I met up with the whole AFC West team at SB Nation yesterday to talk about the division and where we think each team is headed this season. The AFC West is already being called the best division in NFL history and while that hyperbole is a bit much before any of these teams played a single game, one can’t but help see the talent on each of these rosters is impressive.
We’ll be doing this AFC West Mixtape every month on the last Friday of each month through the season. In our first pilot episode above, we covered the under-the-radar players on both offensive and defense, one player we think will pop off this season, and some record predictions. You can listen to the whole thing to get their insights on the Kansas City Chiefs, Las Vegas Raiders, and Los Angeles Chargers, but here is who I picked for each category for the Denver Broncos.
Under-The-Radar Player On Offense: Montrell Washington or Jalen Virgil. I started off with those two, but then evolved into talking about the overall speed at the position and how that seems to be of huge import to this new Broncos’ coaching staff.
Under-The-Radar Player On Defense: Baron Browning. In Denver, he isn’t so much under-the-radar, but outside of Denver he’ll be a guy people start to take notice of this year. I think Browning could be a legit starter at edge if he is as good in the regular season as he was in the preseason.
The Guy To Watch: Jerry Jeudy. When asked who surprised him the most this offseason, Justin Simmons said it was Jeudy. He seems to be a man possessed throughout camp and if you watched film through his first two seasons in Denver he was already getting open a lot. The issue is the quarterbacks on the roster could never seem to progress to that read or pull the trigger when they did. We are going to see just how good Jeudy is this season.
Prediction Game: We all predicted our team would go 4-2 in the division. Obviously that isn’t going to happen. I tried to stay realistic and pointed out that Denver must get as close to 10 wins in their first 11 games as possible. The reason for this is that their final six games are absolutely brutal. They could go 0-6 in those games and still seem competitive, that’s how good those teams could be this season. If they get around 8-9 wins through the first 11, then they can split those final six games and finish with a respectable 11-12 wins.
I had fun doing this episode and look forward to chatting it up with our rival blogs once a month. Hopefully I’ll get to smugly talk about the first place Broncos each time we meet!
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