The 2020 season has been a forgettable one for the Denver Broncos.
The team sits at 5-9 with just two games remaining in the regular season and after a blowout loss to the Buffalo Bills om Saturday, it was officially eliminated from the playoffs, though that was just a formality for the past several weeks.
The team has not played in a postseason game since winning Super Bowl 50 and fans are growing increasingly frustrated. Since that win, the team has seen some terrible quarterback play and some even worse coaching from the sidelines.
An argument can be made that the coaching has gotten even worse.
The Broncos have had some bad seasons, but fans have enjoyed many, many more successful ones over the course of a lengthy period of time. These have certainly been some of the darkest times in team history.
So we can try and put a positive spin on it and talk about all of the “promise” this team has and how the players are still young and learning to work together. We can also talk about how players and coaches should get a “pass” due to the 2020 season being largely overshadowed by a pandemic. But, many other teams have overcome those obstacles so it really is nothing more than a poor excuse.
There will be no sugar coating here. It’s been a bad season. So where does it rank among the worst in team history? Let’s first look at some other bad ones.
The AFL days
1960-1969
The Broncos began play as one of the teams in the old AFL. For 10 seasons, they were pretty much atrocious.
The team never qualified for the postseason and it had five different coaches during its time in the AFL. The team was consistently one of the worst in the league each and every season.
In 10 seasons, the Broncos had an overall win-loss record of 39-97-4. The team carried that futility into the NFL following the merger and it would take all the way until the 1977 season before the team qualified for the playoffs for the first time.
It’s a good thing that this was so long ago as most fans nowadays don’t know how bad the AFL days were for the team.
1990
The 1990 season was just disastrous, and it really never should have been. There was no excuse of poor quarterback play as John Elway was there and in his prime. You couldn’t blame it on the head coach, as Dan Reeves was well into his tenure with the team.
It was just one of those seasons where the ball just didn’t bounce the team’s way… ever.
The team had been to three of the previous four Super Bowls so contending for another trip to the big game was expected out of this team, But it didn’t happen, not even close.
It started with a 14-9 loss to the Los Angeles Raiders. The Broncos bounced back to win their next two games but then went on a three-game losing streak. Two of those losses were by one point.
The Broncos then beat the Indianapolis Colts to get their record to 3-4 heading into the bye week. But it fell completely apart after that.
The Broncos would lose their next six games before finishing the year at 5-11 and at the bottom of the AFC West, which in those days had five teams in it.
It was truly one of the worst seasons Broncos fans ever had to suffer through.
1999
The 1999 season was awful, but not in the surprising way that 1990 was. This was somewhat expected, but for a team that was coming off back-to-back Super Bowl wins, most fans didn’t expect this kind of drop off.
Following the team’s win in Super Bowl XXXIII, Elway called it a career, ushering in the Brian Griese era. Griese had been positioned to take the throne from the great Elway but things got off to a miserable start.
The Broncos lost their first four games and in the fourth game, they lost Terrell Davis to an injury that not only ended his season, but completely altered and eventually shortened his career.
From 1996-98, the Broncos went 39-9 in the regular season. To see them lose more games than that in the 1999 season alone was difficult for fans, but they at least had the recent success to fall back on and appreciate.
Griese never came close to being Elway and Davis was never the same again. The 1999 season is one that definitely ranks among the worst in team history.
2010
If you want to single out the 2010 season as the worst in team history, it would be hard to say that you’re wrong. The Broncos finished 4-12 in 2010 and they were not competitive in the majority of the games that year.
In December of that season, the team chose to part ways with head coach Josh McDaniels after a videotaping scandal mostly forced the team’s hand. .The fact that his team was so bad made that decision much easier.
The Broncos had seven double-digit losses that season, including a 59-14 blowout loss to the Raiders. They also only won one game inside the division.
Tim Tebow did get a chance to play quarterback, setting the stage for what would come in 2011, easily one of the most memorable seasons in team history. But 2010 was rough and it led to the Broncos having the No. 2 overall pick in the draft the following year.
From blowout losses to videotaping getting the team into the headlines for all the wrong reasons, the Broncos were an embarrassment in 2010.
2017-18
It was clear halfway through his first season with the team that Vance Joseph was just not the right guy to be coaching the Broncos. Yet, he got two full seasons to prove how bad he was.
These years were horrible and if you want to say that it was the worst time to be a Broncos fan, you will get little argument from me.
You can argue that the team didn’t have the right pieces either, particularly at quarterback, but Joseph was just in way over his head as an NFL head coach. Joseph went 11-21 in two seasons with the team.
But it wasn’t just the number of losses that occurred under Joseph, it was the way the team was beaten. If you want a perfect example of this, go back and watch the Broncos face the Miami Dolphins on December 3, 2017.
Joseph’s handling of that entire game was incredibly bad and it easily detailed how far off the team was from what it used to be. It was sad to watch.
Joseph was relieved of his duties following the 2018 season and there were almost no Broncos fans arguing for him to stay. It really makes you wonder why those same fans would be arguing for Vic Fangio to stay, though many of them are.
Is it because we shouldn’t hold the pandemic year against them? Let’s get real.
Where does 2020 fit on this list?
The 2020 season is not officially over. The Broncos still have two games to play and if they manage to win them both, they would finish at 7-9, the same record as last year.
But that loss to the Bills was hard to take. Yes, the Bills are one of the best teams in the league right now. But to allow them to come in and just run you over on your own turf like that should be a massive wake-up call.
But will it be?
This season has been bad. You can’t say it’s the worst season in team history, but it’s in the discussion for one of the worst.
Ask yourself this. If you had to rank these seasons in terms of having to relive them all over again, where would you list them? Many of these seasons would not be fun to sit through again but there are at least a few on this list that I would relive over before this one.
It’s been that bad. It’s been painful. It’s been hard to watch. And while many Broncos fans will point to things like a pandemic and a lot of injuries, that’s allowing excuses for poor performances.
Because there are no excuses for getting beat 48-19 at home. There was no excuse for the performance in Las Vegas or the loss to Atlanta.
This season also included a game in which the team threw more intercepted than it had completed passes. Regardless of the reasons that happened, would you want to sit through that game again?
It’s been a bad year and it is, in my opinion, certainly one of the worst in team history. Will 2021 be any better? There’s only one way for the team to go from where it’s at and that’s up.