Broncos embarrass themselves in loss to “inferior” Giants

There are losses in the NFL, and then there are losses.

All week the potential for this meltdown lingered like a rank odor, but we tried to convince ourselves we were smelling apples and cinnamon. After what we saw on Sunday Night Football against the, apparently inferior, New York Giants, the Denver Broncos smell worse than a well-used outhouse. We all thought we would see a blowout, just not one that ended with a Giants win.

How does a team come out of its bye, at home, against an apparently inferior opponent and put on that kind of performance? No doubt we’ll hear that it’s a week-to-week league from the Broncos locker room and “that anything can happen.”

“You have to give the Giants credit, they wanted to win too.”

“They were motivated to get their first win of the season and they showed it.”

“We just have to forget about this and move on to the Los Angeles Chargers.”

“This isn’t who we are as a team.”

Screw that. Spare me the cliche bullshit after this game. The players and coaches better show they care because, after Sunday night, it sure likes they do not.

You lost the right to speak in cliches when you deliver a choke-job performance like that. The Broncos should apologize to Pat Bowlen. They should apologize to the players who played for this organization.

There are moments after games to recalibrate, catch your breath and come back to Earth. To convince yourself that things aren’t as bad as they are. This isn’t one of those times. This isn’t one of those games. This isn’t one of those teams. When you embarrass yourself and the organization the way the the Broncos did, you lose that right.

Since the middle of the preseason, there’s been this feeling in the air that this season was 2016 all over again. We tried to convince ourselves we were wrong after the first two weeks, but it was still there. Then came the first humbling loss to the Buffalo Bills, and it was just brushed off with the typical cliche BS. Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence. And now Denver heads on the road for three-straight games, two of them in the AFC West. I’ve said since August we were in for a bad redo, and here we are.

The Broncos have seen their fair share of embarrassing and putrid losses since 1960. If this one on Sunday night isn’t at the top of the list, you’d be hard pressed to find one.

This stench calls for more than just air freshener.