Good morning, and happy gameday, Broncos Country!
Gameday is finally here.
The Denver Broncos start their journey on what the franchise and the fans hope is a magical season. The good news is the Broncos open the regular season at home. And given the anticipation of the season, Mile High is going to be rocking.
Since the first game is always a roll of the dice, Denver hopes its work pays off. This goes without saying, but the Broncos need a fast start at home against a Tennessee Titans team with a rookie quarterback in Cam Ward.
When asked if Week
1 is more about the team than the opponent, Broncos head coach Sean Payton said:
“The second thing I told them was after we talked about our home game, ‘The scouting of an opponent is essential. Who plays where, who has ball skills, who’s their better run player, who’s their better receiver?’ You have to know the opponent cold, and yet it’s a faceless opponent relative to the work week. Sunday’s game will have been won during the work week, long before kickoff. They have to understand that relative to how you prepare, and what Mondays (are) like, what Wednesdays (are) like, what it’s really like on an elite team. Many times, most of the times, those games are won before the ball’s ever been kicked off.”
The regular season opener also introduces new players to regular season gameday in Denver: Evan Engram, J.K. Dobbins, RJ Harvey, Jahde Barron, Pat Bryant, Talanoa Hufanga, and hopefully Dre Greenlaw (but that doesn’t look like it’ll happen).
“Very excited,” Hufanga said. “It’s going to be a super opportunity. Everybody on the defense tells me it gets really loud in there, so we’ve been practicing just learning how to handle it. I don’t know if you guys can hear, but that crowd noise today was loud during practice. We’re practicing for it and just excited to see them out there.”
We all know that Broncos Country will bring the Rocky Mountain Thunder; it’s just a matter of the Broncos matching that intensity.
However it unfolds, football is back.
“There are two things. It’s our home crowd that has a great tradition, and then on top of that, the actual physical … It’s not a mental thing; it’s a real thing,” Payton said to the media on Friday. “That’s why so many of our Olympic athletes are training at altitude and then going to sea level to compete. I just finished the last thing I just finished saying was, ‘We’re playing at home, and we have to make this the hardest place to play.’”
