And that is exactly what some players saw last year.

"It starts in the meetings," Wolfe said. "I'm not going to say anybody's name, but even me and Von [Miller] were talking about it, there's guys kind of trickling into meetings a little late, a couple of seconds late. In my entire football career, even in little-league football, don't walk in late. And we kind of just let that stuff slide. That's the thing."

It was the gateway to more problems later.

"You open Pandora's box, and then people started being late," Harris said. "Then it's like, 'All right, well, then, that could easily translate to you being lazy on the field, so I'm going to pull [a receiver and commit] a P.I. [pass-interference penalty], and it's third-and-25, and you get a 10-yard P.I.'

"It's just stuff like that where it starts. It starts early. Being late. Not paying attention to detail. That's the attention-to-detail thing -- pulling somebody when you're not supposed to."

Inches became yards, yards become first downs lost on offense or allowed on defense, and the accumulation results in a 2-6 record in the Broncos' last eight games decided by one score -- a mark that ultimately doomed their postseason aspirations.

The lost inches revealed themselves in penalties. In 2018, Denver had the second-most penalties in the league, averaging 7.8 per game. Worse, some of them were clearly preventable, such as the league-worst five penalties for having too many men on the field.

"It's a game of inches, so you can't give up 100 yards of penalties," Wolfe said. "You can't give the other team an entire length of the football field, just give it to them. You're just giving them those yards. The yards in a game, it all matters when it comes down to the end.