When they took off from the desert, the Broncos lost service, and the fate of the AFC West floated somewhere tens of thousands of feet up in the desert air.
A few hours after putting the Raiders away to put some distance between them and the rest of their divisional field, head coach Sean Payton and staff turned on the Sunday night game. These were the dying vestiges of the Kansas City Chiefs as the Broncos and the world knew them, clinging for one last breath to their hold on the AFC West against the Houston Texans. Denver hit the sky with Houston up 10-0 early, and landed with the score knotted at 10-10. Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes and company, of course, would not go away quietly.
But Payton and staff watched Mahomes throw two picks in the fourth quarter, and Houston take control in a 20-10 win. And that solidified it, a steady bleed after the Broncos beat the Chiefs 22-19 in mid-November: Kansas City has been mathematically eliminated from winning their division.
Yes — a team other than the Chiefs will reign in the AFC West for the first time since 2015.
“I think, again, if this makes any sense — the focus gets so inwardly driven to our own team,” Payton said Monday, pondering the significance of watching that Chiefs loss.
“But,” Payton continued, “I recognize that a team that’s won the division for however many straight years won’t be able to win it this year. But it’s more important to focus on – all right, how do we finish this next quarter pole of the season, starting with a real good team in Green Bay?”
There’s no need, simply, to watch out for Kansas City in this last month. They’ve been on top, as cornerback Ja’Quan McMillian said Monday. They aren’t anymore. The boogeyman has been driven out, the Chiefs at 6-7. The Broncos’ attention now, as Payton indicated, will turn to navigating a December gauntlet to set themselves up as best as possible come January.
“Focusing on what we can do to win the division — the Chargers are very much alive in that battle,” Payton said. “And then furthermore, what we can do to give ourselves the best seed possible?”
Indeed, the Broncos don’t yet have claim to the throne now vacated by Kansas City. They sit at 11-2 after this 10-game win streak, a comfortable 2.5 games up on Los Angeles. But the Chargers have two incredibly important distinctions that could come into play in a tiebreaking scenario: Los Angeles already beat Denver in Week 3, and currently has the best record in the AFC West at 4-0 this season.
And a 2.5-game lead, with four games to play, is not comfortable enough to cruise by any means. The Broncos face one of the tougher final stretches of any NFL team this season, starting with those 9-3-1 Packers, who have leveled up this season after landing star pass rusher Micah Parsons in a blockbuster deal during camp. Then comes a home matchup with 9-4 Jacksonville, who’ve won four of their last five even after losing rookie Travis Hunter to season-ending injury. Then comes a road trip to Kansas City on Christmas, and finally those Chargers in a potentially titanic Week 18 matchup.
“We got a stretch here,” Payton said, “with some real good teams coming in.”
So do the Chargers, though: hosting Philadelphia (8-4) Monday night, then at Kansas City, at Dallas (6-6-1) and hosting Houston (8-5). One slip by Los Angeles and one tough win by the Broncos, and the AFC West will be Denver’s.
In the meantime, too, Sunday’s win over the Raiders gave the Broncos an important edge in AFC seeding overall: a tiebreaker in shared-opponent matchups with the New England Patriots, who also sit at 11-2. Don’t forget about Buffalo, who’s 9-4 and will play New England this Sunday in an important game with AFC seeding implications; don’t forget about Jacksonville, who could challenge the Broncos in that matchup in two weeks.
These Broncos have “been through a lot of crap” on the road to 11 wins, as quarterback Bo Nix said Sunday night. Nine of those 11 wins have come in one-score games. They’ll have to go through more to actually lock up the AFC West, and wade through even more muck for a shot at a no. 1 seed and a playoff bye.
But they played one of their cleanest games of the season against the Raiders on Sunday. And over 1,300 miles away, their greatest historical roadblock fell.
“The sky’s the limit for us,” left tackle Garett Bolles said in the locker room Sunday. “If we do what we’re supposed to, we’re a hard team to beat.”
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