You don’t want a ‘moral victory,’ but that’s what the Broncos got against the Chiefs

DENVER — Six consecutive losing seasons means that, yes, you do have moral victories.

The fact that such a thing exists for the Broncos is testament to how far things have fallen since Super Bowl 50. In those days, you’d see unhappiness after wins. In March, one thought that sort of scenario would find its way to the team again.

But nine months later, with the Broncos mired in a 1-9 slump that — along with stretches of the 1990, 2010 and 2017 seasons — represents their worst 10-game form since the AFL-NFL merger, this is where they are.

The moral victory in a 34-28 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs is the effort that nearly allowed the Broncos to pull off what would have been their most unlikely victory in at least a generation, and perhaps ever.

My thoughts from the field after a 34-28 Broncos loss. They came back … but they dug themselves a deep hole. They were entertaining … but ultimately are still 3-10. It’s a mix of emotions that left Jonathon Cooper, as he said, “all messed up.”

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— Andrew Mason (@MaseDenver) December 12, 2022

“They didn’t blink. They stayed together,” Broncos coach Nathaniel Hackett said.

“… I appreciate that, and that is kind of that moral victory — but we want to win the game. We had a chance to. But the fight that these guys have is awesome.”

And it can be argued that they were a Russell Wilson concussion away from having the biggest comeback in franchise history. Or a Chris Jones haymaker on fill-in quarterback Brett Rypien away. Or a Patrick Mahomes miracle away.

But the result was the result.

“I think my head is all messed up, just because — we should have won that game,” said edge rusher Jonathon Cooper. “We should have won that game.”

Indeed, moral victories are kind of “messed up,” one could say.

You take the “L” that matters, but the vibe isn’t somber. Certainly not in the way the locker room was funereal after losses earlier this season to the Colts, Chargers and Titans in particular.

“It’s a combination of frustration, anger, but also just being proud of the guys and how they fought,” Cooper said. “You guys saw the whole entire game. I don’t think we gave up.

“We kept fighting until the clock hit zero-zero. And that’s something that I’m going to take away that’s positive about this game.”

And the truth of Sunday was this: In their comeback, these Broncos looked like they found their joie de vivre again.

Truth be told, they looked that way in practice this week, too. The going-through-the-motions drudgery of late seasons in recent years didn’t seem to exist in the days leading up to Sunday’s showdown with the Chiefs.

For all that has gone awry in Hackett’s first — and perhaps only — season as Broncos head coach, he and his staff succeeded at keeping the team’s energy and spirit as high as the mounting loss total.

Which helps explain why, when it was 27-0, the Broncos didn’t pack it in. Josey Jewell lit the fuse with an interception; Wilson hit Jerry Jeudy for the first of his three touchdown receptions, and the rally was on.

And, yes, so was the fun. The Broncos defense posed for pictures after Jewell’s pick … when they were down, 27-0. That seemed a bit over the top given the score at the time.

But in the fourth quarter, when Jewell got his second interception — and the Broncos their third off Mahomes — and they posed again, it felt right.

And it made their first pose look prescient, in retrospect. Because their fun had just begun, and it didn’t finally end until Isaiah Pacheco slammed up the middle for the clinching first down inside the two-minute warning.

“It’s never fun to lose,” Cooper said. “But when you see the team rallying together, being like, ‘Let’s do this; let’s do this,’ yeah, it’s going to be fun.

“Football’s fun. But losing sucks. So, it’s a combination of both. That’s why my head’s all over the place.”

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NOW, IS THIS THE START OF SOMETHING?

Any attempt to put a greater meaning on the Week 14 outcome is futile.

There will be the temptation to say that this game could be the start of something. And it could be. Confidence is real, and the next two games against 4-8 Arizona and the 4-9 Los Angeles Rams will give the Broncos a chance to put a temporary halt to the niagara of depressing numbers that their form inevitably spurs.

But for every example of a shaky team using a “moral victory” — or even an actual one — as a springboard, there are a slew of others for which it was a meaningless bounce. Take the 2020 New York Jets, who defeated two playoff-bound teams in the last three weeks of the season after starting 0-13, then lost 15 of their next 19 games.

Thus, one should refrain from judgment. Let’s see what they do next.

Will Wilson — when he recovers from his concussion — look as dynamic as he did when he scrambled and flashed like the dazzling improv artist of old?

Can Jerry Jeudy maintain his current form? His last four games of start-to-finish work would prorate to a 106-catch, 1200-yard season.

Could this defense maintain its turnover touch? Takeaways were missing from the unit throughout its stellar season, but it picked up three interceptions of Mahomes — including two in short order that kick-started the Broncos’ comeback from 27-0 down.

Everyone wants to know what this means. But no one has a crystal ball.

What they have is just hope.

It’s kind of like the hope the 3-6 Broncos had when they upset the playoff-bound Los Angeles Chargers in 2018. Or the hope of the 4-9 Broncos after they stunned the eventual AFC North champion Houston Texans in Drew Lock’s first road start a year later. Or the hope of the 4-4 Broncos when they flew to Dallas and laid a 30-0 wallop on the Cowboys before a pair of window-dressing touchdowns just last November.

For Wilson in particular, the hope of recapturing his magic is the biggest thing the Broncos can extract from this game. Because late in the second quarter and throughout the third, he showed glimpses of his old self. He had fun; the team had fun. He took the baton from the theft-making defense and nearly carried it all the way to the finish.

It’s not much, but at 3-10, an injury-choked roster that took further hits Sunday and with losses in eight of nine games, that’s all you’ve got.

And when that’s all you have, you take a moral victory.

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