Welcome to SB Nation FanPulse — a survey of fans across the NFL, powered by SurveyMonkey. Each week, we send 32 polls to 100+ plugged in fans from each team.
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For the Denver Broncos, we asked who might be the franchises biggest rival. As a newly 40 year-old, my answer continued to be the Oakland Raiders. However, fans overwhelmingly voted for the Kansas City Chiefs in this poll.
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That was when I realized that the Raiders really haven’t been relevant for almost two decades, while the Chiefs and Broncos have.
History tells the full story of why the Chiefs are now the Broncos biggest rivalry despite decades of intense rivalry between Denver and Oakland. In the 1960s, the Raiders began a streak against the Broncos that lasted for 20-straight games. When the Broncos finally tied and then beat the Raiders in the early 1970s, that intense rivalry really began and lasted all the way through John Elway’s Super Bowl championships of the late 1990s.
Then the Raiders franchise utterly and completely collapsed in the early 2000s. The rivalry remained strong, but waned significantly during the Peyton Manning era.
Today, who really cares about the Raiders anymore? It’s the Chiefs who have a franchise quarterback and the talent around him, which means they’ll be the team the Broncos will be chasing and competing against for the next decade or longer.
Do you agree?