The Broncos beating up the Falcons shows just how far the they’ve come

There was a time, not that long ago, when the Denver Broncos were the team on the other side of a lopsided preseason score. The team getting pushed around. The team that looked disorganized and outmatched against opponents who had already figured out what they were building toward.

That era feels like ancient history now. And Friday night in Atlanta was the latest reminder of just how far this franchise has traveled.

On a recent edition of “Dover and Cecil” on 104.3 The Fan, host Josh Dover broke down the Broncos’ 27-7 dismantling of the Atlanta Falcons in the first preseason game of the year. And his message wasn’t about the score. It was about the standard.

Dover framed the result in the simplest possible terms.

“A good team beating up on a bad team? That’s what it’s supposed to look like. And guys, the Broncos are on the right side of that equation now,” Dover said.

That sentence carries more weight than it appears to on the surface. For a decade, the Broncos were the bad team in these matchups. They were the roster that better-constructed organizations used as a tune-up. They were the opponent that opposing coaches pointed to as a confidence builder before the real games started. That identity has been erased, completely and definitively, by what Bo Nix, Sean Payton and the front office have built over the past three years.

Dover then drew the contrast between where both franchises are heading.

“Top-10 draft pick in next year’s draft, that’s where the Atlanta Falcons are gonna be,” Dover said.

He continued with the line that captured the full distance between the two organizations.

“The Broncos are gonna be worrying about a Los Angeles trip in February. The Falcons are gonna be tanking in December,” Dover said.

That’s the gap. One team is preparing for a Super Bowl run. The other is preparing for a rebuild. And when those two realities collide on a football field, even in a preseason game, the result should look exactly like it did Friday night.

Dominant. Controlled. One-sided.

Dover closed with the assessment that ties the entire performance together.

“So, it was supposed to look that way,” he said.

That’s the mentality the Broncos need to internalize heading into the regular season. When you’re a contender, a genuine, AFC championship-caliber contender, you don’t play down to weaker opponents. You bury them. You use the opportunity to sharpen your execution, build confidence across the roster, and send a message to every other team watching that this franchise doesn’t take its foot off the gas regardless of the opponent or the stakes.

It’s only preseason. Nobody is hanging a banner for a Week 1 scrimmage win. But the way a team carries itself in August reveals something about its identity heading into September. The Broncos looked like a team that knows exactly what it is. The Falcons looked like a team still trying to figure it out. And Dover is right, that is exactly how it was supposed to look.

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