Orange Colored Glasses: This is the fun part
“This is the fun part, but the regular season (AKA the “extended pre-season) is almost over for your Denver Broncos. There remains only the Black Hole on their schedule and after that they will take a much-needed week off to rest up and wait for their divisional round opponent to be revealed.”
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Nobody thought that the Houston Texans were going to actually beat the Denver Broncos on Sunday – not even when Matt Schaub tossed his touchdown pass to pull his squad within three points in the third quarter. No, the outcome of Sunday’s game was all but pre-determined. Denver was going to pull out a win against the lousiest team in football. Still, Peyton Manning’s three fourth quarter touchdown passes were surprising. The last of those – an end zone strike to Julius Thomas – made number eighteen the most prolific single-season touchdown passer of all time with fifty-one sixes to his credit in 2013.
It’s exciting to watch records being broken – especially when they had belonged to Tom Brady. Another one will fall next week in Oakland when Manning eclipses Drew Brees’ single-season yardage total.
Star Wars numbers, indeed.
This is the fun part, but the regular season (AKA the “extended pre-season) is almost over for your Denver Broncos. There remains only the Black Hole on their schedule and after that they will take a much-needed week off to rest up and wait for their divisional round opponent to be revealed.
After that life as a Broncos fan will be stressful again. Very stressful.
Perhaps the Ravens will come to town – or the Steelers or Dolphins or Chargers or Chiefs. Regardless of which bottom-tier playoff team it is that visits the Mile High City we will all be haunted by what happened last year in a match-up the Broncos seemed sure to win. We will be reminded about Peyton Manning’s proclivities in big games and we will cautiously Google the weather report.
The Broncos’ lack of a pass rush is going to enter our minds and we’ll stress out about the secondary. We will chew our nails wondering whether Champ Bailey can hold up and who will replace Von Miller. Trindon Holiday will give us waking nightmares. Can Montee hold on to the Ball? Denver will be heavily favored versus opponent X in that first playoff game but point spreads provide little solace to a fan base that has been bitten the way Broncos Country has been.
And that’s why we need to enjoy this week.
It’s like finals or over and the Broncos have a few days of school left before they graduate and go on to college. Now is the time to party. The Raiders may give Denver a game – in much the same way Houston did – but we will all know that they will go on to win somehow. And all the while Manning will be separating himself from history, widening the gap between his incredible season and those of would-be future record holders. Every pass is going to matter and every catch will bring jubilation. This is a week for basking in the splendor of special before hunkering down and preparing for the inevitable.
The Broncos might go to the Super Bowl and they might win it. But we all know the odds are better that they will slip somewhere along the way and allow some other team to play in their stead. We cannot assume that they’ll get there. What we can assume is that they will beat the miserable Raiders in the final week of the most spectacular regular season ever by a quarterback. This is the fun part.
