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Some people are fans of the Denver Broncos. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Denver Broncos. This 2017 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.


Your team: Denver Broncos.


Your 2016 record: 9-7. Ah see, now that’s the kind of Late Shanny-Era Broncos record I’m accustomed to. Nice hot 4-0 start, and then they turn jussssst shitty enough to miss the playoffs. Feels like everything is back in its proper order.

Gary Kubiak retired suddenly after last season due to health concerns. This is the same man that kept coaching after stroking out on the sideline, so he must have swallowed a grenade or something. Now, the seemingly obvious thing to do after Kubiak’s retirement would be to promote from within and maintain continuity for a team merely two years removed from a Super Bowl title. That’s…not what John Elway did.

Your coach: Former Dolphins D-coordinator and accused frotteur Vance Joseph. You’ll excuse me if I feel a touch icky that Elway—who sports an enormous Trump hard-on—hired a guy who was accused of rubbing his dick on women back when he was an assistant over in neighboring Boulder. Horseface has a history of bold moves paying off, but Joseph presided over the 29th-ranked defense in football last year. Not only that, that defense was actually worse than it was in 2015, when Miami shitcanned Kevin Coyle in midseason. This is the guy you entrust the Broncos to? And you let him unceremoniously leave Wade Phillips out on the street? All Wade Phillips did was come in and build a championship defense. And he’s ADORABLE. Why would you get rid of him? The fuck is this team doing?

Your quarterback: I guess it’s still Trevor Siemian, because Paxton Lynch is just Christian Hackenberg on a better team. No team got boned harder by Tony Romo’s retirement than the 2017 Broncos. I can’t believe a 37-year-old man with a decaying spine would turn down the chance to play on top of a mountain for a shady, unproven head coach. The mind reels, I tell you.


There are few things I hate more than seeing a stud defense forced to drag a limpdick offense through a full season, but that’s what’s about to happen all over again here. This will be one of the least watchable teams in football. The defense will be openly feuding with the offense and extra pissy by Week 2. It’s scary to think that the Broncos are out here relying on a nobody like Trevor Siemian to stay healthy so that they don’t have to trot out Lynch and have him be fully exposed for the flop that he is. Somewhere in Durango, there’s a dude rocking a Tebow jersey and keeping his fingers crossed.

What’s new that sucks: Uhhhhh, Elway wrote an open letter endorsing Neil Gorsuch for some reason.


That was weird. I guess the reason John Elway loves Trump is because he’s the only man on Earth who’s gone bankrupt more often. Either way, I refuse to believe that this donkey-toothed boob is somehow playing chess while the rest of football is playing checkers. Before you throw any Trust In Elway garbage at me, please remember that he was more than willing to pay Brock Osweiler $15M a year and only dodged that bullet because the Texans were slightly dumber. Every success of his is either the product of sheer luck, or of a pyramid scheme that has yet to be exposed. I’m onto you, Elway. I remember MVP.com. I’m no fool.


Speaking of scams, here’s the revised stadium menu:


Eight bucks for crudités? Fuck you, Bowlen family. DeMarcus Ware retired, but not before someone robbed his house. John Bowlen got loaded and drove over 100 mph because he’s a spoiled turd. Safety Will Parks was accused of telling his ex-girlfriend he would send his cousin to “beat her ass.” A fan fell 60 feet from the stands and died. They drafted a 25-year-old Mormon whose comeback from a criminal past spawned four million soft-focus redemption profiles. Meanwhile, Laremy Tunsil has an old weed vid posted on Draft Night and people are like, “We can’t be sure about the kinda folks he hangs out with!”

Also, Jamaal Charles is here.

“I’ve been trusting my knees,” Charles said after Tuesday’s practice.

Okay, but maybe you shouldn’t.

