9,131 no shows to Broncos game on Sunday is most since 2010

The Denver Broncos enjoy one of the longest sellout streaks in NFL history, but that doesn’t mean fans won’t make the choice to eat the cost of their ticket to show the team their displeasure with the product on the field.

Back in July, the Broncos sold out single-game tickets in 12 minutes. In October, an incredible 9,131 fans no showed the Broncos game against the Los Angeles Rams. Even worse, the stadium was half full as Case Keenum and the Broncs offense made a bit of a comeback to make the score closer than it should have been.

According to Mike Klis of 9News, the last time this many fans no showed to a game was when Josh McDaniels was coaching the team against the St. Louis Rams in 2010.

That could be a bad omen for Vance Joseph as he continues to try to field a winning football team. As it stands, Joseph has the worst winning percentage as a Broncos head coach since the 60s and patience has all but worn out with fans.

The players are not used to this kind of fan anger as the only player remaining on the roster since that 2010 season is Demaryius Thomas. The Broncos best player, Von Miller, appealed to fans after the game to not lose hope.

“I’ve never attacked the Denver Bronco fan base,’’ Miller said. “They’ve been through thick and thin with me. Loyal as heck. I just can’t believe that guys are losing hope right now. We’ve still got a long season to go. We’ve got real fans here. If fans are losing hope, I just can’t believe that. We’ve still got a long season ahead of us and Broncos Country has been great for us. We still need them to do the same thing for us to get this turned around.’’

Emmanuel Sanders continued with a strong defense of Case Keenum, but acknowledged that the fan base is use to winning.

“They expect us to win,” Sanders said. “In ’15, we won the Super Bowl. Before I got here in the Peyton Manning era, we were winning. The Tebow era, they were going to the playoffs and won miraculous playoff games. They expect wins. I would expect wins, too. I understand what they’re going through. I don’t respect what they do in the stadium in terms of booing and stuff like that, especially with the Case situation. Case is the quarterback that comes in every single day. He busts his butt. He goes out and plays. They’re supposed to provide momentum and give us that ‘Let’s go’ factor. We don’t want to hear boos. But at the end of the day, like I said, they expect wins and we expect wins out of ourselves, so hopefully we start providing wins here soon.”

As a fan myself, I get where they are coming from as players. The boos are not so much towards them or Keenum, at least not from my perspective, but towards the coaching staff.

The Broncos defense held the Rams to just 23 points, but they set some rather distasteful records in the run game by giving up 593 yards rushing over their last two games - second worst effort since the merger.

Then play-calling like this where Offensive Coordinator Bill Musgrave ran go routes on second and three, third and three, and again on fourth and three to end the first half.

All of these things have led to a fickle fan base that is ready for change. Most are ready for coaching changes, some are ready for quarterback changes. It all comes down to Joseph setting the wrong kinds of records in Denver and fans being fed up with it.