DETROIT — Almost nothing good happened to Denver over the course of a 42-17 shellacking by the Lions here on Saturday night.
But the Broncos also are still very much alive in the AFC postseason picture.
Sure, a win would have bolstered Denver’s credentials, but if they were going to lose a game over their final five, this was the one to lose.
The challenge, then, is to forget this one ever happened.
Except, not right away, defensive tackle D.J. Jones insists.
“No, not necessarily,” he said after the game. “We’ll put this behind us tomorrow as a unit, but it’s not easy to just move on. It’s a loss.
“We’ll correct it, then move on.”
The 24-hour rule applies regardless of how thoroughly you get beat down or how critical the final three games of the season are.
Here’s a clean picture of the Broncos’ situation: According to the New York Times’ playoff prediction models, Denver’s chances Saturday night dropped from 42% to 31%. If they win their final three and get to 10-7, that same model puts their chances at playing Wild Card weekend at 92%.
Win and in. Or, win and overwhelmingly likely in.
Right tackle Mike McGlinchey pointed back to that dreadful 1-5 start as reason to believe the Broncos will be playing the second weekend of January.
“Just look at the season as a whole,” he said. “We’ve had some severe lows this season, but we’ve always responded with work and continued on. We just keep chopping away at it. We’re right in a playoff hunt where two months ago people were writing us off and talking about 2024.
“This locker room is resilient, this locker room is tough and I have no doubt that we’re going to take care of business.”
Left tackle Garett Bolles advised anybody listening to doubt the Broncos at their own risk.
“We’re 6-2 in the last eight weeks,” he said. “If you’d have told us that when we were 1-5 and everyone was laughing at us — you can laugh at us all you want, but we’re 6-2, we’re playing some of the best football in the NFL.”
Well, not on Saturday night. And they just wrapped a three-game road set with a win and two losses. At the same time, the final three on the schedule enter Sunday with a combined record of 14-27 and are rolling out three reserve quarterbacks and two interim head coaches.
Essentially, the Broncos’ chances are in the eye of the beholder.
Is there a lot to fix? Absolutely. Does the way Denver’s handled the fastest teams on its schedule — Miami, Houston and Detroit — raise alarm bells? No doubt about it. But the group’s also stormed back into the picture despite that inconsistency and those problems. They’ve beat a trio of AFC contenders in Kansas City, Buffalo and Cleveland in the process, two of them convincingly.
So you’re not going to convince this locker room that a rough night in the Eastern time zone is reason to start making tee times in Mexico for mid-January.
“Just take it one game at a time, man,” Bolles said. “It’s tight-knit in the AFC. That’s just what it is. It’s playoff football from here on out and we’ve got to get the job done. We’ve got an AFC opponent coming in for Sunday night football and then two divisional games that we’ve got to win in order to get where we want to be.
“We can’t lose faith in what it is. Going 6-2 in the last eight weeks, that speaks for itself. But everyone can say whatever they want. They can say whatever they want. ‘Oh, they got smoked. Oh, they’re not going to make the playoffs. Oh, this happened, that happened.’ Everyone can say whatever they want. We know what we have, we know what we’re going to do and we’re going to go from there.”
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