The Denver Broncos just kept winning this year. And after that, they won some more. Back in the 2024 NFL Season, so many people in the NFL world hammered Denver for their decision to use a first-round pick on Bo Nix, and after a shaky 0-2 start, they appeared to be right.
But that wasn't close to being the big picture, as two games in this league really isn't much at all in the grand scheme of things. After that 0-2 start in 2024, the Broncos have since gone 24-8, including a 10-5 finish to that season and a stellar 14-3 record this year. Last year, Denver did take advantage of a weaker schedule and blew out a ton of opponents.
This year, the schedule got harder, but Denver got a lot better. Not only did this team win more four games than in 2024, but the Broncos also emerged as the best one-score game team in the NFL. Denver went 11-2 in such games this year, with 'blowout' wins against the Bengals, Cowboys, and Chargers. With all of these close wins, many people began to think that the Broncos were 'frauds,' but those games only prove the complete opposite...
The Broncos close wins only prove that they aren't frauds and can win it all this year
Close game are what the NFL playoffs are filled with, and I'll prove it to you right now. I went back and looked at every single NFL playoff game since the 2022 season. In those three playoff years, there were a total of 21 games from the Divisional Round through the rest of the season.
We won't count the Wild Card Round since the Denver Broncos are already in the second round. Of those 21 Divisional Round games, 13 of them were decided by one score, which is eight points or fewer. So, 62% of the playoff games played after the Wild Card Round over the past two seasons were one-score contests.
Denver won 84.6% of their one-score games this year, and they have a better-than-average chance of being in one of these when the playoffs roll around. The NFL this year, more than in previous years, has been filled with parity from top to bottom, so it's not like they were the only team to play in a ton of one-score games. The Broncos being able to perform well in these high-stakes situations bodes well for their playoff chances.
If this team wasn't quite as good in one-score games, the same people hammering them now would still say that the Broncos are 'frauds.' In 2024, Denver was just 1-6 in one-score games. The massive improvement surely isn't just a coincidence, as the Broncos just experienced what it was like on the other side of those results.
Calling the Denver Broncos frauds is a short-sighted criticism.