What to know about Broncos’ playoff picture as unique part of schedule arrives
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Sean Payton spent the first 25 seasons of his NFL coaching career in the NFC, first as an assistant for the Philadelphia Eagles , New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys and then as the head coach of the New Orleans Saints . That means his first season with the Denver Broncos of the AFC has brought a few subtle changes the coach has had to digest, from different local kickoff times to preparing for an abundance of west-to-east travel.
Now, Payton has another change to master.
“Being in the NFC this whole time, you always kind of knew who you wanted to lose and win,” Payton mused last week. “I’m still trying to get adjusted to figuring out, ‘That’s an AFC team, we don’t want them to have success.'”
You can be sure a coach as obsessed with details as Payton knows who he is racing against in the AFC. The Broncos defeated the Cleveland Browns on Sunday, 29-12, for their fifth straight win. The victory moved Denver to 6-5, pushing the team into a tie for seventh in the AFC standings. Seven teams in the conference will reach the postseason, and the No. 7 spot currently belongs to the Indianapolis Colts by virtue of their superior conference record. The Houston Texans are also ahead of the Broncos at 6-5 because of a better mark against AFC opponents. But with five of their final six games coming against AFC teams, starting with Sunday’s game at Houston, the Broncos still have plenty of time to improve their conference record — and their win-loss ledger overall.
On a fresh episode of the , we break down the Broncos’ 29-12 victory over the Browns, the preparation that has helped Denver win 5 in a row, unsung heroes, the playoff picture ahead and much more:— Nick Kosmider November 27, 2023
Payton, despite his crack about the AFC homework he needed to do, is not concerned with any of those tiebreaker particulars at this point. The Broncos have come too far since a 1-5 start to let the focus blur now.
“You guys will handle that for me. I know you will,” Payton told reporters of the postseason picture. “We put ourselves in a position where each of these games becomes more and more important, but the focus has to be strictly on this one.”
One thing the Broncos can’t control is the unique wrinkle the league’s schedule-makers have thrown their way. Up next for Denver are three straight road games: Houston (Dec. 3), Los Angeles Chargers (Dec. 10) and Detroit (Dec. 16 or 17). It will be only the fourth time in the Super Bowl era that the Broncos have played three straight road games in December. During the previous three such stretches, the most recent of which came in 2010, Denver never won more than one of the three games. And a three-game December road gantlet is something Payton never dealt with during his 15 seasons as the head coach in New Orleans, though he did have two three-game road trips that began the final week of November.
“I’d seen that our next home game is on Christmas Eve. That’s crazy,” said running back Javonte Williams , referring to the Dec. 24 matchup with the Patriots . “We’ve just got to make it work. Going on the road, we’ve got to do what we’ve got to do. This is really going to show what type of team we are.”
Here are other items to know about the playoff picture as it relates to the Broncos:
• The Broncos have what is tied for the 12th-hardest remaining schedule in the league, according to The Athletic’s NFL data analyst, Austin Mock. His strength of schedule metric takes into account his model’s rating of every remaining team on the schedule. A team’s rating is derived from play-by-play data and uses metrics like expected points added, success rate and many others.
Of the six teams in the wild-card picture within a game of Denver on either side — Steelers (7-4), Browns (7-4), Colts (6-5), Texans (6-5), Bills (6-6) and Bengals (5-6) — only Buffalo (No. 1) and Cincinnati (No. 10) have more difficult remaining schedules. Pittsburgh (No. 24), Cleveland (No. 25), Houston (No. 26) and Indianapolis (No. 28) round out Mock’s rankings.
• The good news for the Broncos? They already have head-to-head tiebreakers against the Browns and Bills in hand. If the Broncos finished with the same record as one of those teams, Denver would earn a playoff spot by virtue of those head-to-head victories. That’s why the game against the Texans on Sunday is so massive for the Broncos. Win and they’ll own three head-to-head wins against teams in the AFC wild-card picture, and they would also improve their conference record to 4-4 after an 0-4 start in those games.
“It’s nothing that I don’t think any of these players don’t already know,” Payton said. “These games are important. When you dig yourself in a hole at the start of the season, then there’s a little less wiggle room down the stretch.”
• To Payton’s point, the Broncos’ margin for error remains slim. The model Mock uses to project the playoff field gives the Broncos a 20.5 percent chance to crack it. The New York Times forecasting model is a little more generous, giving the Broncos a 34 percent shot. Still, it’s miles from where Denver sat on Oct. 12, when they suffered a 19-8 loss to the Chiefs and fell to 1-5. At that time, Mock’s model gave the Broncos just a 0.4 chance of reaching the postseason.
The Broncos that night in Kansas City previewed the turnaround to come for a defense that played embarrassingly bad at the start of the season, no more than during a loss to the Dolphins in Week 3 in which they surrendered 70 points. In Week 6, the Broncos held quarterback Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs to only one touchdown. The Broncos have only allowed teams to reach the end zone nine times in the past six games overall — or one fewer than they allowed against the Dolphins in late September.
“As crazy as it sounds, we never really wavered from what we knew we could be,” said linebacker Nik Bonitto , whose 1.5 sacks Sunday against the Browns moved his team-leading total to seven. “There were so many times (defensive coordinator Vance Joseph) came into the meetings and said, ‘I know we’re close.’ I know the scores weren’t really showing we were close, but looking at the film there were so many things we were doing run where you could be like, ‘Damn, that could have helped change the game.’ We were really that close to being the kind of defense we knew we could be. I feel like we’ve been doing that in this stretch of games, just limiting the mistakes on the field and being able to play team ball.”
That turnaround has given Broncos fans an opportunity to dream about the team’s first playoff appearance since 2015. It gives them a chance to jump into the various simulators, manipulate future results and plot a path to the postseason. For the players and coaches, tinkering with future scenarios would pull precious injury from the task at hand.
“I think it’s so important to just immerse yourself in the things you can control,” Payton said. “The things you can’t control, man, let’s not waste any battery life on those things.”
(Photo: RJ Sangosti / The Denver Post via )
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