The Denver Broncos Have a Long History of Sliding Late in the Season

The Denver Broncos have won more regular season NFL games than any other franchise going back to 1978, when the league expanded to 16 games. The distribution of those wins, though, tell an interesting story. When Denver lost at home to Oakland last week, it was not an unusual result for a franchise that so often dominates from September through November.

Over eight years ago, Doug Driven wrote this post about the Broncos late-season splits. I’m revisiting that today, but adding in “against the spread” records for those games to provide further context.

Here is Denver’s performance by week going back to 1978, for every year when a 16-game schedule was played (so, excluding 1982 and 1987).

For the last quarter of the season, for a period covering over 35 years, the Denver Broncos have won barely half of their games, and covered 41% of those games against the spread.

Is this random? I don’t think so. Denver has lots of unique qualities as a professional sports city. Chief among those is the altitude. Another unique characteristic is that it is the only team situated in the Mountain Time Zone (except when Arizona is on the same time during Daylight Savings). It also has no geographic opponents within 500 miles. Denver, thus, has to travel more than most teams, particularly those on the East Coast that play multiple games in close proximity.

Is there a fatigue factor? Over the last decade, we’ve seen the following, for example. In 2011, Denver was 8-5, and lost the last three games, still getting in at 8-8 on a tiebreaker. In 2009, Denver started 6-0 but missed the playoffs at 8-8, including 4 losses to end the year. In 2008, the Broncos were 8-5, and lost the last three, including the finale at San Diego by 31, to lose the division tiebreaker. In 2006, Denver missed the postseason after a 7-2 start, including a big final week upset at home to San Francisco when a win would have put them in.

I wrote about Denver’s disaster scenarios for how they could lose a playoff spot after a 10-2 start this year. The road game at a surging Pittsburgh will not be easy. Then it will be returning home for Cincinnati in a key showdown. Will Peyton Manning play by then? He could be jumping right into a heated race that no one expected a few weeks ago, just to play in January.