Good morning, Broncos Country!
The Denver Broncos head into their bye week in a really good spot.
After a great road win in Charlotte against the Carolina Panthers, the Broncos sit at 7-2. The bye comes after a gauntlet of a start to the season, in which Denver played some of the best teams in the NFL.
For now, the Broncos lead the AFC West standings, are near the top of the AFC playoff seedings for home-field advantage, and are clearly one of the best teams in the league.
Now, with some injuries and guys dinged up, the bye comes
at a great time.
We’re in a really good spot, obviously where you want to be,“ Broncos quarterback Bo Nix said to the media after the win over the Panthers. ”You want to be first in your division. You want to be winning football games. We’ve played a really tough part of our schedule. At 7-2, we feel really confident, but at the same time, there’s a lot of things that we could get better at. We’ve said this every week, and some weeks we’ve gotten better at other things; some things we still got to clean up.
“But overall, we’re finding explosive plays, doing better on third down today, stayed out of the third-and-long situations like we’ve been wanting to do. At the end of the day, we scored enough to win the game, and that’s what’s important going into the bye.”
At least for Nix, he loves the bye week.
As he said after the Panthers win:
“You get stuck in Groundhog Day over time doing the same thing over and over every week. I can tell you exactly what I’m doing every day of the week, so this will be a good break, good rest for us. We all feel really good about it, feel like we need it, our coaches. We’ll get some rest. Players will get some rest, and then we’ll start right back up next week with our next opponent. It’s just going to be a good time to relax and also debrief and look back at a few things and just have a great breakdown and sort of digest where we’ve been and what we’re doing and where we want to go.”
Since coming to Denver, Sean Payton knows how to handle the bye week and has the post-bye week figured out. The Broncos are 3-0 coming out of the bye under Payton. A big reason why is the time off he gives the players.
What waits for Denver after the bye is the Las Vegas Raiders on Nov. 22 at home.
“I think I told you guys this. I went two or three years practicing on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and we were OK. I can’t recall the year, but I called (Kansas City Chiefs head coach) Andy (Reid) one year in Philly. He was 9-0 after the bye … and he just said I get them out of here, and I see them the next Monday. And ever since we’ve done that, we’ve been pretty good after the bye as well. So, they’ll rest. The guys getting treatment will be in, and everyone else will. At some point, we’ll get a jump start on Vegas.”
Given how close the Broncos like to play and win their games, the bye comes at a great time for the fans, too.
