Captain Ahab did not name himself….”
Moby Dick (1851), by Herman Melville
Good.
Nothing has made me more excited for the future of this team than the stillness and quiet they’ve navigated with thus far this offseason.
Malcolm Roach for $7 million? Absolutely. Some Washington backup linebacker signing a one-year prove-it deal for the second time in as many seasons? Fantastic. Electing to eat the $53 million Wilson hit this year, over the lower $32 million? My favorite part.
I watched as free agent QBs Gardner Minshew, Sam Darnold, Jimmy Garoppolo, and their ilk all scattered to teams I do not care about. All opportunities to ‘upgrade’, all rejected like the nonsense desperation bait they are.
This is what I want. Steadfast and powerful nothing. Doom.
On a functional level, this team is bad. The infrastructure isn’t there. The individual pieces aren’t there. It’s fairly obvious what the Broncos are doing.
Tanking is typically understood to mean a deliberate attempt by some figure of authority, be it coach or GM and ownership, to intentionally lose games with the aim of higher draft position. I don’t think the Broncos are tanking.
Head coach Sean Payton — who has been suspiciously absent from this piece up to this point — isn’t going to tank. He’s proven to be too competent a coach to pencil in any guarantees about losing. Certainly there’s more to be said about Payton, and what he is and isn’t, but that deserves an article of its own. Not tanking, but what if the capacity of the team was structured in such a way that winning was made more challenging?
What if doom was the plan?
There’s still the draft, though. That’s the last hurdle.
Should the Broncos go after a Bo Nix-type player at 12th overall, when their next pick isn’t for 64 more selections, and the roster stands so barren?
In many ways, Bo Nix is a kind of doom. Not our kind. The fear of drafting anything less than a perfect QB prospect is this insidious and largely fanciful mentality that tends to trap people in cyclical pessimism.
‘They wouldn’t develop here. We’d ruin them anyway. Nail polish is not a gender signifier I accept on this 20-year-old I claim parasocial ownership over.‘
Let’s leave that wherever it can most conveniently be left. Just because a Bo Nix-esque player isn’t viewed as a predestined Hall-of-Famer doesn’t mean there isn’t value in drafting quarterbacks that are toolsy or brainy or whatever-ways-we’ve-decided-to claim-Sean-Payton-only-likes-underwhelming-QBs-that-don’t-give-any-lip. Bo Nix simply is not our doom to suffer. The Denver Broncos have aged out of the middling-non-answer-at-QB phase.
Our doom to suffer is in the knowing and accepting that this team is more than one year away from reaching a floor. We are not at rock bottom, we are floating in void. We are not climbing out of a hole, we are attempting to reconceptualize what existing means.
And that’s awesome.
What are our draft needs? Literally everything. We are doomed and we are free (but they better take OL early in this class, don’t get it twisted). My hope and my cope is that the Broncos see things the same way; that the QB options (as they stand) and the desolate landscape of the team (as it stands) don’t mesh.
Find the foundation then entertain a Bo Nix-type (doom), if you must. Just like progress and development aren’t linear, neither are they solitary. The rookie QB contract gives you a window of cheap control to build around but also pulls focus. There will be Bo Nixes in the future, no need to start that timeline in this (doomed) moment.
Notes: The abuse of ‘doomed’ in this piece from the title down to the previous line has been fun for me. This has largely been a stream of consciousness scribbling so the quirk and bounce of the language is both a signifier of authenticity and also a cover for haste. I’ve had a lot of fun. We are doomed. In some volatile search for meaning there’s gonna be a whale that eats you, gaurenteed. No metaphor, just whale. Being doomed is going to suck. It’s going to feel like a routine of well acquainted hardships are the only reality possible and, honestly…not impossible. Cycles love coming back around. But how often are presuppositions presupposed onto us from entirely disparate happenings? How many people named themselves? Seems that doom could just as easily be a fresh start as it is a devastating end. The Broncos are bad. They are doomed. But at this moment they are better than they’ve been for nearly a decade. The Denver Broncos are a good team.
I was listening to Black Country, New Road’s album Ants From Up There and Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou’s compilation Éthiopiques Volume 21: Ethiopia Song while writing this.
