Jerry Jeudy can do something that no Denver Broncos WR has done since 2014

DENVER — Jerry Rosburg wants the Broncos and their fans to feel “joy.”

“We seek joy this Sunday,” the interim head coach said. “We are out to win so we can celebrate with one another. We look forward to having our fans celebrate with us.”

Joy has been in short supply this season. And, for that matter, in past seasons. And nothing has been more joyless for the Broncos than their play in AFC West games, as the numbers show:

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9

Length, in games, of the Broncos’ current AFC West losing streak. It is the Broncos’ longest-ever losing streak in AFC West play, dating back to the formation of the division with the AFL-NFL merger of 1970.

If the Broncos lose Sunday, they will match their longest divisional losing streak since they dropped 10 consecutive AFL Western Division games from Sept. 11, 1965 through Nov. 20, 1966. They stopped the streak with a home win over the Chargers — by a 20-17 score on Nov. 27, 1966. Unfortunately, those Broncos lost another nine-consecutive divisional games.

But even with a win Sunday, the Broncos will still conclude their worst three-year stretch of AFC West play. With 1-5 division records in 2020 and 2021, the best the Broncos can do is go 3-15 in AFC West play over a three-year span. Their previous low-water mark was a 4-13-1 ledger from 1970-72.

However, it’s worth noting that the Broncos’ two divisional wins in 2020 and 2021 came in the same situation that the Broncos face Sunday: a home game against the Chargers.

A loss Sunday also gives the Broncos their first winless record in divisional play in 40 years, since they went 0-6 against AFC West foes in the strike-shortened 1982 season.

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6

Touchdown catches by Jerry Jeudy this season. He leads the Broncos in that statistic. And with one more touchdown, he will have the highest single-season touchdown tally for a Broncos wide receiver since Demaryius Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders had 11 and 9 touchdowns, respectively, in 2014.

From 1960 through 2014, the Broncos saw a wide receiver amass at least 7 touchdowns 37 times. They had 10 such seasons in a 6-campaign stretch from 2009-14. They never went more than three consecutive seasons (1970-72) without a 7-touchdown wide receiver; Ring of Famer Haven Moses stopped that streak in 1973 with 9 scores.

League-wide, there have been 173 seasons for wide receivers with at least 7 touchdowns since 2015, per pro-football-reference.com. That’s an average of 5.4 per team. The Broncos are currently the only team without a single 7-touchdown season from a wide receiver in that span.

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7

Consecutive seasons in which the Broncos entered the final game of the season with no chance at the postseason. This is the longest such streak for the Broncos since the first 13 seasons in club history — 1960-72.

Denver snapped that in 1973, its first winning season. Those Broncos went into a regular-season finale at 7-4-2, facing the Oakland Raiders in a winner-take-all clash for the AFC West crown. Denver fell, 21-17.

From that point forward, the Broncos never had more than three-consecutive “meaningless” regular-season finales (not including ones in which their playoff seed was already locked in) … until now.

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