What has always sucked: There’s no polite way to say this, so I’ll just put it out there: Denver smells like poop. For real, I went there this summer and everything smelled like shit. So I asked a reader, “Hey, what’s that smell?” And she rolled her eyes and said, “We’re working on it.” But you know what, Denver? I don’t think you are working on it. I think you’re way too stoned to realize that your town is being smothered in cattle methane vapor. Also, if you ride from DIA to downtown, there is NOTHING along the way. It’s as if downtown Denver was erected three days ago. It’s bizarre. You got all this empty space between the city and the airport. Why didn’t you build the airport next to the city instead of 87 miles away?


As for this team, it was a real change of pace last season when chain-snatching butthole and amateur marksman Aqib Talib was the victim of a dirty hit and not the perpetrator of it. Stretching back to the Alex Gibbs days, you can usually count on the Broncos to be a crew of bush-league assholes, and this year’s outfit is no different. I fully expect them to increase their QB killshot percentage a good 20 points in the hope of scraping out a 10-7 victory every week. KILL IT, BOYS.

What might not suck: Jake Butt rules and my hope is that he recovers from his injury swiftly enough for all of us to make tired Jake Butt jokes on a weekly basis.


Did you know? Emmanuel Sanders is the world’s worst driver?

Sanders was driving a Range Rover down a median, with emergency blinkers flashing, when an 18-year-old driver cut into the median and collided with the SUV… The Broncos receiver told deputies he was “running late for work” and “trying to get around traffic.”


What the fuck? This isn’t Florida, dickhead.

HEAR IT FROM BRONCOS FANS!

Jake:

“Tebow looks like he’s in great shape...” - Literally thousands of individual Bronco fans in Colorado

Michael:

The future of our franchise is invested in a QB who has a better shot at winning a Captain Morgan lookalike contest than a Super Bowl anytime soon.


Alex:

Last November, John Elway went on TV to tell us the horrors of increasing the minimum wage in Colorado. Go fuck a horse, John.


Katherine:

We are going to waste the best defense we have ever had because we have card board cutouts of offensive linemen and Kyle Orton Jr. as QB.


Justin:

For Christmas 2011 my mom got a me a Tebow jersey, his book Through My Eyes: A Quarterback’s Journey, and an accompanying daily devotional.


Tom:

We are going to waste the remaining years of Von Miller’s prime with dogshit quarterbacks, aren’t we?


Chad:

I don’t know if Trevor Seimian (I just had to Google his last name for correct spelling) is any good or if I was just relieved to see a QB with a Bronco uniform throw a ball more than 10 yards without it looking like Daffy Duck flying after mainlining Mad Dog 20/20. If the O line doesn’t protect him better than last year, he will be dead by week 8 and the keys to the offense will be turned over to Chris Cornell’s ghost. Talib is a fucking asshole.


Peter:

I’m from Boulder, whose municipal flag is actually just a screenshot of an email from dad with three-step directions for how to access your trust fund.


Danny:

I spent last Christmas up at my aunt and uncle’s house out in the country in southern Colorado. Long story short, my aunt broke her hip and arm and I decided to help my mom out in taking care of my aunt for a couple of weeks. Anyway, Christmas Day rolls around, and we’re getting pumped to watch the Broncos-Chiefs game that will let us squeeze into the playoffs if we win, when the power goes out. Turns out this is a frequent occurrence out there, high wind conditions snap a power line and because the local county power authority doesn’t give a fuck about the hillbillies and hippies-turned-yuppies that live out there, the power isn’t going to be restored until the next day. I’m already freaking out because I’m a millennial that is literally addicted to the internet and can’t fathom an evening spent in quiet solitude with loved ones. There isn’t even the charm of candlelight because my uncle is a tech nerd and thus has nothing to start a fire, not even a leftover pack of matches or a barbeque lighter, nothing. Luckily, my uncle manages to scrounge up a circa 1999-era boombox and the 90 or so D cell batteries needed to power the fucker, so at least we can listen to the game, with the hope that this will make up for spending Christmas like we’re in Little House on the Prairie. I was wrong. Highlights include: Trevor Siemian getting strip sacked at the three yard line and Russell Okung’s bumbling attempts to recover leading to a safety for the Chiefs. A good run overturned by a flagrant holding call against Okung, which was the 900th time that season that Okung cost us good drives by being a fucking moron. And of course, the cherry on the shit sundae, the infamous wildcat touchdown pass/Andy Reid trolljob by a 350 plus pound nose tackle, which I couldn’t even enjoy the novelty of the play due to it being on the radio. So, our fledgling playoff hopes dashed and the only thing to comfort me being eggnog mixed with Rebel Yell bourbon, I proceed to pass out a couple hours later, cursing this franchise. In closing, fuck Dontari Poe, fuck the Custer County Power, and fuck Russell Okung for being a worse left tackle than Michael Oher.


