Show them.
Make the yeah-buts stop.
“People don’t fear Denver,” CBS Sports analyst Jonathan Jones said when asked where the 3-0 Broncos stood among the less elevated parts of NFL nation. “They fear the altitude. The last sort-of home-field advantage that they have in the NFL, they fear that. But they haven’t struck fear in the hearts of other teams in five years or six years.
“But if (they) get this Ravens win …”
Show them, Broncos.
Make ’em fear you again.
“When I was coaching with the Chargers, we had a year where we went 4-12 and the next year (2004) we came back and we were 12-4,” recalled James Lofton, the Pro Football Hall of Fame wideout who’ll help call Broncos-Ravens for CBS on Sunday at Mile High at Empower Field. “We didn’t change a lot in terms of people in the building.
“When the schedule came out (in 2005), I was in a room with my wide receivers and I was talking to them about it. The (pundits) were saying, ‘You guys have to go back-to-back playing Pittsburgh, and then you’ve got to play New England.’
“I said to the players, ‘No, they’ve got to play us.’
“And I think once you get to that mentality of, ‘They have to play us.’ … I’m pretty sure that’s where (coach) Vic Fangio is taking those guys.”
Show them.
Make a point.
Better yet, make 30. Whatever it takes.
Baltimore (2-1) averaged 12 wins per year from 2018-2020. Ravens boss John Harbaugh, at the start of his 14th season in crab country, has become part of the furniture, this paragon of stability in a circuit that chews up and spits out coaches like smokeless tobacco.
Since 2019, Baltimore quarterback Lamar Jackson is 26-7 as an NFL starter. The seven losses were to squads that wound up posting a combined record of 65-34 (.657).
No. 8 does not gladly suffer fools. Or pretenders.
Show them.
Make them forget about how wretched the Giants, Jaguars and Jets are. Make them remember just how much you pushed those three teams around.
“I think (Denver fans) should be really excited,” Lofton said of the Broncos’ first 3-0 start since 2016. “It’s like somebody tells you that you have to return a Christmas gift. You don’t.”
You can only purge who’s in front of you. Sure, sure, we know: The G-Men, the Jags and the J-E-T-S were a combined 0-10 heading into the weekend, the NFL’s Three Stooges.
But here’s the part that tends to get glossed over, along the Front Range and elsewhere: The Broncos also head into Week 4 tied for the NFL lead in point differential (plus-50) with Buffalo.
They haven’t just beaten the league’s dregs.
They’ve lobotomized them.
“You know what? Somebody’s worse,” Lofton noted. “You could be in that corner.”
You could be Jets rookie quarterback Zach Wilson. The former BYU star channeled Garth Algar, the blond sidekick from the movie “Wayne’s World,” last Sunday during his postgame news conference at Empower Field — polite, subdued, and absolutely shell-shocked.
After Broncos 26, Jets 0, the poor kid looked like he wanted to flee to the Flatirons and hitchhike to Provo. Anything to keep from going back to the Big Apple.
“And the Broncos played well,” Lofton continued. “They’ve done the job on offense, and it hasn’t been easy offensively.
“Teddy (Bridgewater) has had to scramble around a lot. You had one big run by Melvin Gordon (in Week 1), but other than that, it’s been a lot of little runs, some that got (stopped) behind the line of scrimmage, where running backs struggled. Everybody’s doing their jobs.”
Show them.
Make the doubters think Steady Teddy has hopped into a time machine and taken us all back five years. That Fangio and offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur, a pair of old dogs, still have new tricks.
“I do think they’re the least impressive of the undefeated teams,” Jones said. “I think (3-0) Carolina edges them out with that distinction. But in the same breath, I’d say that doesn’t matter. Most certainly, a win against Baltimore is legitimizing.”
Show them.
Make the naysayers admit that this team is legit. That the next man up can take the baton and run like the wind. That Courtland Sutton’s knee and Tim Patrick’s hands are in it for the long haul. That this offensive line can hold up with gum, piano wire and Quinn Meinerz.
“We didn’t make the schedule, we’re just playing the games,” Broncos star Von Miller offered a few days back. “We’ve got some tough teams coming up — the Ravens, the Steelers, then the Raiders right after that. So we have more than enough time to show the type of team that we are.”
Show them.
Make them believe. Make Christmas come early.
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Keeler: If Broncos, Teddy Bridgewater want to quiet NFL haters, there’s only one rebuttal. Beat Baltimore. Beat Lamar Jackson. - The Denver Post
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