Every seventh hat in Section 501 looked as if it belonged in a mousetrap, not a mile high. Jeremy Marty waved an Orange & Blue arm at the invasion of Cheeseheads below us Sunday at Empower Field and shook his head.
“I don’t want to tank,” Marty, a Broncos lifer here from Nashville, told me during the third quarter of Denver 19, Green Bay 17, Aesthetics 0. “I believed in this team at the beginning of the year. And my blood runs deep for the Broncos.
“So to go and even think for a second that they would go and tank at all is almost offensive to me as a fan of the Broncos — even as much as what we’re seeing with these yellow-and-green jerseys. Actually, it pains me to see this. So I would say absolutely not.”
Denver celebrated Week 7 by moving to 2-0 vs. the NFC North and 0-5 vs. everybody else. The eye test tells us the Packers and Bears aren’t in the same weight class as the Eagles and Dolphins, let alone the same zip code. But a gift horse is a gift horse, even if this one came wrapped in wacky officiating and cheesy conceit.
“For my sake. I’m hoping to hold on,” Marty, who was born in Denver and reared in Colorado Springs, laughed morbidly as we watched the Packers cut a 16-3 lead to 16-9, then 16-10. “It’s painful. And when I say painful, it’s almost painful to the sense where it just eats at me at the core.”
It beats the alternative, although the Broncos skirted perilously close to going 0-11 over their last 11 games with a halftime lead. When first-year coach Sean Payton last week insisted that 1-5 was no reason to give up the ghost, citing the Lions’ stunning turnaround last year from 1-6 to 9-8, Marty found himself nodding along in silent agreement from 1,200 miles away.
Plus, have you noticed how USC QB Caleb Williams has fared over the last three weeks whenever he’s run into a defense with half a pulse? (Spoiler: Not so great.)
“Don’t tank!” Austin Collins cried from a few nose-bleeds over. “I mean, we’re running the NFC North, for sure. We beat the Bears, we’re going to beat the Packers, we’re beating the Lions (on Dec. 17) for sure.
“We’ve got Russell Wilson. We don’t need to tank for a quarterback. And then we’re going to make the playoffs — just like the Lions did last year.”
Actually, dude?
The Lions … didn’t.
“I know we’re in a tough division,” Collins countered. “But it doesn’t matter.”
Collins drove in Sunday from Morton, Ill. — Peoria country, downstate, where he grew up rooting for the Orange & Blue of the Mile High instead of the Orange & Blue of the Midway. His dad had worked in Colorado, and while the Broncos of his youth — during the Mike Shanahan and Peyton Manning eras — were incredible, the Bears of his youth were, by and large, very much not.
“We’re visiting family this weekend,” Collins said. “They’re Packers fans, unfortunately for them.”
There was a lot of that in the upper deck, um, going around. So much so that a debatable touchdown catch by Green Bay’s Romeo Doubs sent 20% of Marty’s section into Cheesehead hysterics.
“GO … PACK … GO …”
“At the beginning of the year, I totally felt like 8-9, 9-8 was easy,” Marty shrugged. “Now, I’m like, ‘Eh, probably not.’”
He bleeds this stuff anyway. Always will. His family’s had season tickets since the ’70s. But even if the last month has proven that the Broncos aren’t the sorriest ship in the NFL, how do you patch so many holes?
“Good question. I mean, the draft hasn’t exactly been our friend,” Marty chuckled. “And now the few draft picks that we do still have, especially in the first round, it’s like, well, if you were to go and give up the (top) draft picks that you’ve had previously, the good ones like a (Jerry) Jeudy — God forbid, if it happens.
“But even if we had to go and think about how to fix it, I would say the draft would be first. From a coaching perspective, you’ve got to go and have something that’s going to connect to the locker room. I don’t feel like they have that right now.”
They still might not. In the big picture, did winning in Week 7 help or hurt this franchise more? What’s the difference between 4-13 and, say, 6-11 or 7-10? Other than pride?
We may not get a straight answer to that one for another year. Or two. Although Marty already knows. In his heart.
“I was talking to my uncle (Saturday) night,” Marty sighed. “And he was like …”
A pause.
“He’s as disgusted as I am. Let’s put it to you this way: I do believe, just based on the few words I heard from him, he was like, ‘Let’s just run this out. See what’s going on. Let’s play it out.’”
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