With the Kansas City Chiefs about to head into the Divisional Round, I wasn’t planning on spending much time thinking about the Denver Broncos. I mean, why would I? It’s been almost a decade since the Broncos won a playoff game and featured in the divisional round, so why waste my time, right?

But alas, here I am, thinking and writing about Denver. Not because the team is any good, but because their coach said something stupid. Really stupid.

At his end-of-season press conference this week, Sean Payton had this to say about how Denver’s playoff run could have turned out.

“There’s a lot of confidence in this team if we could get past that game (vs. Buffalo), the next game (vs. KC) we felt real good about.”

— #Broncos HC Sean Payton felt “real good” about Broncos facing Chiefs in divisional round pic.twitter.com/EnsrbjeHuV

— Chiefs Receipts (@ChiefsReceipts) January 15, 2025

“There’s a lot of confidence in this team if we could get past that game (against Buffalo), the next game we had to play (against Kanas City) we felt real good about,” Payton said.

What a ridiculous thing to say.

Denver’s season ended in a blowout less than a week ago, and here’s Payton taking a shot at the back-to-back Super Bowl champions. And what is he bragging about? A hypothetical win that didn’t even happen. It’s laughable.

I’d love to test Payton’s theory out, but sadly, we’ll never get the chance because Denver got annihilated in the Wild Card Round after giving up 31 unanswered points. Oh, well.

Now, I understand the nuance behind what Payton is getting at here. What do you expect a head coach to say about his team? That they would have been blown out again a week later? But there’s a way to back your team without bad-mouthing a rival, and Payton’s comments were not the way to do that..

Frankly, Payton and the D̶o̶n̶k̶e̶y̶s̶ Broncos are in no position to be bad-mouthing Kansas City. They finished third in the AFC West—five whole games behind the Chiefs—before promptly getting destroyed in the first round of the playoffs.

The closest the Broncos have come to a Super Bowl since Peyton Manning retired is John Elway handing the Chiefs the Lombardi Trophy last season. They have won—*checks notes*—zero playoff games since the 2015 season.

Kansas City, meanwhile, has won three titles in five years, won the AFC West nine times in a row, and had the greatest five-year stretch in NFL history. And, of course, the Chiefs enjoyed a 16-game winning streak over the Broncos, the fourth-longest winning streak over a single team ever.

A comment like Payton’s isn’t surprising. This isn’t the first time Broncos Country said something stupid about the Chiefs.

In October 2023, Denver fans partied like it was 1997 when they finally ended a losing streak to Kansas City that lasted almost eight full years. As Broncos fans celebrated, Taylor Swift’s song “Shake It Off” played throughout the stadium.

The Broncos are playing Taylor Swift after beating the Chiefs 🤣 pic.twitter.com/8a8Q0H9Fif

— NFL Memes (@NFL_Memes) October 29, 2023

Hilarious, right? What a great joke.

I found it particularly funny when the Chiefs took that advice literally, shook off that loss to Denver, and went on to win the Lombardi Trophy that gave the Chiefs more Super Bowl titles than the Broncos.

Then, late in the 2023 season Denver Post writer Sean Keeler declared that Broncos DC Vance Joseph had “broken the Kansas City Chiefs” the day the streak ended. “Vance Joseph didn’t just beat the Chiefs. He broke them like plates at a Big Fat Greek Wedding,” Keller wrote.

Keeler said Denver’s defense should go by the nickname “the Mahomes-Wreckers,” claimed “the AFC West is a race again,” and hinted that Joseph “might’ve just written the definitive book” on how to beat Patrick Mahomes.

Maybe Keller was right. Joseph very well might have “broken” the Chiefs. But sadly for Broncos Country, he didn’t kill them. And as the famous philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Kelly Clarkson both said: What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.

So, thank you, Denver, for giving the Chiefs the strength they needed to go out and win another Super Bowl. As a Chiefs fan, I really appreciate that.

It’s fair to say the Broncos had a good season in 2024. After the trainwreck that was the Russell Wilson era and with an eye-watering dead cap hit and a rookie quarterback, Denver’s season exceeded expectations. But alas, the NFL does not give out trophies to teams who weren’t as trash as everyone expected, leaving the Broncos with nothing but a hollow Week 18 win over a resting team to boast about.

Enjoy your hypothetical playoff win while watching the Chiefs from your couch, Sean.