Are the Broncos for Real? A Closer Look at Denver’s Shaky Case as AFC Contenders
The Denver Broncos are sitting pretty at 11-2, riding a 10-game win streak and holding the AFC’s top seed. On the surface, that’s elite territory-especially for a franchise that’s spent recent years wandering in the wilderness.
But peel back the layers, and the shine starts to fade. The Broncos have been walking a tightrope all season, and while they’ve consistently landed on their feet, the question is: how much of this is sustainable, and how much is smoke and mirrors?
The Win Column: Quantity Over Quality?
Let’s start with the wins. Yes, 11 of them. But who have they actually beaten?
- Tennessee, Jets, Raiders (twice), Commanders, Giants, Bengals - That’s a murderers' row… of bottom-feeders. All of these teams rank near the basement in DVOA and have struggled to stay competitive week to week.
- Eagles, Cowboys, Texans, Chiefs - These are the wins that look good on paper.
But even here, context matters. The win over Philly?
Denver was down 17-3 heading into the fourth quarter and needed a penalty-riddled mess of a game to claw back. Against the Cowboys, the offense exploded for 44 points, but Dallas’ defense has been feast-or-famine all year.
The Texans and Chiefs games were close, low-scoring affairs-both decided by late-game heroics from kicker Will Lutz.
In fact, Denver has played in 11 one-score games and won eight of them. That’s not just impressive-it’s borderline miraculous.
But it also raises red flags. Teams that live on the edge like that tend to regress, especially when the schedule tightens up.
And it’s about to.
A Soft Start, A Brutal Finish
Denver has had the second-easiest schedule in the league so far (31st in strength of schedule), but their final stretch is among the toughest. That’s a serious shift in difficulty, and it’s going to test whether this team is built to last or just got fat beating up on the league’s weakest links.
Their Pythagorean win-loss record (which uses points scored and allowed to estimate expected wins) sits at 8.5-4.5. DVOA estimates 8.1 wins.
Translation: they’ve outperformed expectations by about three wins. That’s not nothing.
That’s the kind of overperformance that usually comes with a fair amount of luck-and a kicker who can’t miss.
The Bo Nix Dilemma
Bo Nix has done just enough to win games, but make no mistake-this offense is not built around him. It’s built around avoiding him making mistakes. And yet, the mistakes keep coming.
Despite playing ultra-conservatively, Nix has thrown nine interceptions. That’s tied for 15th in the league, which wouldn’t be alarming if he were pushing the ball downfield.
But he’s not. He ranks near the bottom in completed air yards and has the second-lowest “aggressiveness index” in the NFL-meaning he almost never throws into tight windows.
Only Caleb Williams is more cautious.
Even with the training wheels on, Nix isn’t immune to turnovers. He’s also second in the league in batted passes, a common issue for quarterbacks who live on quick, short throws. And while some of the blame falls on his receivers-who have the second-highest drop rate in the league at 9.7%-the offense as a whole feels like it’s being held together with duct tape and good vibes.
The Loss of JK Dobbins Hurts-Badly
The run game hasn’t helped much, especially since losing JK Dobbins for the season. Dobbins was averaging five yards per carry and ranked eighth in Rushing Yards Over Expected (ROE%) before going down.
Backup RJ Harvey has struggled to fill the void, averaging just 3.9 yards per carry and ranking near the bottom of the league in ROE%. Without a reliable ground game, the offense has leaned even harder on its defense and special teams to bail it out.
The Defense Is Legit-but Not Unstoppable
To their credit, the Broncos' defense is the real deal. Sixth in DVOA, seventh in EPA.
They’ve consistently kept Denver in games and bailed out the offense more times than you can count. But even great defenses have limits, and Denver’s hasn’t exactly been dominant every week.
The Giants-yes, those Giants-put up 32 points and nearly stole a win.
So while the defense is good enough to win games, it hasn’t been so suffocating that it can carry an average offense deep into January. And that’s where the concern really kicks in.
A Familiar Feeling: Shades of the Bears?
If all of this sounds familiar, it should. It’s eerily similar to what we saw earlier this season with the Chicago Bears.
They too rode a streak of close wins, leaned heavily on defense, and protected a quarterback the coaching staff clearly didn’t fully trust. The difference?
The Bears didn’t find themselves atop the NFC. Denver is sitting at the top of the AFC mountain, and that’s what makes their situation so precarious.
There’s been a lot of “best team in the AFC” chatter surrounding the Broncos lately, but the numbers don’t support that. Their best wins are against the Chiefs and Texans-two solid teams, but not juggernauts. And their resume is padded with wins over the Titans, Jets, Raiders (twice), and Commanders-all bottom-five teams by DVOA.
The Road Ahead
The Broncos are underdogs this week at home against the Packers. That might surprise some fans, but it shouldn’t. Green Bay is a top-five team by most advanced metrics, and Denver simply hasn’t shown it can hang with the league’s elite without a little help from the other side-or a last-second field goal.
None of this is to say Denver is a bad team. They’ve found ways to win, and that counts for something.
But if you’re penciling them in as the AFC’s team to beat, you might want to hold off. The Broncos have been living on the edge all season.
Now comes the part where we find out if they can survive the fall.