Courtland Sutton has seen the good, the bad, and the ugly during his long tenure with the Denver Broncos. So, if anyone has a good pulse on where the orange and blue are headed into a new season after bursting a playoff drought, it’s the captain who leads the team from wide receiver.
Sutton was named a captain for the fifth-straight season on Wednesday. One of the 10 oldest players on the team, the 30-year-old, is poised for a huge year. He finally has a quarterback to work with for two years in a row, a rarity during his eight seasons in Denver.
Sutton is coming off one of the best years of his career, where he caught 81 passes for 1,081 yards and eight touchdowns. It propelled the Broncos to the playoffs, and he’s the main weapon for the team this fall if they’re to take the massive step forward that many have predicted.
“Watching college football this past weekend, every team goes into the season saying, ‘This is our year.’ Every team has that mindset, and respectfully so, you should have that mindset going into each season. You shouldn’t say we might be able to scratch this amount of wins. You want to have that mindset that you can go win,” Sutton explained. “But that’s not realistic for every team and for us to put together the pieces that we did over the offseason, whether in free agency or during the draft, and getting guys to return from last year’s team.”
The Broncos essentially brought back everyone from their 10-win season, added some notable talent in the draft that could impact the team immediately, and signed a few free agents who should bolster the team’s weaknesses. Denver even got deals done with all their big names asking for new money, like Sutton himself, and most recently on Wednesday, Nik Bonitto. The vibes and hopes are very high.
“We have an understanding that nothing is going to be handed to us. There is no complacency of, hey, we made a playoff game, Whoopty. Like, no one really cares about that at the end of the day. We work in a business that’s what have you done for me lately,” Sutton said. “Last year’s is wiped clean, and it’s about what we’re going to do this year? What are we going to do when the ball gets kicked off on Sunday?”
“The season begins, and it’s, what are we going to do? I think that the mindset is chasing that 1% at the end of the day. I keep saying the 1% but I firmly believe that it’s a daily battle.” It’s not just something that you can overlook each day. We just had a great practice. You’ll hear me say it all the time in meetings. We’re gonna go in here and watch this film, correct what we did, what we didn’t do. Things that we can get better at, attention to the details and fine-tuning.”
Sutton and the Broncos will try to chase down that 1%, the Chiefs, who have won the AFC West nine-straight years — the entire time Denver’s standout pass-catcher has been in the NFL.