David:

This was more fun when the Raiders sucked.

Sam:

I just can’t wait for the season to start so all the faux-crunchy trust fund kids with “Raider Hater” bumper stickers to flee the Front Range and hide out in Vail until the snow melts.


Corey:

Denver is not the golden liberal utopia that these fucking hipster douchebag wannabes make it out to be. Take one fucking stroll down 16th street and see a bunch of homeless people selling blowjobs for heroin. The northern part of the state tried to succeed in 2014 because of the liberalness of Denver and you know what they wanted to name themselves? North Colorado. AND FUCK JOSH MCDANIELS.

Sam:

John Elway went to the Trump inaugural. We won the Super Bowl with arguably the greatest quarterback of all time, then the next year proceeded to start and play the season with an undersized, fragile, 7th round pick. Our fanbase, no shit, *still* pines for Tim Tebow. On the Orange Mane, a Broncos message board, people are still arguing over his value, and there’s now a long-ass thread about him trying to play baseball. It’s as boring as it is predictable. Seriously, fuck this fanbase. The term “flavor clown” is used regularly by our racist-ass fanbase on forums to describe players ranging from Emmanuel Sanders to Brandon Marshall (both of them) to Von fucking Miller.


[Ed. note: Flavor clown?]

Justin:

Our Quarterback looks like Michael Cera and this is a team that duped me into buying a Tim Tebow jersey in 2011 because “he was the future”. I’ll never let go of that grudge, nor will i ever get that $125 back.


Kyle:

I’m sure this has been mentioned at some point, but Broncos logo bumper stickers are always placed incorrectly. Every. Fucking. Time.


Alex:

The only thing I am excited for this season is hearing JEEEEEEEEEEEM or Romo say “Semen goes deep to Butt!”


Andy:

Our fans want Paxton Lynch (the Youth-Group-director-ass-looking dude who’s been to every Switchfoot concert) to start over the guy I unironically call “Touchdown Trevor” simply due to his 1st round draft pedigree. I’m excited for Jamaal Charles to totally get 1,000+ yards but think Marshawn Lynch is gonna tank since he’s an aging RB who took a year off. The heir apparent to future hall-of-famer Demarcus Ware got a Kansas City Chiefs tattoo inked on his back last year and was somehow surprised that his social media followers didn’t respond well. There are still way too many Tebow jerseys at home games and our fanbase is as fickle about our quarterbacks (group texts with the family during games area a real rollercoaster) as they are about the proper placement of the Broncos decal on their cars. Fuck the Raiders.

Daniel:

The Rockies are having maybe their best regular season ever and all anyone is talking about is which shitty quarterback is leading the pack at OTAs right now.


Manuel:

We talked ourselves into Trevor Siemian as a legit starter even though he was terrible in college and was a reach in the 7th round. The Alabama O-line as a whole was probably better than our O-line last year, so it wasn’t like he was going to have a great chance but still, I legitimately caught myself thinking several times “You know this Siemian kid could totally pan out, ELWAY HAS DONE IT AGAIN” (Never mind he has a spotty, at best, record on the draft but all of us Bronco fans refuse to admit it) Aqib Talib shot himself and TJ Ward is headhunter but they are OUR criminal headhunters so we can still say that our organization is classy and we do it The Bronco Way. If Talib played for the Raiders and he did that chain snatching stunt against Denver, we would have chastised the SHIT out of him. Hey at least we didn’t overpay for Osweiler so we have that going for us.


