This is the kind of game that hurts, Broncos Country. For years I’ve been here writing articles and commenting with this great community and have never understood the gnashing of teeth and wailing that happens when we lose a close game at the last moment.

I can take close games all day long. I don’t like to lose, but to look at a game and say that the team had the chance and just couldn’t get it done is fine.

But this team never had a chance.

They were completely and in every way outclassed by the Kansas City Chiefs and even with all the sports hate in the world I have for that team and especially their fans, today I’m tipping my hat to them. Well done, K.C. You played football. I sure wish I had a team that would do that.

Offensive takeaways

1. We have a rookie QB and he doesn’t look comfortable at all throwing accurately in snowy conditions
2. Our offensive line is the No. 1 weakness on this team, and our right tackle especially isn’t good enough.
3. This team for whatever reason isn’t ready for the elements. They either didn’t have the right equipment or the right coaching to be able to play without issue.
4. In a game where running the ball should have been the order of the day, the offense as a whole was not ready to execute running plays in order to get anything stable and allowed KC to crowd the line of scrimmage aggressively on defense about 80 percent of the time. It was very telling that there were only a few times that KC had a safety more than 10 yards off the LOS.

Defensive takeaways

1. The front seven as it stands today doesn’t have the depth to be able to do anything useful in the pass rush department aside from hope that Shelby Harris wins his one-on-one.
2. Von Miller loses at least 50 percent of his advantage as a pass rusher when the ground is slippery. He lives and dies on his ability to burst and turn the corner. Without it, he looks like an average pass rusher trying to make the team as the fifth guy on the depth chart in the last preseason game of the year.
3. Chris Harris, Jr. isn’t a No. 1 cornerback and is being misused in his role as a match corner (not that the Broncos have any serious choice given the state of their personnel). He’s not fast enough. He’s not tall enough, and he doesn’t have the recovery speed to keep up with No. 1 WRs. His best chance against the NFL’s best is to play off coverage and keep a good cushion so he can minimize the damage, which he’s been doing all season long honestly.
4. Our cornerbacks in general really suck. There just isn’t any other way to say it.

Effort was the biggest thing our team lacked

The talk of the blog for the past two days has been Von Miller’s comments after the game and rightly so. I honestly found them humbling, refreshing and heartfelt.

For me as a fan listening to him, the thing that resonated with me from what he was saying was the same thing I told my wife - our players didn’t come to play in this game and it sucks. I’m glad Von took the stand and said what he said. As a fan, I love seeing any sign whatsoever that the players care.

He danced around being brutally honest because as a person in the locker room and a person who is the face of the franchise who has PR rules he has to follow, I don’t think Von wanted to get completely real about it. It is a long term problem he’s seeing in a very real light and it isn’t fun to talk about.

Please Von, allow me.

There are players on this Denver Bronco team that are playing their asses off to try to win a mud trucking football game. They are few. Guys like Von Miller, Shelby Harris, Justin Simmons, Courtland Sutton, Phillip Lindsay, and Kareem Jackson.

But for the most part, the Denver Bronco team was short on giving a shit about the game they get paid anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to play.

They played like a team who is 5-9, which is to say they played like losers.

We’ve had three years of this nonsense and seeing the lack of effort as the game wore on from our players honestly makes me want to puke.

It is no excuse, but the team lacks talent

Deep breath.

Now back to today and this team in 2019.

Did I expect Denver to do better? Not really. KC up and down is just a better team. They have sound coaching, good players on both sides of the ball, and their players are all in week in and week out.

At this point in the season, how is a team like the Broncos supposed to match up to that?

We’ve lost our young stud pass rusher in Bradley Chubb.

We never had our young slot corner in Bryce Callahan.

Joe Flacco was supposed to save the season, and he’s on IR.

Young De’Vante Bausby was balling out at the start of the season and he’s on IR.

Our veteran third down specialist at running back in Theo Riddick is on IR.

Fan favorite Andy Janovich is on IR.

And the heart and soul of this team and he only voice I ever hear from the players who is willing to call it like it is in Derek Wolfe is on IR.

We’ll dig into it more as the season winds down, but this team is a shell of what it was supposed to be. The fact that they have five wins is in retrospect impressive.

This season is almost ready to put behind us like a bad dream.

This team can and will be more sooner rather than later.

Keep your chin up, Von and Broncos Country...bad teams don’t go into Arrowhead in December and pull out wins.

It just doesn’t happen.