Denver, CO
The 10 moments that made the Broncos’ playoff return a reality
The Broncos’ route to their first playoff berth since 2015 took them through highs and lows from coast to coast. They lost in Seattle and won in Tampa. They spent a week in West Virginia and played Thursday night on the road twice.
They ripped through Sean Payton’s old division, sweeping four games against the NFC South.
They won three or more straight twice, lost back-to-back twice and ultimately clinched a spot in the AFC Wild Card round on the final day of the regular season.
Along the way, Bo Nix and company turned a low-expectation season into a 10-win success story. Here are the 10 moments that defined the run.
1. Bo breaks out
Week 3 at Tampa Bay
The Broncos set out on a two-game East Coast swing with an 0-2 record and a rookie quarterback who’d thrown four interceptions without a touchdown in his first two starts. Instead of trying to break him in slowly against a solid Tampa Bay team, though, Sean Payton got aggressive. Nix zipped the Broncos down the field by completing four passes for 70 yards and then scoring on a 3-yard run. Denver’s defense snuffed Baker Mayfield and company and the Broncos rolled to a 26-7 win — their first of the season. Not only that, but they got a glimpse of what their young quarterback could do when in rhythm.
2. Hurricane hunters
Week 4 at New York Jets
The Broncos spent the work week following Tampa Bay at the Greenbrier in West Virginia. Despite some trepidation about the trip beforehand, Broncos players now look back on it as a galvanizing week for a team still figuring out its identity. Of course, they had some rigmarole, too. The remnants of Hurricane Helene marred the practice week and forced the team onto indoor tennis courts for its Friday practice. That hardly mattered for Vance Joseph’s group, which dominated Aaron Rodgers and the New York Jets that weekend. Nix might have had minus-7 passing yards in the first half, but the defense ensured it didn’t matter. Biggest play of the game: A fourth-and-10 sack of Rodgers by P.J. Locke off the edge. It was a moment when Denver realized it might just have something special brewing.
3. Pick-six Pat
Week 5 vs. Las Vegas
All of the good vibes the Broncos found in John Denver country looked like it might go for naught back home against the Raiders. Nix threw an early pick, Denver started slow and was on the verge of falling behind 17-3 when All-Pro cornerback Pat Surtain II made one of the signature plays of the season. He snatched a Gardner Minshew overthrow and ran it back 100 yards for a touchdown. Instead of a 14-point hole, the Broncos pulled even with Las Vegas. By the end, Minshew was benched and Denver rolled to a 34-17 win. It put an embarrassing, eight-game losing streak to the Raiders to bed and showed Denver had toughness and resilience.
4. Sean smashes the past
Week 7 at New Orleans
It’s not that Payton didn’t seem happy to be in Denver before this game, but something clicked for him when he took the Broncos to New Orleans for his homecoming bout against the Saints. After Denver smashed the Saints, 33-10, Payton gave perhaps his most introspective public comments since he got the Broncos job. “I’m glad I’m here,” he said, referring to his current employer. There was something cathartic about the win — players knew it meant a lot to their coach — and of course, it mattered in the scorebook, too. It put the Broncos back above water at 4-3 and sent them into a mini-bye week on a positive note.
5. OLB future set
Week 9 at Baltimore
The Broncos only made one move at the trade deadline and it was to send Baron Browning to Arizona despite a 5-4 record. They had more than just the one move in mind, though. Denver the day before their game at Baltimore agreed to a four-year contract extension with OLB Jonathon Cooper, finalizing a choice of direction for the future on the edge.
The solidification of Cooper as a building block coincided with Nik Bonitto’s rise. He entered that week with sacks in six straight games and, though the streak ended against the Ravens, he then went five more games after with at least a half sack. The group entered the season with question marks. Now it looks like a long-term strong spot. That got set in stone with this pair of moves.
6. Progress blocked
Week 10 at Kansas City
Nix and the Broncos offense authored a defining moment of the season when they drove into position to beat Kansas City in the waning seconds at Arrowhead Stadium. Disaster followed. Wil Lutz’s 35-yard field goal was blocked when the Chiefs caved in the left side of Denver’s protection unit — an issue that had been bubbling for weeks — and stole a win in the process. The Broncos’ postgame locker room was as devastated as you’ll find in the regular season. Denver players vowed to make sure the moment didn’t break their spirits, and indeed from there the group mounted a four-game winning streak to get from 5-5 to 9-5.
7. A helping heave
Week 11 vs. Atlanta
Perhaps no moment captures how the Broncos rebounded from that crusher in Kansas City better than Javonte Williams’ touchdown “run” against the Falcons the next week. Quotation marks because, of course, Williams didn’t actually run into the end zone. He thumped former Denver stalwart Justin Simmons at about the 4-yard line, pushed him toward the goal line and then hung on while several teammates joined the scrum and literally carried him into the end zone. “That’s a culture play right there,” defensive tackle Malcolm Roach said after his team polished off a 38-6 whooping of the Falcons in which Nix threw for 304 yards and four TDs.
8. Marvelous Marvin
Week 13 vs. Cleveland
Marvin Mims Jr.’s resurgence in Denver’s offense had already begun before the Broncos started a wild, back-and-forth Monday night shootout against the Browns. But he made the single-biggest play of his season so far in the second half. Mims trucked up the seam and hauled in a perfect ball from Nix before racing to a 93-yard touchdown. It only temporarily put Denver up two scores — old friend Jerry Jeudy quickly responded with a 70-yard touchdown — but it served two purposes: The Broncos found a down-the-field option and Mims got uncorked for what has turned into a highly productive stretch run.
