NFL: Reflections on the Good, the Bad and the Future for the 2010 Denver Broncos

This has been quite a year for Broncos fans hasn't it?

I don't think anything prepared us for what was to be one of the worst seasons in Denver history. Like every year, the season began with such high hopes, and in a matter of only six months, those hopes were confirmed or crushed. Yet after the dust settles and Broncos Country is left trying to figure out what exactly happened, there is always some kind of silver lining to the worst of situations.

For Broncos fans, next year will mark the beginning of a new chapter. That alone gives us something to look forward to.

Still, we can't forget the season that was 2010, and remember that for all of the pain, all the heartache and all the failures, we still have something to be proud of and something to look forward to.

The Denver Broncos mean too much to this state and to these fans to simply give up on them after one poor season. Sometimes it takes bad times to make the good ones that much sweeter. If there was ever a time to band together as Broncos fans, this is it. I've done my best in this article to cover what I believe are some of the worst, some of the best and some of the most important times of this past season.

Before beginning this article please be sure and start the music in the video. It only works if you do. It's not meant to be read quickly, and the music is merely there to set the tone.

Broncos Country, we've been through the ringer, and let's hope this next season will be the beginning of our ascent back to becoming the legendary team we've come to love.

Hitting Bottom in a Bad Way 

Monday morning after the Super Bowl is the worst Monday of the year.

It's worse than the Monday after New Year's. It's worse than the Monday after St. Patty's Day weekend. It's worse than the Monday after your buddy's bachelor party. It's the morning when you wake up hungover and realize the NFL season is finally over. Weekends will not be the same again for another eight months.

The post-NFL season hangover usually takes me a few weeks to get over. It's especially bad this year because we have no guarantee of a next season yet, and even if we have a next season, we can't be sure how much time our Broncos will have to prepare for it.

During a season that ended in such a fashion where a win was nothing more than a moral victory and a lower draft pick, Denver fans were left with too many unanswered questions, too many broken promises, too many unfamiliar faces joining the family and too many familiar faces moving to unfamiliar territory. It is very difficult to fight that feeling of melancholy that attempts to permeate a time that every football fan expects to spend celebrating.

We've seen some difficult times as Broncos fans this year haven't we?

We saw our star linebacker sidelined with a season-ending injury. It was only the beginning of an ever-growing list of preseason injuries that went a long way to crippling our defense and driving it into the basement of the NFL.

We watched what was supposed to be our powerful offense stutter and falter in the fourth quarter over and over again, as our defense let football game after football game slip away.

A boneheaded pass interference penalty led to an excruciating loss to the Jets in the final seconds of what would have been a critical win, merely setting the stage for the disappointment to come.

In the one game our defense became dominant, our offense went dormant against a team we had just scored 49 points against three weeks earlier.

The players our head coach traded away began to shine with their new teams, while we were forced to watch the results of those trades either sit the bench or under perform.

We will never forget the beatdown the Raiders dealt us in Week 7. The entire collective of Broncos Country hung their heads. What could any of us say?

For nearly all of us, it was the lowest point we could remember. What had happened to our team? The Raiders? Really?

Losing to the Oakland Raiders at home like we did marked the lowest point of this season for me and has left a bitter taste in my mouth that will not go away for quite some time. It may also have been the beginning of the end for our head coach.

Jim McMahon once said, "Yes, risk-taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called sure-thing-taking."

We lost our coach this season, a man hated by most, loved by some and probably not understood by all. A man who, before even two complete seasons, had fans claiming things like, "Not our coach!" and using every McJoke they could come up with.

The effects of his personnel decisions will probably not be fully understood for the Broncos for another few years, but his exit marked the end of an era, the closing of a chapter and the beginning of something new. That's the beautiful thing about change though, there is always at least one sliver of hope one can latch on to if they are willing to look carefully. Hope is a powerful thing like that.

Yet, for all the pain we felt watching our Denver Broncos lose, the most excruciating pain was perhaps the loss of one of our own. As fans of the NFL, we tend to take this game very seriously, but never is the NFL exposed for the game that it really is and the truly important things in life illuminated than when we lose one of our own.

The death of Kenny McKinley was a wound that never fully healed; like Darrent Williams, a scar that will never fade.

Anyone who suggests Broncos aren't family, does not understand what this organization means to fans, its ownership and its players. The only thing more deafening than the roar of the Denver crowd in a victory, is the silence from 70,000 respecting their dead and the silence of one empty locker. How quickly we remember that football is merely a game, and who we are as people is vastly more important.

