October is here and opportunity knocks for the Broncos.
They’re not the only team out there hoping to make a move in the coming weeks, of course. More than a third of the NFL enters Week 5 at 2-2. Only a very small handful of teams find themselves at the very end of the spectrum either way.
Denver head coach Sean Payton always feels this way about this part of the calendar in general. He likes to say the first month of the season is a race against yourself. From there, teams try to separate.
So now it’s separation time.
“October is important in our league,” Payton said Friday. “The first four weeks you’re in a race to improve and we’re beginning (the season). But October is an important month.”
It sets up as perhaps particularly so for Payton’s team this year. The Broncos started 0-2, including their home opener against Pittsburgh. Then they went on the road and earned a pair of wins against quality opponents in Tampa Bay and the New York Jets.
Now they return home to play their first divisional game Sunday against Las Vegas. That begins a stretch where the Broncos play three of their next four at Empower Field plus a Thursday night game at New Orleans.
Looming beyond that to start November: Back-to-back road games at Baltimore and Kansas City.
“Obviously, look, you can go through it: We’re at home. It’s a division opponent, I know it’s the Raiders,” said Payton, keenly aware this franchise has lost eight straight against the silver and black. “It’s a special weekend for a lot of former players, too, and that matters.”
The Broncos went 5-4 at home last year but throughout their eight-year playoff drought have never managed to be better than 5-3 in home games. Entering this year, their collective home mark was 34-32. Now it’s 34-33.
“From the time I got into the league, it was that you win the home games and you steal a few on the road,” defensive lineman John Franklin-Myers told The Denver Post. “That’s kind of the starting model for everybody and that’s the starting model for making the playoffs and doing anything in the postseason. You understand the importance of that.”
The Broncos starting the season 2-1 on the road makes stacking a couple of wins at home all the more important. If Denver doesn’t, it will feel like an opportunity wasted. In 2023, remember, the Broncos won at Buffalo and ground out some tough wins amid a five-game winning streak but part of what ultimately put them too far into the hole to start was a pair of early-season home losses to Las Vegas and Washington.
“Sean said it, there’s not been a great team that doesn’t take care of business at home,” Franklin-Myers said. “You understand that and you realize three of the next four are at home and you realize the sense of urgency has to pick up because those are games we’re expected to win.
“Being at home, being at Mile High altitude gives us that little advantage.”
Similarly, good teams take care of business within their division. The Broncos’ 3-3 mark last year against AFC West foes was only the second time in the past eight years they’ve scratched out a .500 record against Kansas City, the Raiders and the Chargers. Overall in that span, the Broncos enter 2024 15-33 against the division since the start of the 2016 season.
“I can’t recall a team that has accomplished anything worthwhile finishing .500 in your division,” Payton said earlier this week. “Then you take a team like Las Vegas. There’s a long history and certainly I appreciate that, especially with our fans.
“It’s our job to play our best football this Sunday and get ready to play.”
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