It has been a long and dreary road for fans of the Denver Broncos
since winning Super Bowl 50. It seems like that was the last time Broncos Country was able to let out a prolonged sense of excitement. 

Sure, there have been some small victories since then, but those have been very few and far between as the team has not made the postseason since. Sean Payton and his staff hope that things start to turn around this coming season with a new quarterback in the fold, but most analysts predict it will take some more time. 

The schedule for the upcoming season is now here and many have already taken a crack
at how the team will fare in 2024. But it is not an easy schedule. The team opens with three of its first four games on the road and later in the season has back-to-back games against the two teams that met in last year’s AFC Championship Game, Baltimore and Kansas City. 

For the Broncos to have success in 2024, they are going to have to buckle down and win some games against opponents that they should be in a position to beat based on how things currently stand. You’ll notice that protecting home field is a common pattern here. 

Denver Broncos must-win games in 2024

Week 5 vs. Las Vegas Raiders

The Broncos have a difficult stretch to open the season, playing at Seattle in Week 1, at Tampa Bay in Week 3 and at New York Jets in Week 4. The first game on the schedule that screams “must win” comes in Week 5. 

Last season, the Broncos finally won a game against the Kansas City Chiefs, snapping a 16-game skid against them. But lost in the shuffle is the team’s 8-game losing streak against their most-hated rival, the Raiders, which dates back to 2019. 

In many ways that losing streak is worse because the Chiefs have been Super Bowl contenders for the last several years while the Raiders have just been the Raiders. The Broncos need to get this monkey off of their back and if they could do that this early in the season it could create a ton of momentum to go forward with. 

Week 8 vs. Carolina Panthers 

You have to beat the bad teams at home in the NFL and the Panthers are still a bad team. The Panthers have never won a game in Denver (0-4) and this would be a bad time for them to start. 

If the Broncos don’t win this game, we won’t be able to take them too seriously this season. 

Week 15 vs. Indianapolis Colts

The Colts are not necessarily a bad team, but they are not necessarily a good team either. This game is later in the season, taking place in mid-December, but the key is that the Broncos will be coming off of their bye week. 

The bye week is already late for the Broncos (the last bye week of the season) and they will have already played 13 games to this point. They need to use the week off to get some well-deserved rest but be ready to come out firing on all cylinders at home against Indy. 

The good teams win after the bye week, just ask Andy Reid. 

Hope is no longer a strategy, O Captain, my Captain. Not a working strategy. Not a Stanley Cup-winning strategy, at any rate. Without Gabe Landeskog, the Avs are stuck spinning their wheels in neutral, pining for the hockey gods to give them a push.

“I’d like to be able for him to come back and be able to play,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said late Friday after his team’s playoff dreams ended with a gut punch of a loss at home, this time to Dallas, for a second straight spring. “And I think that can happen. And if anybody can do it, Gabe can do it.”

Amen. If you’re not rooting like heck for Landy to be back out on that ice, raising the bar and setting the tone, you don’t have a soul. Let’s be clear: The Avs aren’t in this championship window without him.

But let’s be clear on something else, too, the uncomfortable reality even if you wear burgundy and blue glasses: This franchise has been running in place for almost two years, in part, because of him. Because of that blasted knee. Because of those blasted surgeries. Because of that blasted hope.

None of this is Landy’s fault. Are you kidding? Nobody this side of Nathan MacKinnon wants to finish what the ’22 Stanley Cup champs started more than big No. 92, where the buck, and the bull junk, always stops.

But like the castaways on Gilligan’s Island, the Avs look as if they’ve spent 18 months stranded on the beach, singing songs by the campfire, waiting for a rescue ship that may or may not ever come.

“I’m optimistic and hopeful,” Bednar said of his absent captain. “(But) I don’t think we got close to getting him back (this postseason).”

It’s the teasing, the hope, that kills you. And we get it. You completely understand why the Avs would treat Landy’s knee with kid gloves. Why they’d give him all the time he needs. As with Valeri Nichushkin, the other elephant in Bednar’s locker room, nobody on this roster steps in and does what the captain did — and presumably still can.

Landeskog’s absence was especially felt in this second-round series, when a team as sound, physical and deep as Dallas needed to have its teeth rattled a few times. When Jamie Benn cheap-shotted Devon Toews in Game 2, for example, there were no immediate reprisals, no one stepping forward to enforce on-ice justice.

“What, do you just want us to take penalties and fight?” veteran defenseman Jack Johnson replied after Game 6 when I asked about this roster’s toughness. “Is that what you want?

“I mean, toughness comes out in different ways. If you just want penalties and to fight, you’re not going to get very far in the playoffs.

“The team that won (in 2022) had plenty of toughness … I don’t think that anyone looked down the list of that (title) team and saw a lot of goons.”

No, but they did look down that list to see Landy and Nazem Kadri — two dudes who gave on this stage as good as they got.

The longer general manager Chris MacFarland is hamstrung by sentiment, the longer this championship window remains in stasis. Was MacKinnon a frustrating watch, at times, against the Stars’ defense? No question. But as long as Gabe’s future and Nichushkin’s status with the Avs are murky, so are your parade plans.

It’s that simple.

O Captain, my Captain, come back soon. Or don’t come back at all. The island’s getting lonely. Lord Stanley’s skies are getting darker sooner here with each passing year.

“I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that,” Bednar said of Gabe and Val. “You hate having that uncertainty because it makes it hard to plan … for management, for Chris and Joe (Sakic) …

“Those are obviously a couple of guys who have significant cap hits. I don’t know where that goes or (how) far this goes this summer. That’s a challenge. That’s a big challenge.”

It is. Meanwhile, the wheels keep spinning. And this much is clear: The hockey gods are done doing Bednar any more favors. From here on out, if the Avs are going to move forward, MacFarland’s going to have get out of the car and do the pushing himself.

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