High Points: Young and hungry

“Young and hungry is dangerous,” said the Denver Broncos head coach Sean Payton when he addressed the team’s chances in the upcoming Wild Card round of the NFL playoffs. And that statement has become something of an internet meme as Broncos fans look for any edge going into their game on Sunday against the Buffalo Bills in upstate New York.

And who can blame them? At the start of the season, those in the know — that would be the bookies in Las Vegas — predicted a long losing season for Payton’s bunch. The over/under for Broncos wins, according to the experts, was just 5.5. The team exceeded that by finishing with 10 total wins after starting the season 0-2.

Take that, odds makers.

Now Denver finds itself in the postseason tournament for the first time since the 2015 season. That was the year they went all the way and won Super Bowl 50 behind another Peyton, that would be Peyton Manning.

In the nine years since that Super Bowl win over the Carolina Panthers, 24-10 at Levi’s Stadium, the Broncos have seen 14 quarterbacks start games for five different head coaches. They went from being a storied franchise to one that was just another dog in the lower middle of the AFC pack. But this year saw a revitalization in Payton’s second season at the helm, and a young and hungry team persevered to collect the final seed in the AFC on the last day of the NFL season.

Kudos must go to Greg Penner and the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group who paid $4.6 billion for the team back in the summer of 2022. In a relatively short period, they have righted the wrong way train wreck that characterized the Broncos following the passing of the Broncos mercurial owner Pat Bowlen who had guided the team to three Super Bowl championships. The new owners have been generous in building a new practice facility and have been smart about letting the football people, especially Payton and general manager George Paton, do their jobs. That’s three Pay-tons spelled three different ways if you are keeping track.  

But the biggest reason the Broncos made it this far this year comes down to five letters: B-O N-I-X.

The rookie quarterback with the shortest name in NFL history has come a long way since he started his first game in week one for Denver. This past weekend, he led the team to a 38-0 win over the two-time defending champion Kansas City Chiefs in a must-win game. Sure, the Chiefs rested their best players and didn’t have much to play for. But still, Nix was sensational when it mattered the most. He completed his first 18 passes and put the game away in the first half. For the day, he was  26-of-29 passing for 321 yards and four touchdowns with zero interceptions with a near-perfect 152.4 passer rating.

For their efforts, the Broncos get to go to Buffalo where they will play the second-seeded Bills who are led by Josh Allen, a special player if there ever was one. If the Broncos have a chance — and those aforementioned odds makers say the Bills are favored by 8.5 points — they will need a combination of their most experienced players and their youthful newcomers to outperform expectations.

See if left tackle Garrett Bolles can protect Nix in his postseason debut and if Courtland Sutton can get open against the Buffalo defense. Watch out for Marvin Mims Jr., and see if he can continue to become one of the team’s most impactful players. And let’s see if Pro Bowl linebacker Nic Bonitto can prove his regular season was just the beginning of a stellar career.

Young and hungry can be dangerous. So said the man.