Courtland Sutton and the Denver Broncos are gearing up for a pivotal AFC West showdown against the Kansas City Chiefs this Sunday at Empower Field at Mile High. If the Broncos win, they can take control of the division race, but if they lose, the division will still be anyone’s for the taking.
Many people are looking at this as one of the biggest games in Denver since the 2016 AFC Championship game when Peyton Manning and Tom Brady squared off for the last time. The stakes are high for this one, and the whole country should be watching, but for Sutton, it’s just another Sunday.
“It’s another week. It’s another opportunity… You can’t make it bigger than what it is. It’s our next opponent,” Sutton said after Broncos practice on Wednesday. It’s obviously a divisional game; it’s always a division game. Last week was similar, where it was our next opponent, but it was the Raiders. It’s our next opponent, and it just happens to be the Chiefs. We have to go into it with the same mindset of it being the most important thing because it is the next thing. We’re going to go into this week fully prepared to go out and perform our best against a division opponent. It’s just our next opponent.”
Broncos Country should be happy with the fact that their veteran leader in the locker room is approaching the showdown this way. The worst thing that could happen Sunday is for the team to come out acting all nervous and make a bunch of mistakes that put themselves in a hole early. This team has the talent to compete with anyone in the league, but all 53 players in the orange and blue have to come together and not let the pressure of the moment get to them.
For second-year quarterback Bo Nix, the mentality is similar to Sutton’s.
“[The preparation is the] same as it is every week. They have a really strong defense. They’re going to provide a different challenge than what we’ve seen, and we have to execute on all levels on offense. We have to run the ball efficiently, we have to do a good job completing passes, getting them in tackling situations and then sustaining drives with third down conversions. That’s going to help out our defense a lot and could help us out just with scoring points, just with sustaining drives,” Nix said.
In last year’s playoffs, Nix showed poise early in the game when he led a drive to get the Broncos out to a 7-0 lead on the road against the Buffalo Bills. While the rest of the game didn’t go Denver’s way, his mentality as a rookie in such a big spot was a good sign for the future.
Broncos head coach Sean Payton had an interesting spin on things when talking about the mindset heading into Sunday’s game. In his eyes, there are much bigger games on the horizon, but his team can’t overlook this one.
“The players are aware of division games, and certainly there’s great respect for a team that’s had the staying power that they’ve had. So you’ve worked hard to put yourself in a position to play a game like this at home. We’ll play in bigger games. I say that all the time, ‘We’re going to play in bigger games,’ but this is the next one, and this is a team that’s playing really well right now. You can see that. So we’re going to have to be on point,” Payton said.
It’s no secret that this game is an important one. The Broncos are 8-2, but aren’t getting the respect that the other two-loss teams around the league are getting, and it’s because they’ve only beaten one team with a winning record in Philadelphia. This is the biggest test of the season for the Broncos, and an opportunity for Payton’s squad to show that their outstanding record isn’t a fluke.