Here’s what I love about football: Anything can happen.
In other sports, the best team usually comes out on top. But in the NFL, the Philadelphia Eagles can beat the New England Patriots, and we’re all left with a dumb smirk on our face. In the NFL, the Kansas City Chiefs can go from having the worst record in the league to winning their first nine games of the next season, and we act as if that’s just a normal thing.
We can make predictions and bold statements, we can prognosticate and hypothesize, but once that ball kicks off, it’s up to the football gods to decide what happens next.
If you want a perfect example, just look at the Denver Broncos. Tebowmania, anyone? You cannot tell me that the Broncos should have won all those games with Tim Tebow behind center. There’s no way. But it happened.
How about Super Bowl XLVIII? You could play that game a hundred times and the Broncos never score less than 10 points. That game was a complete aberration, it was unexplainable and yet it happened.
And what about this year? It seems like there’s been more controversy and name calling within Broncos Country than I’ve ever seen, and yet the team is 10-2. How? Honestly, it beats me. I’ve gone through the season a million times in my head and still can’t figure out how we managed to get to 10-2, and yet, here we are.
And again, that’s what I love about football. It doesn’t matter how you get somewhere; all that matters is that you’re there. So when we start talking about the playoffs and the Super Bowl, this team may not seem like the prototypical champion, but that doesn’t mean much; all that matters is that you have an opportunity and take advantage. The Broncos are doing just that.
And here are three Super Bowl champions that should give the Denver Broncos hope:
2000 Baltimore Ravens
This is the team that gets thrown into the discussion most often when we start talking about Broncos’ comparisons; they’ve got the elite defense, a questionable quarterback position and a lot of wins.
And honestly, it makes a good deal of sense. The only caveat, though, is that that Baltimore Ravens defense was probably a good deal better than this Broncos defense. Just check out the numbers, with Denver’s 2015 stats adjusted to 16 games:
’00 Ravens: Total Points: 165 (1st); Total Yards: 3,967 (2nd); Turnovers: 49 (1st)
’15 Broncos: Total Points: 280 (2nd); Total Yards: 4,555 (1st); Turnovers: 31 (3rd)
Clearly, there’s a reason why we often talk about the ’00 Ravens in the same breadth as the ’85 Bears. Still, that doesn’t mean this Broncos defense is anything but great; at their best, I’d put them right up there with anybody.
Honestly, part of the difference probably is the result of the somewhat frightening fact that this Broncos offense has been more harmful than the infamous Trent Dilfer-led Ravens offense. While Dilfer was acting as the ultimate game manager, protecting the ball and handing off to Jamal Lewis, the Broncos quarterbacks have been gifting the ball to opposing offenses in fantastic field position all season long.
Through 13 games, even with one of the best ball-hawking defenses in the NFL, the Broncos only have a +2 turnover differential, whereas the Ravens finished at an absurd +23.
But those Ravens are the blueprint; they’ve proven that you can win a championship with an average offense and an elite defense. Now, the Broncos just have to follow their lead.
2007/09 New York Giants
We remember the ’07 Giants for the David Tyree catch and the Super Bowl victory over the undefeated New England Patriots; what we tend to forget is that those same Giants just barely snuck into the playoffs and were considered the furthest thing from a true Super Bowl contender when they took on the Buccaneers in the wildcard round.
In fact, in both of the Giants’ last two championship runs, you would have been hard pressed to find a single person outside of New York (probably within it) who would have picked the G-Men to walk home with the Lombardi Trophy. And at 10-6 in ’07 and 9-7 in ’11, they absolutely looked like less of a threat than the 10-2 Denver Broncos currently do.
These two Giants teams simply reiterate what football has always shown us: Anything can happen!
In both cases, the New England Patriots were clearly the better team. Heck, the Giants probably ran through a couple better teams in their run to the Super Bowl, too. But in the end, it didn’t matter. Today, we talk about Eli Manning‘s two Super Bowl rings, not Tom Brady‘s six.
In those games, we saw a dominant defensive line step up and make Tom Brady’s life a living nightmare; they grabbed their slingshot, and they took down Goliath.
So right now, the Denver Broncos may not look like the best team in the league, but neither did the ’09/’11 New York Giants after Week 13. The difference, though, is that at 10-2, the Broncos still have an opportunity to avoid Wild Card Weekend, only bettering their shot at making another trip to the Super Bowl.
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[adrotate banner=”10″]2012 Baltimore Ravens
Once again, the Baltimore Ravens probably weren’t the best team in the NFL when they won their second Super Bowl in 2012 — as Broncos fans, we know that all too well — but it didn’t matter. Who cares that they backed into the playoffs, losing four of their final five games? Who cares that their quarterback was only slightly above average all season? Who cares that the only reason they even reached the Super Bowl is because Rahim Moore made the worst decision in football history (yes, I’m still bitter!)?
Joe Flacco, Ray Lewis and the Baltimore Ravens won the Super Bowl, and in 50 years, that’s all we’re going to remember. And while it was a disappointing outcome for the Broncos at the time, it’s another example of why we should have hope going into this postseason.
The truth is that Flacco was elite during that playoff run. He may not have been before or after it, but he sure was during that four-game stretch where he threw 11 touchdowns, 0 interceptions and had a quarterback rating of 117.2; that’s a good deal better than the 22 touchdowns, 10 interceptions and 87.7 quarterback rating he produced during the regular season.
The Ravens won the Super Bowl because Flacco stepped his game up when it mattered most. More importantly, their playoff run was not decided based on how he played during the regular season.
The same will be true for the Denver Broncos. No matter how many arguments we’ve had over whether Peyton Manning or Brock Osweiler should be the guy come the postseason, we’re still attempting to predict how they’re going to perform in five/six weeks; based off what we’ve seen, nobody can accurately do that.
For one, if the Broncos do go back to Manning, I’m not sure we can expect him to play anything like what we saw through the first nine weeks. Again, if Manning really was dealing with a serious plantar fascia injury, then he’s probably been dealing with it since Week 1. If — and it’s a big if — Manning is healthier than he’s been in a long time, maybe we do see the “old Manning.”
Likewise, if it is Osweiler’s job, then shouldn’t we expect him to just continue to get better? Is there any reason to think he’ll be worse with eight games of experience than he was with one or two?
This is all a case for the idea that the Broncos haven’t reached their potential, that the offense will continue to settle into itself as the postseason nears. If that happens, don’t be surprised if we end up looking at the 2015 Broncos and their quarterback (no matter who it is) the same way we looked at the Ravens and Joe Flacco back in 2012.