(sad violin music against a purple backdrop) NFL Offseason Amnesia is a difficult condition to cope with. Common symptoms include: forgetting that Travis Etienne Jr. is on the New Orleans Saints now and signed a four-year deal, and wondering where the heck David Montgomery went while watching a Detroit Lions game (he’s on the Houston Texans). More serious cases, though, can lead to completely forgetting who was the best team in the AFC last season. Shockingly, it was the Denver Broncos.
(music gets happier) Luckily, NFL Offseason Amnesia is easily treated by reading lots of blogs and articles right before the season starts, and this is one of those blogs! The Broncos were 14-3 last season, also known as literally the No. 1 seed in the AFC, yet have tumbled down futures boards, currently with the eighth-best odds to win the conference. They are tied with the Cincinnati Bengals (missed the playoffs) and behind the Los Angeles Chargers and Kansas City Chiefs, two divisional opponents they boat-raced last season. The Broncos made a splashy wide receiver addition with Jaylen Waddle, and held onto to basically all of their impact players up and down the roster. Bo Nix is coming off an injury, yes, but he appears ready to go full speed to start the season. Yet somehow Denver has become criminally underrated.
The Denver Broncos are better than their odds suggest
“Counterpoint: Bo Nix isn’t good,” said FanSided content director Cody Williams when I asked to write this article. (I merely responded “is that a yes?” It was indeed a yes).
I disagree that Nix isn’t good, though I will acknowledge these odds are for the AFC champion, implying two to three playoff wins rather than just the best record in the conference again. Nix was out injured for the AFC Championship Game last season, and thus we don’t have much proof of concept for Playoff Bo. But he did kinda … outplay Josh Allen in the Divisional Round before getting injured on one of the last plays of the game. Are we just forgetting all of this?
It was definitely a weird AFC playoff bracket, and these odds price in the fact that the Chiefs are unlikely to have the year from hell again after only managing six wins in the Broncos’ own division. The Chargers stand to be better too with Mike McDaniel calling the offense, and a full year of Joe Burrow in Cincy plus a reloaded New England Patriots team makes Denver’s relative passivity easy to ding.
The Broncos roster is still elite, and their opponents have real holes
But they also have a premium team that is hard to poke holes in. If your argument is “you can’t win without a good quarterback and Bo Nix isn’t good,” I can’t win. But if we look at the rest of that roster, it’s really strong: inarguably the best offensive line in football, a still-beastly front seven that terrorized between the numbers in 2025 and perhaps the best single defensive back in the league in Patrick Surtain II.
Do I think the Broncos are going to just run the table in the AFC with win after win like they did in 2025? No, but I also think it’s patently absurd to give them the third-best odds to win their division after the season they just had. The criticisms are minute and speculative, and the teams that are “better” than them are similarly speculative. And I’m a Patriots fan — you think I’m happy to be saying all this about my longtime rival?
Even if Nix is merely passable, the Broncos deserve to be favorites (or at least tied favorites) for the AFC West and will be in the mix for the AFC Championship again this year. The reverse-hype train has gone off the rails.
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