Pretty soon, if we all think about it for much longer, the gap between the Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs is going to grow to the point that nothing we've seen over the last two years is going to matter in the slightest.
We can all probably get used to hearing about the "gap" between the Broncos and teams like the Kansas City Chiefs this offseason. It's going to be a huge topic of discussion because there's no longer a Mariana's Trench-sized chasm between the two teams. Since Sean Payton has become the head coach of the Denver Broncos, the gap between the Broncos and the Chiefs has undoubtedly shrunk substantially.
The Broncos ended a winless drought against the Chiefs in 2023, Payton's first year on the job. And that was with Russell Wilson at quarterback and a roster he mostly inherited (and had to gut in the middle of the year after the Dolphins debacle). The very next meeting between the Broncos and Chiefs happened this past season with the Broncos dealing with nearly $90 million in dead salary cap, a rookie quarterback making his first start in Kansas City, and one of the youngest rosters in the NFL.
It took a fluke blocked field goal for the Chiefs to beat the Broncos in that game.
Needless to say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and while some (like Broncos head coach Sean Payton) feel like the gap between the Broncos and Chiefs has shrunk more than meets the eye, others in the media are not as convinced. That includes even one of the biggest Broncos supporters in the National media: Peter Schrager of FOX Sports and Good Morning Football.
Peter Schrager says gap between Broncos and Chiefs is "huge" in 2025
.@NFLonFOX's @PSchrags, on how close the Broncos are to matching the dominant Chiefs in the AFC West: "It is a huge gap ... I don't think they're a year away; I think they're two years away, but Sean's got them going in the right direction." pic.twitter.com/7xBrMMu0Fs
— Andrew Mason (@MaseDenver) February 8, 2025
Schrager worked for a year at FOX with Sean Payton and obviously has faith in him. He has believed in the Broncos in the past (and been burned) but this feels like he's taking things a step too far. It's reasonable to think the Broncos are two years away from being Super Bowl contenders, but is it reasonable to say they are two years away from closing the proverbial gap against Kansas City?
I'm not so sure.
Nobody wants to count the Broncos' absolute drubbing of the Chiefs late in the season, and that's also understandable. The Broncos beat the Chiefs' backups handily and that win punched their ticket to the playoffs. But the Chiefs have struggled with Denver dating back to the early portion of the 2023 season.
Closing the gap with Kansas City is different than closing the gap with the rest of the AFC. The Broncos have to build a team that can not only contend with Kansas City in January but a team that can win over the long haul of a regular season. At this point, those two feel like different things completely. With that in mind, the Broncos already seem to have one of them figured out. They seem to have the formula for beating the Chiefs straight up.
That doesn't mean the Broncos are outright better than the Chiefs at this point. All it means is that this idea of them being so far behind Kansas City with a gap of two years between the two teams is far-fetched to the point of being bulletin board material for the Broncos.