"I've had the opportunity to have two draft classes here in two years and I'm not sure that anyone one of those kids enjoyed the phone call as much as Kenny did, and that was him. He was excited about it, and was looking forward to the opportunity, and that is what he brought every day. We are certainly going to miss him around here." Josh McDaniels said.

Sometimes the greatest gift a parting person can leave in death is the ability to leave those behind to come together, if even for a little while.

The Positives, the Smiles, the Future.

But in a season with so much pain, sadness and disappointment, we still had much to look forward to and be thankful for.

We saw the resurgence of Brandon Lloyd's career as he made both Kyle Orton and Tim Tebow look fantastic. Making the Pro Bowl for the first time in his eighth year in the NFL is a testament to his resilience, and he deserved every Pro Bowl vote he received. Considering the shock and confusion that was the Brandon Marshall trade last year, Lloyd was exactly what Broncos Country needed.

The one bright spot on our defense was a Broncos legend who we may never again see in a Denver uniform.

Through the good and through the bad, Champ Bailey has always been a shining spot for this organization, and he will always be remembered as one of the greatest athletes to ever play for the orange and blue. The selfish fan in me wants nothing more than to see Bailey remain a Denver Bronco. If he does move on, I can only wish him the best and hope that whichever team he ends up with will do for him what we could not and win him a Super Bowl.

Champ, just like Shannon Sharpe, you'll always be a Bronco in my book.

With the possible departure of a veteran, we also saw the promise of a young QB.

Tebow is a young athlete who has convinced a depressed fan base into believing he will stop at nothing to be successful, and if he cannot, at least no one will say he didn't leave his everything between two sidelines and some hash marks.

His presence was so powerful, that the moment he became a Denver Bronco he began setting records in jersey sales, and the very first game he officially started, he set a Broncos' QB record for longest rushing touchdown. For better or worse, Bronco Country began dominating Mile High with orange, blue and the No. 15.

In the aftermath of Tebow's celebrity and success, another Denver Bronco has begun to be forgotten by many.

Kyle Orton's accomplishments have been written off as inconsequential, and his supporters continue to dwindle by the week. But I don't think any Broncos fan can completely deny that in the wake of our pathetic season, Orton was—at times—at least one bright spot.

To some of us, his comeback against the Tennessee Titans was the high point of the season. Perhaps it could be argued that it was far more than just Orton's play that led to our victory. I think many of his supporters would argue though that that's exactly why the Broncos comeback victory over the Titans was so fantastic, because we won it as a team.

Credit couldn't, and wasn't, given to simply one individual person. In the realm of football, where the difference between a loss and a victory often has far less to do with the performance of one person than it does the performance of a team as a whole, shouldn't we be more concerned with how our team plays as a whole, rather than one single part of it?

As long as the Broncos struggle and Orton starts, it will be like playing away from home every week. It is a bum deal any way you cut it, and if Orton's future is not in Denver, what more can we do than wish him the best.

However, if his future is in Denver, many of us Broncos fans must come to terms with ourselves and decide in the end what is greater, one single player or our team as a whole. After all, what do Pro Bowl stats truly mean for a single player if the team loses in the end?

The Orton decision and many more lie on the shoulders of two important new additions to the Broncos' organization. This year we welcomed the greatest Bronco to ever set foot in Mile High Stadium back to the organization. John Elway was once again reunited with his beloved football team, and it wasn't a minute too late.

Even as he learned to navigate the tricky social media known as Twitter, he was interviewing and hiring our new head coach, Mr. John Fox. Together, the two of them have promised us transparency and a focus on things that have long been forgotten in the previous Denver regimes.

They represent a promise that things are about to get better, and they are about to get better quickly.

The Promised One

There is one player, however, left behind from the McDaniels era that has captured the minds of Broncos fans across the country.

From the second he was selected at No. 25 in the draft less than one year ago, Tebow ignited a new desire among Broncos Country to see this young college star find success in Denver.

I must confess, if Tebow is the future of the Denver Broncos, I for one cannot wait to see where the future of this organization is headed. Experts will all argue mechanics and throwing motions until they are blue in the face and will never reach a conclusion.

But no one will argue brute desire, and no one will debate undying will.

"Against all comers. Bring 'em on. You against Tim Tebow. They're throwing each other around. When your guy, and I don't care what other position you talk about, when the guy that's talking in the offensive huddle has that kind of heart, and he's that kind of fighter, you have a chance every Sunday," Chris Collinsworth said.

No one can say to a man you cannot, when that man's will is so strong that "cannot" is nothing more than one more obstacle in the way of "just did."

I went to only two Broncos games this season, the blowout versus Kansas City and the comeback win versus the Texans. Both were amazing in their own way.

