A "Successful" Broncos Season is what?

First, you have to separate what is defined as a great season and a “successful” season. In 1996 the Broncos were a 13-3 team, had home field throughout and then proceeded to lose to the lowly Jacksonville Jaguars. After this one was over I didn’t call that Broncos season a success at all. After this one no hard core Broncos fan and no one in the media called that season a success either. It was such an epic failure that there was talk after the game that the great Elway might retire.

I consider that loss the worst defeat in Broncos team history, #2 was the Washington Redskins Super Bowl loss, then at #3 the epic fail by Jake Plummer when he blew his wad in 2006. The SB losses to the NY Giants and San Francisco 49ers were devastating but both teams were better than the Broncos so it wasn’t a big shock when we came up on the short end.

I remember the Jaguars game like it was yesterday. The day before the game I bought a brand new 32 inch Hitachi Color TV. I invited about 10 friends over to watch the game. I was absolutely convinced the Broncos were going to win the whole thing that year because they had the best regular season record in the AFC and I believed at the time no one could stop them. That one hurt, hurt bad, it crushed Elway and the City of Denver. Did they win a lot of games that year and put up great stats? Oh yeah but to call that season successful is bad joke.

The same would be true of the Redskins loss in the Super Bowl. The Broncos got a second chance after losing to what was a far better team than them in the Giants the year before. The Broncos were the best team in the NFL during the regular season in 1988. The Redskins were lucky to be there.

They let the Bucs QB Doug Williams and RB Tim Smith have career days when both wouldn’t even be backups on most teams. For whatever reason a pretty good Broncos D up until that point unraveled, especially in the secondary that didn't help matters either. Tony Lilly, who can forget Lilly getting beat like a school boy on every pass play.

Then of course there’s 2006, a team as it turned out that was one player, a QB, away from a SB.

After the last Super Bowl win in 1998 Mike Shanahan would go onto have what some would call “successful” seasons. None of them translated into a Super Bowl win however and the memory of the last one has turned into a 13 year wait for another.

The game is played to win championships period. If the Broncos blow a chance here with home field advantage with Peyton Manning at the top of his game and the D playing as well as they have in years I wouldn’t call it a successful season.

THEY MUST WIN THE SUPER BOWL! GO BRONCOS!!