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Broncos 2024 schedule predictions: Will Russell Wilson’s return serve as kickoff to Sean Payton’s second season in Denver?
Which quarterback is going to start for the Broncos come Week 1? This week, a different question: Which quarterback will Sean Payton’s team be facing in Week 1?
Could it be Russell Wilson? Patrick Mahomes? Justin Herbert or Aaron Rodgers?
They’re all on the docket for Denver this fall and we should find out soon in what order Denver will face them.
The past couple of years, the NFL has announced its full slate the second Thursday of May (this year, that’s May 9). But as of Monday afternoon, the league hasn’t actually announced its plans.
Still, it’s coming. Probably soon. And that means the moment has again arrived for a time-honored Denver Post tradition: Predicting the Broncos’ schedule.
There’s not many clues so far. We know Denver’s not playing an international game. They’re unlikely to play Thanksgiving Day since it would have to be the primetime slot — Detroit and Dallas host the other two games that day and the Broncos don’t play either.
A new NFL wrinkle this winter: A pair of Christmas Day games despite the holiday falling on a Wednesday. If Denver gets one of those, it will be playing the Saturday before.
Without further ado, here are the dueling scheduling predictions from Broncos beat reporters Parker Gabriel and Ryan McFadden. To the winner: Eternal glory.
McFadden’s projection
Week 1: Indianapolis Colts
Week 2: at Baltimore Ravens
Week 3: at New York Jets
Week 4: Pittsburgh Steelers (Sunday Night Football)
Out of all the games on Denver’s schedule, its matchup against Pittsburgh is one of the few that warrants the spotlight. Less than a year after getting let go from the Broncos, Russell Wilson comes back to the Mile High City with the opportunity to get revenge on head coach Sean Payton, who benched him near the end of the 2023 campaign.
Week 5: at Los Angeles Chargers
Week 6: Bye
Week 7: Carolina Panthers
This might be the least intriguing matchup on Denver’s schedule. Still, this will be an opportunity for the Broncos to build some momentum coming out of the bye week.
Week 8: at New Orleans Saints
Payton will return to New Orleans, where he won a Super Bowl and built one of the league’s most prolific offenses, for the first time as Denver’s head coach. Given the state of both organizations, it’s hard to see this matchup getting a prime time slot. But this will still be a big moment for Payton and the Saints’ fanbase.
Week 9: Las Vegas Raiders
Week 10: at Kansas City Chiefs
Week 11: at Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Week 12: Cleveland Browns
Week 13: at Cincinnati Bengals (Thursday Night Football)
Nix vs. Joe Burrow. Pat Surtain II vs. Ja’Marr Chase. If Nix is indeed the quarterback Payton envisioned him to be, this game warrants a prime time slot.
Week 14: Atlanta Falcons
Week 15: L.A. Chargers
Week 16: at Seattle Seahawks
Week 17: at Las Vegas Raiders
Week 18: vs. Kansas City Chiefs
The only implications this game might have will be the Chiefs trying to secure the first seed in the AFC playoff race — and the Broncos’ draft slot, of course.
Gabriel’s projection
Week 1: Pittsburgh Steelers (Monday Night Football)
The Broncos aren’t likely to be a big primetime draw this fall given the mild expectations, but Russell Wilson’s return will do the trick. Note to the NFL schedule-makers: This one should be early in the season or it could end up being Justin Fields vs. the Broncos.
Week 2: at L.A. Chargers
Week 3: Indianapolis Colts
Week 4: at New Orleans
Maybe you’ve heard: Payton used to coach the Saints. His return to the Bayou will be quite a spectacle, especially if he’s waltzing in with a rookie quarterback as his starter and, essentially, the key to his second act in the NFL.
Week 5: Kansas City Chiefs
Week 6: at Cincinnati Bengals
Week 7: at New York Jets
The Broncos have four games in the Eastern time zone this fall. If Denver gets two of them in back-to-back weeks, look for the franchise to make arrangements to set up shop somewhere out there — a week at the Greenbriar in West Virginia, anyone? — rather than trek back to Denver in between.
Week 8: Bye
Week 9: Atlanta Falcons
Week 10: at Las Vegas Raiders
Week 11: Carolina Panthers (Thursday Night Football)
Week 12: at Seattle Seahawks
Week 13: at Kansas City Chiefs
The Broncos ended the losing streak against Patrick Mahomes and Co. last fall in Denver. Notching a win at Arrowhead in December would be another matter entirely.
Week 14: Cleveland Browns
Week 15: at Baltimore Ravens
Week 16: Las Vegas Raiders
This is the week that would be a Saturday game if the Broncos were going to get put on the Wednesday, Christmas Day extravaganza. Let’s not.
Week 17: at Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Probably manifesting too hard here by avoiding Christmas Day and slotting the trip to Florida for late December, but hey, this is my projection. I’m not asking for that much.
Week 18: L.A. Chargers
Last year the Broncos bookended the season with the Raiders. This year we project a different divisional opponent. Soon enough, we’ll know what the actual scheduling overlords have in store.
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Sally Johnston, mother of Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and co-owner of the Christiania Lodge at Vail, passed away May 17, with the mayor joining her for a final goodbye.
The city leader announced his mom’s passing in a LinkedIn post on Saturday.
“Yesterday we said the final good bye to my mom,” Johnston wrote. He depicted her as selfless, joyful and “a tireless force for goodness.”
Sally Johnston grew up in Port Leyden, N.Y., alongside three sisters. Her father worked as a school principal, while her mother was an arts and music teacher, according to a 2010 article in the Vail Daily.
She followed in their footsteps — teaching music in Boston in the 1960s, her son Mike recalled in his social media post. There, she spearheaded a Head Start program, the Vail Daily reports.
She married her husband, Paul Ross Johnston, in 1970 — the former mayor of Vail, who passed away in 2015. The pair bought a boutique hotel in Vail in 1976.
With her experience in education and psychology, Sally Johnston served as a board member at Third Way Center, a nonprofit that helps youths resolve trauma. She also had a spot on the Vail Mountain School Board and was involved with the Vail Religious Foundation.
“She loved people for their beauty and their brokenness alike, which always had the power to make each of us feel unafraid, unashamed, perfect again — the way we were once before the world taught us to doubt,” Johnston wrote. “She changed my world, and she convinced me with a ferocity I will never surrender that we can all change the world, because I watched her do it every day.”
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.
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