Robin and Phil:

The star cornerback needs a gun safety course, a class in not plucking out the opponent’s eyeball, and a class in not taking other peoples’ jewelry. The MVP pass rusher has lost his bookend. He will now be shadowed by 3 offensive linemen every play. Ask any of our transplanted, band wagon fans to list any Bronco other than Peyton Manning. For that matter, ask them to name our current QB. On top of it all, it is almost impossible to distinguish the GM from the mascot.

Zach:

We suck as fans. We like to think we are above the shit from other teams, but deep down we all know we are awful. We turn on players faster than opposing teams blast though our O-line. We act like we are some tortured fanbase who have had to suffer through a terrible line of succession at quarterback because we currently employ Trevor Siemian, forgetting we’ve seen two all-time greats play the position within the last 20 years. I bet you 90% of us don’t remember Jake Plummer took us to an AFC championship game, let alone even played for us. We will act like we were all happy to see Brock go after watching him fail miserably in Houston last year and knew he would all along, but the truth is we all thought he was the next franchise quarterback. We’re fucking idiots. We like to think we are some group of loyal fans, but we will turn on a quarterback the second they fuck up, unless their last name happens to be Tebow. After Percy Harvin returned the opening kickoff of the second half in the Super Bowl for a touchdown, I promptly proceeded to drink a large volume of whiskey and was drunk until about 3 pm the next day.


Landon:

Our team’s success this year hinges entirely on Talib not shooting himself in the leg again. Most citizens of “Broncos Nation” are the same asshats with “Colorado Native” stickers on the back of their trucks (with no sense of irony, as a tipi-shaped airport looms on the horizon). As if all of Denver’s most popular features didn’t all come from somewhere else (e.g., mission-style burritos, green chili, John Elway).


Jonathan:

We’re basically Steelers fans with a better climate and legalized weed.

Varun:

Fuck Peyton… at least Eli actually deserved his two wins.

Max:

Stevie Wonder can see that both of these QBs suck but this team refuses to make any effort to improve the most important position on the field. John “I’m the life blood of the city” Bowlen was just arrested because, despite having hundreds of millions of dollars in resources, he is unable to figure out how to stop drinking and driving. “When pulled over, Bowlen was uncooperative and refused to have his blood taken. He mentioned several times that he was the “son of Denver Broncos owner Pat Bowlen,” according to Sgt. Tim Neumann, spokesman for the California Highway Patrol. “It didn’t help.” What an asshole.

Jacob:

I grew up in Denver, and am a full-fledged member of the cult known as Broncos Country (NOT Broncos Nation as the noob Peyton fanboys call it. See? I’m already insufferable and we haven’t even started). This town is Broncos 24/7. No, it’s literally 24/7, as Denver Sports 760 just announced that they are going to be an all Broncos radio station all the time. Which would be fine, except for the tiny detail that they fucking broadcast Colorado Rockies games and the Rockies are in the middle of their greatest regular season ever. That’s how crazy we are, that a radio station who covers the baseball team can reinvent itself as an all-football radio station and no one bats an eyelash. Training camp just started, and a war has broken out amongst the 24/7 Broncoholics and Colorado’s baseball fans. For some Broncos fans, there is a tangible sense of resentment towards the Rockies right now simply because they’re good, and will take attention away from our beloved football team who is destined for yet another 8-8ish season where the defense pitches a shutout every other game and the two shitty quarterbacks alternate their respective shittiness behind an offensive line who’s only specialty is melting down against any half-decent pass rusher. I love the Broncos with all my heart, but with Trexton Lynchian driving the bus behind an invisible offensive line, the Rockies are the best team in Colorado.