I was born a skeptic and a doubter. When Tebow was drafted, I was allured by his celebrity, but not so brave to think he was going to be the glue that held much of Broncos Country together in what was going to be one of the worst seasons in its lauded history.

Yet, when I watched fans in person and on television, I began to realize just how important it is for a fanbase to believe in something and to believe in someone. Without it, we become disinterested.

Ladies and gentlemen, for everything Tebow is not as an NFL player yet, he has been as a leader, not just for his team, but for the fans.

It doesn't really matter if you hate the guy, love the guy or if you simply don't allow yourself to care enough about the guy. Much of the Denver Broncos' 2010 season will be remembered for two things: that we were the worst team in Broncos' history, and at the very end, Tebow gave the fans something to hope for in the future.

For many fans, Tebow's play was the high point of this season. His 40-yard TD run against the Raiders was electrifying.  For a huge number of fans, their greatest Broncos moment of this season was his game-winning touchdown against the Texans.

My buddy and I were sitting at the 50-yard line, three decks up when this happened. The moment Tebow crossed into that end zone, it was mass hysteria.

His comeback win over the Texans was the kind of comeback win we hadn't seen in too long, and the excitement and drive he showed to his team and fans that day was absolutely staggering.

Had Tebow completed his near comeback against the Chargers, it would have truly changed the landscape of this entire offseason.

I know Tebow is a lightning rod player. I know he is loved by many, hated by some and to others, he is just an overhyped young athlete with too much to prove to warrant his current celebrity. Yet we as fans experience this game in many different ways, and for a lot of us, Tebow brought back something that had been missing from our organization over the past year.

As a Broncos fan, that alone makes him my Rookie of the Year.

The Broncos of Yesteryear

Even if there may be little to be excited about from our Broncos this season, we can all be excited for the two Denver Broncos that were inducted into the Hall of Fame this year.

Floyd Little, a halfback who rushed for more than 6,300 yards with the Denver Broncos over nine seasons, led the NFL in rushing yards from 1968-1973 and is a charter member in the Broncos Ring of Fame, finally saw his name selected and his place in Canton officially reserved.

At the end of the 2010 NFL season, Shannon Sharpe finally got what was due him. For many of us, Sharpe is without a doubt the greatest tight end to ever play the game. He was the player who ushered in the new era of tight ends, the era in which new tight end greats such as Tony Gonzalez are a part of. The fact that it took him so long to get into the Hall of Fame is hard to believe, but Sharpe has finally been given the highest credit he has deserved for so long.

In a tearful interview, Sharpe explained how deeply grateful he was for his Denver Broncos, his grandmother and for his brother Sterling who all played huge roles in his success as a player. Sharpe is the kind of guy who will always have something to say and a lot of it. Even if we can't always understand it all, I have no doubt his acceptance speech later on this year will be the longest of all time, and there will be tears. Man I miss watching him play.

Here's one quote that might not make it in his speech though:

"I won't talk about someone's mother. I won't talk about their girlfriend or their wife. But if you have a deformity, I would talk about that."

Congratulations to our 2010 Hall of Fame Class inductees. We may have gone 4-12 as a team, but adding two more Broncos to the Hall of Fame is an amazing success any way you look at it. We can always be proud of that.

A Brand New Day

Starting March 4, we may not know what the future of the NFL looks like. We won't know until the players' union and owners find some way to cut the $9 billion dollar pie that is this golden goose of the sports world. While executives meet and argue over what is fair and what is right, the fans are left out in the cold wondering what next August is going to look like. 

I have faith the NFL will get things worked out with the players. This game is too great for it to be locked out because of money. For every dollar that the players and the ownership set to make with a new deal, if the NFL season is locked out, they will lose hundreds more as dejected and disgusted fans pocket their cash.

No, I believe a brand new day and a brand new era of the NFL are coming.

I also believe a brand new day is coming for the Denver Broncos under their new leadership, and I cannot wait to see how everything begins to fall into place.

But most importantly, I believe the fans of the Denver Broncos are going to finally begin to find some kind of stability as their team begins to fight its way back to its old success.

I believe all this petty Broncos Country infighting and mudslinging is going to take a backseat to newfound excitement.

Regardless of what happens with the Collective Bargaining Agreement, I hope we can all at least agree that what has begun is positive, and it is what it is. It's easy to look back and think what could have been; I am guilty of this more than most. I have to force myself to remember that it is always darkest before dawn, and if we truly believe John Elway, John Fox and Pat Bowlen have a plan to get us back on track, then dawn is about to break.

A brand new day is about to begin.