There are no shortage of reasons for Broncos players to wear smiles and walk with a bounce in the step over the past few days.
At long last, training camp is in the rearview mirror and Week 1 has arrived.
Denver’s players, too, now report to work in a palace. In the first days reporters were allowed into the locker room for normal, regular-season interview windows, that alone would be reason enough for players to be largely in good moods.
For many, most pointedly quarterback Bo Nix, there is also relief in the arrival of a new season because of the remaining vapors of last year’s crushing exit. The fractured ankle. The second-half snowstorm. New England slipping through Denver en route to Santa Clara, Calif., and the Super Bowl.
All of that adds to the build this week as Monday Night Football approaches.
Thatap not all, though. This team, quite clearly, believes it is good. Not in an arrogant way, at least not outwardly. There hasn’t been much brashness or bold-letter, they-said-what claims so far through training camp.
It has instead been a straightforward preseason. Fiery at times, a little monotonous at others.
A group that has won enough in the past two seasons, including claiming the franchise’s first AFC West title in a decade, to know that everybody else knows they’ll be a contender. But also one that thinks it has some tricks up its sleeve with Davis Webb installed as the offense’s new play-caller and Jaylen Waddle ready to finally be deployed in a game that matters.
“I think there’s a comfortability that comes with (being the defending division champions),” veteran right tackle Mike McGlinchey said. “But I also think, with what the Chiefs just accomplished with the nine years in a row, thatap rare air, right? Nothing’s guaranteed every year. And yeah, we might have won last year, but our division is stacked again. Itap another grind to get it done and go and compete with those three other teams.
“Certainly, though, there’s a comfortability in knowing that we’ve done it and we can go do it again. You can use that confidence to keep moving forward.”
Even though Denver won the West in what ultimately looked like runaway fashion last year thanks to a mega-sized 11-game winning streak after a 1-2 start and a down year from Kansas City even before Patrick Mahomes’ torn ACL in mid-December. The Los Angeles Chargers, though, were 11-4 heading into a Week 17 game against Houston that, had they won, would have made the final week of the season a de facto AFC West title game. Even in a year where so much went right, the Broncos needed all but one week of the season to take the crown from the Chiefs.
Now Mahomes is back and for the first time since he established himself as one of the NFL’s greats, he’s the one in chase mode rather than the rest of the division.
The Chiefs are the ones looking up the standings at somebody else, even if they are widely considered a favorite — albeit a mild one — to bounce back this fall. Most of the offseason, betting sites have snugged the Broncos, Chiefs and Chargers close together but considered Kansas City and L.A. slightly more likely to win the West than Denver.
Often, too much is made of what happens in Week 1 of the NFL season. Last year, Denver snuck past Tennessee at home, then lost back-to-back games. By the end of Week 3, the Chargers were 3-0 with wins over the Chiefs and the Broncos, while Sean Payton’s team was 1-2 and reeling a bit.
In fact, Denver hasn’t actually got itself off to a good start yet under Payton and yet its been a playoff team the in each of Nix’s first two seasons as the team’s quarterback.
One of the beliefs Payton holds to be true about the NFL is that the first quarter of the season is a race to improve. A Week 1 loss isn’t debilitating, but arriving at Week 6 as the same team you were in Week 1 can be a death sentence.
“We go all offseason — everyone goes all offseason — waiting for Week 1,” Payton said recently. “So itap an important game because itap the one we’re playing and yet every year it (proves to not) not necessarily the end-all, be-all.
“But we certainly like to get off to a better start.”
That would be the case if Denver was opening with Jacksonville or San Francisco or anybody else, but it is especially true because the club opens against Kansas City.
If the Broncos win, more people than ever will perhaps finally believe that the division’s power balance has finally tilted uphill and to the West.
If the Chiefs win, however, the chorus of takes about Denver’s 11-2 one-score record in 2025 and Mahomes’ injury and all the rest will undoubtedly sing out.
The true kings will be back and the pretenders will already be toast, regardless of outcome.
That, of course, will not be true. There are twists and turns from here to the first week of January. No team can win or lose a division or even know for sure what it has in totality on the opening night of the season.
For the most part, the team who knew nothing but division crowns until last year and the one wearing it entering Monday night each have spoken in such tones in recent weeks.
“The Broncos did real good last year,” Kansas City wide receiver Rashee Rice said. “They did great leading the division last year, but, I mean, that was last year and this is a new season for everybody.
“We’re gonna go out there and compete and see who’s it’s gonna be at the end of the season.”
It might well take until the end of the season to sort this division out once again this fall. At last, however, the start of the race has arrived.
Since the day the NFL released its schedule back in May, this has felt like an appropriate opener for the AFC Westap power broker over the past decade and the division’s defending champion.
“We know we’re playing a really good football team, a divisional opponent, Monday Night Football,” Payton said. “Itap not like Andy and I have to go in and give our teams a pep talk.”