MM:

1. Despite winning the division five times and going to two Super Bowls, there are still a fuckton of people here who will tell you with the seriousness of parents telling their child that they are divorcing that Elway only got rid of Tim Tebow because Elway’s ego couldn’t handle the success and adoration that Tebow would have brought. 2. Denver ran Tebow out of town, then drafted Paxton Lynch who plays just like Tebow but looks like a guy who about 5 seconds from aggressively telling you that the best part of football is “all the puss I can crush”. Lynch is on the depth chart behind a guy who looks and plays like the office accounting intern. 3. It may not matter who lines up at quarterback given that every year Denver signs brittle offensive linemen who end up playing marginally better than tackling dummies or the current old, broken incarnation of Mark Schlereth. Meanwhile our number 1 wide receiver plays like he would rather be doing anything else on a Sunday afternoon, our number 2 receiver calls in sick from practice to go bang groupies, and a cardboard cutout of Ed McCaffrey would probably be more game-changing than any of our other wide receivers. 4. Our best defensive player is one trip to Bonnaroo away from devoting his life to being a Molly tester, our 2nd best defensive player shoots himself while blackout drunk and our 3rd best defensive player is 4 feet tall. 5. Like play-action rollout Herpes, Gary Kubiak not only refuses to leave, but is spreading. Kubiak and two of his kids now work for the Broncos, where they will all spend days scouring college films looking for every quarterback who runs naked bootlegs and every offensive lineman who can zone block like it’s 1998.


Ethan:

In Nashville, where Broncos fans outnumbered Titans fans 3 to 2, I was walking out of the stadium and a belligerently drunk Titans fan came over to me and said “Better luck next time, donkey lover!” Again, I went straight chalk when attempting to talk trash and said “Win a Super Bowl and then maybe you can start talking.” He said “When are you gonna stop living in the past?” and flipped me off to which I told him to get bent. I never realized how bad I am at trash talking, and anyone who witnessed this incident probably came to the conclusion that Broncos fans are unoriginal, soft, and horrible at talking shit. I’m sure this representation I created is correct and shared among many fans of the other 31 teams.


Matthew:

Because every midwesterner and SoCal bro that is moving to Denver is suddenly the biggest Broncos historian in the state. The Rockies are having their greatest season in their miserable history and all local radio wants to talk about is which shitty QB will be the first die behind the worst o-line in the league. Denver is becoming a shitty version of San Francisco culture mixed with LA’s traffic problems. FUCK Joe Flacco and Rahim Moore with a rusty railroad spike.

Mike:

Half the current fan base is made up of people who were “Peyton Manning fans” and are waiting to dust off their Colts jerseys once the post championship glow wears off. We don’t have one player on our roster who should be throwing a football outside of the 4th quarter of a pre-season game.


Ryan:

This fanbase is so easily divided and we’ve been at each other all offseason over a QB controversy that no one outside the area gives a flying fuck about. After watching one of the league’s worst offensive lines get our QBs killed over and over in recent seasons, we went out and drafted a left tackle in the first round who looks like a hideous offspring of Mark Davis and has trouble against the bull rush. That seems like it would be pretty important when you play in a division against guys like Khalil Mack, Joey Bosa, and Justin Houston. But in John Elway we trust, right? The naming rights to our stadium still belong to a failed retail chain that closed its final store over a year ago after declaring bankruptcy, yet our shitbag team president and CEO, Joe Ellis, can’t be bothered to find a suitable replacement. Also fuck all of Mike Shanahan’s ego driven draft pick disasters from the 2000s, fuck Jack Del Rio, fuck Eddie Kennison, double fuck Rahim Moore, and triple fuck Josh McDaniels with Bluecifer’s right front hoof.


Larry:

John Elway could flu-shit on a orphaned child in the middle of rush hour in downtown Denver and 90% of Bronco fans would trumpet it as the greatest thing they’ve ever seen. We given the reigns of our team to a man who coached his last team’s defense to 29th in total yards allowed with a defense that had Ndamukong Suh and Cameron Wake on it!


Michael:

My best friend since 8th grade and I went to the season opener last year in Denver (Super Bowl rematch). As is our custom, we went to Elway’s Steakhouse the night before the game in hopes that the man himself would be there. We were thrilled; Elway and an entourage were there. It was difficult to determine who was at the table, given where we were seated. We speculated about who might be in his inner circle: is Von here? Maybe Peyton is in the house? We watched closely to see who left the table (restroom, bar, etc.), hoping to see a fan favorite. Some slick wearing a suit gets up and walks to the bathroom. We are horrified to see that it is none other than Donald Trump Jr. who was in town trolling. He was in Elway’s entourage.