9. Casa Bonitto
Week 15 vs. Indianapolis
The Broncos’ third-year outside linebacker was already in the midst of a breakout season, but he turned the dial up in December. Bonitto ran an interception back for a touchdown against Cleveland and then made the play of his season against the Colts. He read an attempted trick play, snatched a lateral at midfield and ran it back 50 yards for a touchdown. It was part of a scoring blitz that turned a near two-score deficit — thank you Jonathan Taylor — into a comfortable lead and critical victory for the team’s playoff hopes. Bonitto’s 13.5 sacks are accentuated by two touchdowns and several late-game, closer-type plays. This one was all of the above.
10. Clinching time
Week 18 vs. Kansas City
The Broncos missed on two chances to clinch, blowing a 21-10 lead against the Los Angeles Chargers and falling in overtime at Cincinnati. That left just the finale against the Chiefs to get the job done. They caught a break when Andy Reid’s team already had the No. 1 seed wrapped up and sat more than a dozen key players, but they also made sure that break didn’t go begging. Nix threw for 321 yards and four touchdowns, the defense held Carson Wentz and the Kansas City offense to 97 total yards and the Empower Field crowd partied and celebrated a long-awaited return to the postseason.
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Denver, CO
Prolonged ‘Welly weather,’ our first taste of winter and Lisa’s official first-snow prediction for Denver
Lisa Hidalgo and Ryan Warner were ready to bust out the rain boots for their September weather and climate chat.
Denver7’s chief meteorologist and the Colorado Public Radio host delved into a rare, days-long rainy stretch, our first taste of winter and the pair’s official first-snow-date prediction for Denver.
‘Welly weather’
“Two things happened this week that rarely happen in Colorado,” Warner said. “The first is that when I went to bed it was raining. I woke up and it was raining. And two, the rain meant I could wear my ‘Wellies,’ my Wellington boots.”
“These are rare events,” the green-rubber-boot-clad Warner quipped during the conversation.
Warner and Hidalgo held their conversation on the heels of an unusually rainy spell. In Colorado, rain storms often come and go quickly. This week’s rainfall, though, came during a slow-moving storm.
“It’s more the direction of it and where it camps out,” Hidalgo explained. “So as you get a low pressure system rolling through the state, and we get all this moisture that wraps around the back side of it, it jams up against the foothills. It’s called an upslope flow.”
In the winter, such a storm would’ve meant inches of snow in Denver. With September highs in the 50s, though, it came down as rain in town as it snowed in the high country.
First taste of winter
The National Weather Service in Boulder estimated Tuesday that “a widespread 5-10 inches” of snow fell at the highest elevations – above 10,500 to 11,000 feet – during the September 22-23 storm.
For the snow-lovers out there (keep scrolling if that’s not you)…
Some healthy snowfall over the past ~18 hrs for some of our higher elevations (mainly east of the Continental Divide above 10,500′).
Pictured: Dakota Hill (Gilpin Co; left); Killpecker (Larimer Co; right) #COwx pic.twitter.com/46surChItd
— NWS Boulder (@NWSBoulder) September 24, 2025
Hidalgo noted things would quickly warm up after what was the area’s first winter weather advisory of the season.
“But this is just a hint of what’s to come,” she said. “And, obviously, we’re going to see a lot more alerts as we get into fall and into winter.”
When will Denver see its first measurable snow?
On average, the first snowfall in Denver happens on Oct. 18. The window has already passed for our earliest first snow, which happened on Sept. 3. The latest first snow in Denver is Dec. 10 – Lisa’s birthday.
With all of that in consideration, Hidalgo predicted this year’s first snow in Denver would fall on Oct. 24.
Warner’s guess? A potentially soggy evening of trick-or-treating after an Oct. 29 first snow.
More weather in-depth
Lisa and Ryan touched on studies on potential connections between both lightning and snowmelt on Colorado’s year-round fire season. They also discussed a study that suggests the eastern half of Colorado is drying out faster than the western half.
For more in-depth weather analysis, watch their full weather and climate chat in the video player below:
Denver, CO
Some Park Hill residents feel Denver is failing on minority outreach in golf course discussion
Saturday morning at Park Hill’s Hiawatha Davis Recreation Center, the City of Denver held a community open house to talk about its next big project: the city park and open space that was formerly the Park Hill Golf Course.
“It’s quite rare for a city to have this large of a park coming in. So it’s really important to us that that process is driven by the community,” said Sarah Showalter, director of planning and policy at the city’s Department of Community Planning and Development.
Residents got to see the plans for the park and the future the city has in store for the surrounding neighborhood.
“The voters clearly said that 155 acres should be a park, but the community is still looking for access to food and to affordable housing,” said Jolon Clark, executive director of Denver Parks and Recreation.
It seemed to be a good turnout, which the city likes, but two groups that appeared to be underrepresented were Black and Latino people, which is a problem, since Park Hill is a historically Black neighborhood.
Helen Bradshaw is a lifelong Park Hill resident. She and Vincent Owens, another long-time resident, came to the open house and said the problem is simple: the city isn’t meeting the neighbors of color where they are.
“The people who are just the average go to work, they might be at work or they have to work today or, you know, they couldn’t get a babysitter or something like that,” Owens said. “A lot of the elders on my block, they’re not going to come to something like this. So, you need to canvass and actually go get the voice of opinion, or they don’t know about it.”
Bradshaw and Owens say they want a neighborhood park and space for the neighbors by the neighbors. They also want a grocery store and opportunities for people who were part of the neighborhood long before it became a gem for development.
The city says that’s what they want as well, and that’s why they want everyone in Park Hill to give their input until the project is done.
“People can go to ParkHillPark.org and they can fully get involved and find out what the next engagement is, how to provide their input, you know, through an email, through a survey,” said Clark.
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