Denver Broncos coach Sean Payton hasn’t said the next two games will decide the team’s season, but he’s getting close to implying it.
After starting 0-2, the Broncos now have consecutive road games on deck against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New York Jets. If Denver drops to 0-4, it wouldn’t be mathematically impossible to make the playoffs, but it would be an extremely difficult hole to climb out of. Consequently, Payton knows the road trip will have big implications for the Broncos’ season.
“[I have had] a little bit of déjà vu in a team I coached where we were 0-2 and then we had a game I think in Carolina and then a game over in London,” Payton said earlier this week. “It was kind of like a two-game road trip. In other words, we were going to be gone and not coming back. We were going to practice the whole week in London. This week sets up a little like that. Every once in a while, you feel like you’ve been somewhere, or this has happened before.
“I talked to [the players] about we’re going to have a better idea — now, it’s not a make or break — but we’re going to have a better idea of where this team is going to be after these next two weeks going on the road to Tampa and then of course practicing a week on the Eastern Seaboard and then playing the Jets. Sometimes that can work as a positive relative to your team is together the whole time. There are still no ways around it. We have to look right into the teeth of this and get better quickly.”
After playing in Florida on Sunday, the Broncos will practice in West Virginia leading up to their game against the Jets in Week 4. The team’s East Coast trip could end up deciding Denver’s season, even if Payton’s not ready to make such a declaration just yet.