Alex:

Because Paxton Lynch was literally picked 100 picks before Dak Prescott. Oh and Lynch’s facial hair looks like he bought one of those off-brand Halloween store pirate outfits, took the goatee from the outfit and glued it to his face. Bring back Tebow from Mets!

Ariel:

My dad had a heart attack on Monday December 28th, 2015 (he’s ok). After rushing to the hospital, I thought about turning on the Monday night game to watch it with him. Denver was playing Cincinnati and losing would mean they definitely wouldn’t clinch the #1 seed, and could possibly drop to the 6th seed. In the AFC - that’s a death wish, because nobody makes it out of New England alive in January. So this was essentially a must-win game. But my dad just had a heart attack, and I wasn’t going to turn on this stressful game and give him another one. So I followed it on my phone while he lay there in bed, weak and exhausted, having just barely avoided a tragedy. And he kept asking me for updates, wanting to know if his beloved Broncos - who he had seen lose five Super Bowls by that point - were going to fuck it up again. We ended up watching a repeat of the Bengals game the next day, and it was gloriously stress free. But the fact that my dad and I both wanted to watch a stupid game when it literally could’ve killed him is just absurd. Fuck football. Fuck the Broncos. And fuck heart attacks.

Chase:

25% of Broncos Fans can’t even put our fucking decal on properly. They put it on with the wrong fucking angle. You have to go to the suburbs or actually know a bar that plays the Broncos games when it’s on. So many bars in Denver are Philly bars, or Saints bar etc that they don’t bother playing the Broncos game if the fucking Bears are playing at the same time. This is due to every asshat from Illinois, Wisconsin, etc who wants to live in Denver since we also have some cold weather but you can go skiing in under an hour. Denver is in the middle of a construction boom. This is a good thing. All of the new buildings being built are where surface parking lots used to be. This is a bad thing. Now there are no fucking places to park. All of the available parking spots are filled up by the construction workers who get to work between 6-630. There are so many construction workers downtown wearing orange it looks like the yard at Attica. If there is wind from the north, Denver smells like Greeley (that means cow shit). If the wind is from the west, Denver smells like beer being brewed (thanks Coors). If the wind is from the east, it smells like dog food (thanks Purina). If the wind is from the south, there is no smell since no one in Colorado Springs has a soul. Watching Russell Okung pass block last year was like potty training my kid. It’s not pretty, there’s going to be lots of running for sure, there’s going to be some holding, and someone is going to need consoled afterwards. We spend a first round draft pick on a Guy Fawkes look alike who happens to play QB. We could have spent that first round pick on an offensive lineman since we looked like MAC team playing O line last year. The Broncos have won 3 super bowls but still have the worst scoring margin of any team to play in multiple super bowls. We’ve been outscored by over 100 points in the Super Bowls they’ve played in. Derek Wolfe looks like a cartoon character for a caveman. He is seriously 3 inches between the eyes. Everyone in the NFL also casually forgets that few years ago he had a seizure after a game, then lost 50lbs and couldn’t play the rest of the season. Nothing to see here folks. There is an oil company in Denver that had some partnership with the Broncos. As a result they drilled 50+ wells that were all named after Bronco Ring of Famers. This company promptly fired all the people who worked on those wells after the price of oil collapsed. We drafted the first offensive lineman in the draft this year. I was 69% sure he was going to drop his baby at the draft after he held the kid up like fucking Simba. This lineman is the oldest player to be drafted in first round since Brandon Weeden. Sigh. Fuck the Broncos for taking away season tickets from people that didn’t go to 50% of our home games last year. People got notices in the mail saying their season passes were revoked. A few of the people that got tickets revoked was due to them being fucking sick in the hospital. Nice real nice. Fuck the In Com Plete chant. I am embarrassed every time I hear this.

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