The Denver Broncos have won 24 regular season games since the start of the 2024 NFL Season, winning 14 in 2025 and finishing with the best record in the NFL. Had Bo Nix not broken his ankle in the playoffs, it's tough to imagine that this team would not at least reach the Super Bowl.
The Broncos roster is star-studded. Nix is a borderline superstar at this point, and there are a ton of Pro Bowl and All-Pro-caliber players all over the place. In 2025, Denver won a ton of one-score games and had an affinity for making things quite dramatic.
But the Broncos being able to win those close games did prove that this team is legitimate and here to stay, as winning in the NFL is way more sustainable in close margins, rather than blowouts. Well, on Tuesday morning, the Broncos, along with the rest of the NFL world, got a very significant primetime schedule leak that proves Denver is back among the NFL's elite.
The 2026 NFL Season will feature the Denver Broncos in the first Monday Night Football game
While it's not yet clear at the moment if this will be a home or away game for the Broncos, they will face the Kansas City Chiefs in the first Monday Night Football game of the 2026 NFL Season:
This season’s first Monday Night Football game, Sept. 14, will be the Denver Broncos vs. the Kansas City Chiefs.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) May 12, 2026
The game’s site still has not been determined as the NFL still is finalizing its schedule for Thursday’s release. pic.twitter.com/IFOOkL0xze
Through two years in the NFL, Nix and the Broncos are 3-1 against the Chiefs. Had the Broncos been able to make a field goal as time expired during that loss in the 2024 NFL Season, Denver would very likely be 4-0 against Kansas City in the Nix era.
The Broncos swept the Chiefs last year, too, having won on another last-second field goal as time expired, and then having beaten them on Christmas Day. Yes, that matchup did not feature Patrick Mahomes or Gardner Minshew, but it's still an NFL team that the Broncos needed to beat.
And during this stretch where the Broncos have continued to climb, the Chiefs have faltered a bit - Kansas City won just six games during the 2025 season, missing the playoffs for the first time in the Mahomes era. That season came one year after being blown out in the Super Bowl against the Philadelphia Eagles.
The Chiefs also don't have the best roster, as years of below-average drafting left the team collapsing in 2025. We did see Kansas City put a huge emphasis on the defensive side of the ball this offseason, using a ton of NFL Draft capital to rebuild Steve Spagnuolo's unit.
Offensively, the biggest question is whether or not Mahomes will be ready to roll for Week 1, as he's recovering from a major knee injury he suffered during the 2025 season. All in all, the Broncos being the first Monday Night Football game of the 2026 season does 100 percent prove that the NFL views the Broncos as one of the league's elites.
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