When all was said and done with the Broncos’ season in a frigid Gillette Stadium on Saturday night, there was talk of pride, progress and potential for what’s to come for the team.
A team that started 1-4 finished 1-4 and leveled off to 9-9 when it was out of games to play.
The Broncos led the league in drama, Web hits and talking points both in and out of their home market, but in the end it’s always about the football. And where things stand for the Broncos is better than their 4-12 stumble in 2010, but not yet where they want to be in seasons to come.
They were a playoff team this season, sliding in as their late-season losses coincided with somebody else’s. And to make the playoffs is indeed some progress over what’s gone on since 2005.
But if the New England Patriots are
some kind of football tape measure, the Broncos find themselves with plenty of room to work on the growth chart.
“In the two matchups we had with the New England Patriots this year, it was pretty evident we have a lot of work to do,” said Broncos coach John Fox after he came in from the cold Saturday night.
In those two losses to the Patriots, roughly a month apart, the Broncos fell by a combined score of 86-33 and looked to be a challenger that had stepped into the ring before he was ready.
At least some personnel executives around the league now believe the Broncos team they evaluated since the start of December showed that its midseason surge was built on adjustments and plenty of out-of-the-box thinking on offense. The jury is still out on whether that’s built to last.
Their two main arguments for this are:
B The Broncos are too limited passing the ball to consistently recover against teams that don’t let them run.
B They can’t match up with diversified passing attacks on defense.
The Broncos made enough progress to get into the playoffs. Now it’s about fixing those two items to make enough progress to stay there.
Key matchup
Much like it was during the season that just concluded, any remark, partial sentence, phrase, clause or dangling participles that emerge from Fox, John Elway or both about quarterback Tim Tebow in the coming offseason will be sifted, sorted and discussed.
The Broncos’ symmetrical season, with the 1-4 start and the 1-4 finish, put Tebow’s development front and center. He is all things to all critics and supporters right now.
He is both motivated and limited, both enthralling and aggravating or both groundbreaking and an offensive anchor, depending on what side of the Tebow discussion you reside.
But the bottom line is this is easily the most important offseason of Tebow’s young career, and it is incumbent on him to do as much as possible when it comes to his vocation. There will be no labor situation to limit offseason workouts and other team activities.
It will be a time for Tebow to expand what he can do in the Broncos’ playbook. Over the last five games, the Broncos lost the ability to say “he just wins,” because opposing defenses caught up to Tebow’s youth and the Broncos didn’t just win.
People defended his game and the Broncos’ offense along with it. They, together, created the template others will use when September games begin.
And competition is coming — he won’t be the only quarterback under contract when training camp opens — so if the expectation from the coaches is that everybody on the team improves, then Tebow now finds himself at the top of the list.
Comparison shopping
The Raiders fired their coach, the Chiefs fired their coach and the Chargers very nearly fired their coach.
All of which is to say the Broncos are the model of stability in the AFC West at the moment. The Broncos also have a head start on the kind of roster makeover their division brethren will have to undertake, as well as the annual erosion exacted by age and the salary cap.
A strong draft and a firm decision about the direction of the offense long-term, and whether Tebow will conform to an NFL playbook or an NFL playbook will conform to him, could put the Broncos in position to win the West again.
Jeff Legwold: 303-954-2359 or jlegwold@denverpost.com
Miles to go
The Broncos played six games this season against teams that made the playoffs. They were 2-4 in those games, including two losses to the Patriots, and were outscored 225-119 in those six games overall. They were outscored 180-66 in the four losses, with all four opponents topping 40 points.
