Sunday’s game stung, but let’s celebrate a joyous, winning football season

Opinion column by Colton Strickler

Us Coloradans experienced something for the first time in a decade this year. The Denver Broncos made an appearance in the AFC Championship game.

This piece might ring a little hollow considering the Broncos ultimately fell 10-7 to the New England Patriots, but the team’s appearance in that game gave me and many others a new appreciation for the 2025 Broncos. That appreciation stems from a realization that life is simply better in Colorado when the Broncos are good. Please let me explain.

It’s not uncommon to deal with a case of the winter blues when Daylight Savings Time ends and we are forced to roll our clocks back an hour during the fall. Sure, it’s nice to get an extra hour of sleep on that Sunday morning, but it doesn’t take long for the reality of a long, dark, cold winter to settle in.

It’s dark when you get ready to head to work and it’s dark when you head home from work. The cold weather means people choose to hunker down indoors rather than spend time outside in the few hours of sunlight we do get. When it’s dark outside all of the time and people are spending more time indoors than they usually do, combined with a whole bunch of other scientific things inside of your body that change when the time adjusts, people get bummed out.

That’s called Seasonal Affective Disorder, also known as SAD, and it’s a common thing that many people deal with during the fall and winter months. I’ve found that my Seasonal Affective Disorder gets worse when the Broncos stink. Unfortunately for me, the Broncos have had several stinky seasons since winning Super Bowl 50 back in 2016.

The last two seasons have been a little different, though. A fun, competitive Broncos team helps fend off the Seasonal Affective Disorder a little bit. Watching a competitive Broncos becomes a weekend activity you can look forward to even when it’s cold, dark, and gloomy outside. You’re going to be stuck inside in front of the television anyway, so it helps to have something to watch that you are genuinely excited about. That gives you something to look forward to as your week goes on, as well. It can provide the carrot in front of your face that you need to keep on pushing through the rough months.

A competitive Broncos team gives you a reason to get together with your friends and family to watch the game. Nothing like a watch party to help you socialize when you need it most!

Nothing fans the flames of Seasonal Affective Disorder for me, personally, like the bad Broncos teams that we’ve seen over the course of the last 10 years. The Broncos teams that are already out of playoff contention by Halloween is like throwing gasoline on my SAD fire. It’s hard to get up for a game when you know from the jump that they are going to lose. Even if they do win, you feel a bit guilty about it because you know it negatively affects their draft position and ultimately hurts them in the long run. Those years make for a long winter.

But this year was different.

The Broncos put together a 14-3 season that earned them the AFC’s top seed in the NFL playoffs. They enjoyed a bye week and then defeated the Buffalo Bills 33-30 in overtime of what turned out to be a classic playoff game.

Can you imagine the Seasonal Affective Disorder that Bills fans deal with on a yearly basis? Their team rips their hearts out every year and they don’t even get to enjoy the 300 days of sunshine that we do here in Colorado.

The Broncos may have lost a very winnable AFC Championship game against a beatable Patriots team, but they were dealt a tough hand when starting quarterback Bo Nix was ruled out with a broken ankle on a play that happened late in the win over the Bills. The writing was on the wall that the season would likely end one game earlier than we all hoped it would.

But now that the season is over, we can look up and see that it’s the end of January. We’ll roll our clocks forward again on March 8, and then we’ll start to set our sights on everything that spring brings with it. We can be disappointed that the Broncos came up short this season, but we can thank the team for helping us get through the brunt of winter, even though the winter snow waited to start until the Broncos needed to kick a field goal to have a shot at advancing to the Super Bowl.

Colton is a proud Colorado native. He has covered the Colorado State Rams men’s basketball and football programs, the Denver Broncos, and was Major League Rugby’s lead writer before contributing to Thirst Colorado. He likes to spend his free time watching football, trying new restaurants, and working on his newsletter, The Cowboy Collar.