Denver is a young team trying to learn how to win games

The biggest enemy the Denver Broncos right now is themselves. They just can’t seem to get out of their own way at critical moments through the first two games of the season - both losses.

After the 16-14 soul crushing loss to the Chicago Bears, the coaches and players met with the media to talk about that ending and where the team goes from here.

• Head Coach Vic Fangio hopes the players and coaches will learn from this and become better for it. He won’t be dwelling on the emotions too much, because they have to prepare for Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers next.

“Hopefully you learn from it and you become better for it, but right now it stings pretty good. It’ll sting tomorrow, but we have to get over it quickly. Now we have to go up to and play a really good Green Bay team who I assume—did they win today? They’re 2-0 and have one of the all-time best quarterbacks ever so we have to get back to work and just get right after it.”

• Joe Flacco shares his thoughts on the end of the game as well and he made an excellent point. These Broncos are not the same Broncos we remember 4-5 years ago. They are a young team with a lot of new faces trying to figure out how to win games in the NFL.

“It’s an NFL football game. I’ve been a part of some pretty jacked up sidelines and I think we were pretty jacked up there at the end of the game, but that’s how it goes. I talked about it with Dave [Logan] on the radio a little bit. We’re a young team. I’m the new guy, got some other new guys and situational football. You’ve got to learn how to win football games. So, hopefully we can quicken that process up as much as we can and move on.”

• On the veteran side, Emmanuel Sanders talked about resilience and being able to bounce back in the face of adversity. I think the offense showed that in the fourth quarter, but ultimately it wasn’t enough.

“You need to have resilience and you need to be able to bounce back. We were able to do that, but again, we weren’t able to close this game out, so it really doesn’t matter. We lost. We’re sitting here at 0-2, which is very disappointing, so hopefully we can turn it around.”

• Looking ahead, Flacco cautioned that this is part of the process. As fans, perhaps we should exercise caution and be patient as this new coaching staff attempts to build their program around the shambles left to it by the previous regime.

“That’s part of the process, sad to say. Nobody likes the taste that they have in their mouth right now and it makes it more difficult to go in and look at each other and rally and have a good week of practice and play good in the next week. It’s obviously more difficult to do that, coming off of things, any loss. You have to stay together and believe in each other and all those things. It’s definitely been a test of who I am and who we are as a team and each and every person individually. There’s cool things about that that’s going to be a fun process to be part of, and like I said, we have to make that as quick as we can.”

As frustrating as that loss was, I do feel encouraged. There are still major issues that won’t likely begin to be addressed until they get through another offseason of free agents and fresh draft picks, but there does seem to be enough of a core of talent here to compete in most games this year.

We just have to be patient and look for incremental improvement throughout the season. A win would be nice, though...