Colin Cowherd is already looking at the Denver Broncos and seeing a team due for a hard reset.
On “The Herd” Monday, the Fox Sports analyst argued that Sean Payton’s Broncos are headed toward a major drop in 2026, and he tied that warning to a pattern he sees across the NFL: teams that live on one-score wins usually don’t keep beating the odds forever.
Cowherd pointed directly to Denver’s 2025 season, when the Broncos finished 14-3 and reached the AFC championship game despite a run of tight finishes and late rallies.
“You look at last year,” Cowherd said. “Trailing 15 times and winning 14.
That has never happened in the history of the league. They won 11 one-possession games.
Remember when Kansas City did that two years ago? What happened the next year?
It regressed.”
That Kansas City comparison is the heart of his argument. Cowherd noted that after the Chiefs reached their third consecutive Super Bowl in 2024, Andy Reid’s team missed the playoffs the following season. In his view, Denver could be the next club to take that kind of step back.
He also framed it as part of a yearly NFL trend, saying one strong team tends to crash unexpectedly. The Los Angeles Chargers did it in 2023, the San Francisco 49ers in 2024 and the Washington Commanders in 2025, according to Cowherd.
“Every year there is one really good football team in the NFL that regresses badly and falls off a cliff and you can never see it coming …. The team that's fascinating to me, and I like them, is the Denver Broncos,” Cowherd said. “History tells you they are not going to win 11 one-score games.
“Think about this. The Broncos trailed in 15 games last year and won 14 of them.
That will never happen again. Hell, the Jets trailed in 17 games.
It just doesn't make any sense at all. When you trail 15 times in a season, you are praying you can win eight of those games.
They went 14-3.”
Cowherd’s skepticism also gets a test right away on the calendar. Denver’s first six games next season include matchups with the Chiefs, 49ers, Los Angeles Rams and Seattle Seahawks, and the Broncos are favored in only one of those games.
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