Broncos players comment on disappointing loss

Same title, different week. That is the recurring theme of the 2022 and now the 2023 Denver Broncos.

If you don’t set high expectations, you won’t be disappointed. That’s what I reminded myself on Thursday night when I turned on the game. Of course, in reality, it’s never possible to detach like you want to. Watching a loss unfold will never be painless, and disappointment will lurk for a very long time afterwards.

Every week, the interviews are exactly the same. I understand there’s only so much you can say when you don’t take home the win, but does it have to be the same thing every time? They’re getting way too comfortable with their post-game interview script.

This week was no exception as the Denver Broncos fell 8-19 to the Kansas City Chiefs. I don’t care if the Chiefs are defending Super Bowl champions. I don’t care if they’re an exceptional force to be reckoned with. Bottom line is that when two teams go out on the field, they’re supposed to be equals in competition. If we lose, we lose, and it doesn’t matter that we lost to a good team because we’re also supposed to be a good team.

I’m not even saying all this to come down on the players specifically. I couldn’t tell you why we lose every game or what is consistently going wrong, and I don’t even know what they could say that would be better. This has just been a bad season. It’s been a bad string of seasons. I think because of this, it’s so exhausting to hear the same things over and over.

There are still a few snippets worth mentioning, I think. I appreciated WR Jerry Jeudy’s perspective on being “close” to the win while emphasizing that close isn’t good enough.

“I like the fact that we will see them [Kansas City] again, for sure. I don’t like the fact that we are that close. You always have to finish.”

“That was a tough loss,” Jeudy admitted, “At the end of the game, we could have got the dub, but they had a good drive at the end. We can’t have turnovers. We have to watch the film and see what we need to fix.”

The WR represents an entire team that’s collectively disappointed and trying to do better. I really do believe they want to put themselves in a position to win. I don’t know what else to say about that.

The Broncos’ defense probably had their best game personally on Thursday, though, and ILB Alex Singleton was asked if it showed the defense was still together.

“Like I said, we are together, and we’re going to continue to be together,” Singleton assured, “Whoever is here when we line up and play against Green Bay in a week and a half, we will try to play a better game than tonight.”

As a leader on the team, safety Justin Simmons shared a little about the team’s next steps. “We got to regroup and get this nice little, short weekend here and hopefully get some guys back…It’s taking the positives and overhyping on the negatives and improve moving forward so we can keep the consistency here defensively.”

Simmons noted that although there was a lot of improvement, it wasn’t good enough. From a defensive point of view, he briefly described his thoughts on the end of the game.

“…We scored to make it a one-possession game. There was a critical third and two or third and three, I think it was. That was a big down for us. And after that, they got into field goal range, and we were able to hold them to a field goal and that made it a two-possession game.”

“I’m not going to say it negates the rest of the game, it’s just tough,” he added, “We got to put a full game together, defensively.”