The Broncos’ opening-night disaster in Kansas City sent them tumbling in the national power rankings, and the consensus is pretty clear: Denver is no longer being treated like a top-tier AFC team.
A team that entered Week 1 with plenty of buzz got punched in the mouth by the Chiefs and then watched that loss get dissected from every angle. The result was a steep slide across the board, with most outlets moving Denver well outside the top five and, in some cases, all the way into the back half of the top 12.
ESPN dropped the Broncos four spots. Jeff Legwold pointed to how little of Denver’s new talent actually showed up in the Week 1 plan, writing: "It was that kind of night for a team that returned more players from last season than any other in the league. Jaylen Waddle had one catch for 2 yards, safety Tycen Anderson had one tackle and Coleman was the only rookie in uniform for the game,"
NFL.com also pushed Denver down four places, and Nick Shook zeroed in on the defensive breakdown. The missed tackles piled up, Kenneth Walker III ran for 173 yards, and Bo Nix’s struggles only made the night worse. As Shook wrote, "Bo Nix's struggles only added to the nightmare, sending the Broncos back to the practice field to work on the basics after a rough showing Monday night,"
Conor Orr of The Athletic was the outlier in one sense: he didn’t come into the season especially high on Denver to begin with, ranking them 16th before Week 1. Even so, the Broncos moved up two spots despite the 21-point loss.
Orr was blunt about what he saw from Nix: "This was opening preseason start-caliber Bo Nix against Kansas City. Tua Tagovailoa-esque scrambling.
Balls tossed to nowhere,"
CBS Sports’ Pete Prisco dropped Denver five spots and kept it simple: "they didn't tackle well." He added that the offense "didn't do enough."
The Athletic had the biggest fall of the bunch, sending Denver down seven spots to No. 12.
Chad Graff and Josh Kendall focused on Davis Webb’s first game as the Broncos’ offensive play-caller after Sean Payton handed over those duties. "In a bit of a surprise this offseason, coach Sean Payton relinquished offensive play-calling duties to 31-year-old coordinator Davis Webb.
His debut didn’t go well," they wrote.
Fox Sports lowered the Broncos six spots. Ralph Vacchiano said Nix can be crossed off any early MVP chatter after the rough outing, even while keeping Denver four spots ahead of Kansas City. "You can scratch Nix off any lists of early contenders for MVP after his disastrous showing," Vacchiano wrote.
Yahoo was even harsher, moving Denver down nine spots. Frank Schwab said the Broncos came into 2026 with the look of a team "capable of winning the AFC West again," but after Week 1, he’s not nearly as confident.
"A lot will be made of coordinator Davis Webb taking over play-calling from Sean Payton and the Broncos' offense looking terrible in his first game doing it. That's not all that was wrong with Denver," Schwab wrote.
Mike Florio dropped Denver eight spots and went with a little dark humor after Adam Schefter’s report about the Broncos contacting Drew Brees ahead of the AFC championship game surfaced before kickoff. "Maybe they should have tried to get Drew Brees to come back for last night’s game, too," Florio wrote.
Taken together, the national view has Denver outside the top 10, though still inside the playoff field on paper. That’s the weird middle ground the Broncos now occupy: one ugly night, a whole lot of skepticism, and a chance to erase it quickly against Jacksonville.
That task gets tougher on a short week. The Jaguars beat Denver by 14 points at Mile High last season, snapping the Broncos’ previous 11-game winning streak, and they opened this year by blowing out the Cleveland Browns. For Sean Payton, the priorities are obvious: get Webb more direction, clean up the offense, and demand better discipline and tackling from Vance Joseph’s defense after the Chiefs gashed Denver for 247 yards on 28 missed tackles.
If Week 1 was a one-off, the Broncos need to prove it now.
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When Bo Nix went down in the AFC Championship game, the Broncos were already dealing with the kind of quarterback uncertainty that can turn even the strangest rumor into something that gets legs fast. That was the backdrop for the chatter tying Drew Brees to Denver, a story that made sense only in the broadest, most desperate sense: a retired franchise icon with deep ties to Sean Payton and a team suddenly looking for answers on the biggest stage.
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The Broncos loss to Kansas City wasnt just about missed chances on offense or a few breakdowns here and there on defense. It was the tackling. Denver missed 29.8 percent of its tackles in the defeat, the worst tackling rate in an NFL game since 2018, and the issue showed up all over the field as the Chiefs kept turning routine plays into extended gains.
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Mahomes Just Added Another Worry For Broncos Fans
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For Broncos fans, the postgame tone probably offered the most unsettling part of all. Mahomes said he felt good after returning, while also admitting there was some nervousness about taking another hit to the leg, which is exactly the kind of concern Denver would rather not hear as the rivalry moves forward. [Read more 🡒]