Projecting the Denver Broncos ceiling and floor for 2024 season

The Denver Broncos are coming into the 2024 season with some baggage still hanging around. The Sean Payton and Russell Wilson experiment ended on a rough note. To add to the fire, Payton saddled himself with a quarterback with the #12th overall pick in the draft that many predicted would be a late first or second-round pick. So with that said, can Payton right the ship in year two and get the Broncos back to the promised land?

The Promised Land, aka the Super Bowl, might be an extremely tough ask. Especially with a rookie quarterback. Never has there been a rookie quarterback who makes it to the Super Bowl as that team's starter. Some have reached as far as the divisional championship game, but never to the big show. No one is expecting that this year for the Broncos but the playoffs, like the expectations last year, should be back on the table 100 percent.

As most recent as this last year, CJ Stroud led his Houston Texans to the playoffs in year one. To make it even more impressive, he did it with a first-time rookie head coach as well. Bo Nix is coming into a similar situation as Stroud and he gets a leg up in the coaching department based on experience alone. With that laid out, I'm expecting the Broncos to have similar thoughts as the team is getting back into the swing of things as practice rolls on and players trickle back into the facilities. 

Coming into 2024, the Broncos are projected to win more or less than 5.5 games. Seems quite low considering they won 8 last year with subpar offensive play and one of the league's worst defenses in recent memory. The whole team came together though and rattled off on a 5-game winning streak in the middle of the year. Being just a win or two away from making the playoffs as a wild card team with how the team performed as a whole was impressive. This is why coming into 2024 I'm expecting the team to surprise the league with potentially 10 wins despite having a new rookie quarterback and losing a couple of veteran pieces on both sides of the ball.

So as a whole, the books having the win total around five is probably where I'd see the floor for this team. If Nix struggles to adapt to the pro level or if the team overachieved in 2023 and the roster is deprived of talent, maybe they are looking at a max of 4-6 wins. However, Nix is coming off of an incredible collegiate career where his best year yet happened just in 2023/2024 when he was in the running for the Heisman and combined this with a future Hall of Fame level coach on a revenge tour to reestablish him, namesake, in the football world? I'll take the latter and the potential of 10 wins and a trip to the playoffs.