The Denver Broncos were clutch last season, winning 11 one-score games, which tied the 2024 Kansas City Chiefs for the most ever in a single season.
The ability to pull off late-game heroics is a skill, but the chances of repeating an 11-2 record in one-score games in consecutive seasons are extremely thin in the NFL, and coach Sean Payton knows it.
So, how will the Broncos avoid regression in that stat this season? For starters, Payton wants fewer close games.
“There are not just the margins, where are these areas that, ‘Hey, let’s not kid ourselves. We have to improve in these specific areas,'" Payton said in July. "So the best way to get better in those one-score games is, find your way not in as many, and I mean that. I don’t want to chase
that whatever of 13 again. You’d like to not be in as many.”
That message from Payton has been received by the players.
“I think part of the [process of] getting better is reflecting," All-Pro guard Quinn Meinerz said. "As a player, I do individual reflection on how I can be better, not only as a teammate, as a player, as a community member. So part of the head coach’s job is, he has the management of the team. So he [Payton] is like, ‘How can this team get better?’ That was a very clear one that he’s made clear to us as players, like, ‘Hey, it’s really cool that we have this backbone to not flinch in one-score games and almost have a clutch element to our defense or to our offense.’ But I think it was a historic 11-2, and that doesn’t happen very often.
"So staying out of those situations and capitalizing earlier in those games. I think we all kind of felt that as the offense kind of took a little bit to kind of get going. It was a very slow, like you know how a train fully gets loaded up, it takes a long time for that train to get going, but once it does, we have a lot of success there. So that’s going to be our emphasis here in camp.”
Broncos quarterback Bo Nix led seven game-winning drives in 2025, and he posted five fourth-quarter comeback wins. Similar to the one-score victories, those stats reflect a clutch nature for Nix, but Denver would prefer to be in command of games instead of holding on and squeaking by. That might be a tall task with the Broncos' tough schedule, but if Payton's squad wants to take the next step, they will need to control games instead of merely surviving them.
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This article originally appeared on Broncos Wire: Can the Broncos avoid one-score regression in 2026? 'Let’s not kid ourselves'
