Broncos get a heaping faceful of ‘humble pie’ in absorbing worst Week 1 loss in two decades

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Broncos players and coaches know — and have uttered often in the last seven months — that the accomplishments of last season don’t matter anymore. That a new campaign means you start from 0-0, just like the other 31 teams, and you don’t somehow have a jump start on the opposition just because you happened to come within three points of the franchise’s first Super Bowl in a decade.

And there can be no more stark evidence of the lack of carryover than the 31-10 thrashing dealt to the Broncos by the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium on Monday night. A defense that ranked No. 2 in the league overall — which included second in the league in rushing yardage allowed and fifth in the NFL against the run on a per-carry basis — in the regular season was gashed for 220 yards.

The Broncos were unable to tap into Kenneth Walker III’s frequency, and he blasted through them one time after another — never more thoroughly than on his lengthiest jaunts of 28 and 60 yards, both of which saw him break tackles and leave a slew of Broncos strewn in his wake. Walker finished with 173 yards thanks to breaking those tackles; he posted the highest individual rushing output at the expense of a Denver defense since the New York Jets’ Breece Hall trampled the Broncos for 177 yards in Week 5 of the 2023 season, Sean Payton’s first campaign.

Further, the team’s missed-tackle rate was its worst since the start of that 2023 campaign, specifically the 70-20 embarrassment Miami administered to the Broncos in Week 3 of that season.

All the offseason and preseason hype vanished into the muggy Kansas City air. It might have been necessary.

“We needed some humble pie, for sure, ” cornerback Pat Surtain said.

#Broncos CB Pat Surtain II said, “We needed some humble pie, for sure.” He explains why: pic.twitter.com/IHL5E9kQMT

— Andrew Mason (@MaseDenver) September 15, 2026

The Chiefs’ comprehensive dominance wasn’t to the same degree of what the Dolphins did to the Broncos back in Sean Payton’s first season as the team’s head coach so let’s be real — this was not the most embarrassing defeat of the Sean Payton era. It wasn’t even a beatdown in the way that Baltimore throttled the Broncos nine games into the 2024 campaign, dispensing a 41-10 punishment that seemed to say, “Hey, Broncos, you aren’t ready to join the AFC’s upper echelon yet.”

“Shocking, yeah, but we’ve just gotta play better. We just have to play better,” Singleton said.

BRONCOS LINGERING CONCERN: THEIR WORK AGAINST THE RUN

With much of what transpired Monday, the miscues were in a bit of a vacuum.

That wasn’t the case for the run defense, which allowed an average of 162 rushing yards per game in the postseason and now has three-consecutive games dating back to last January’s divisional-round playoff win over Buffalo of permitting at least 140 rushing yards in a game.

Many of the rushing yards came after missed tackles, with Singleton credited with five, per the NFL’s Next Ten Stats service.

Singleton ranked in a tie for 33rd in the NFL in missed tackles last season per SportRadar with 12, although his missed-tackle percentage was considerably greater. Nevertheless, it was a problem for him early last season; he had six missed tackles in Weeks 1-5, then had the same number of misses in the 11 games he played over the remainder of the season.

So, missed tackles were part of Singleton’s previous season, but he did improve as the campaign progressed. Perhaps that’s why he was confident the glitch would be fixed.

“We’re gonna be fine,” Singleton said. “We’re gonna work on it this week, we’re gonna do what we need to do, and we’re gonna be fine with that.”

So too were the mental mistakes that included a pair of holding penalties against wide receiver Pat Bryant — one of which he disagreed with. But the infraction he drew in the third quarter that sent the Broncos into goal-to-go back at the Kansas City 15-yard line was a play he admitted was a miscue on his part.

There was little the Broncos did right. They got their tight ends involved early, with Evan Engram and Adam Trautman each recording a pair of first-half receptions, with Engram scoring Denver’s sole touchdown of the night. Brandon Jones took advantage of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes throwing it right to him with the interception that set up the Broncos offense at the Kansas City 5 with a 14-point deficit in the third quarter before Bryant’s afore-mentioned second holding infraction of the night helped for the Broncos to settle for a field goal and a 21-10 deficit.

The Broncos would never score again, and Kansas City simply pulled gradually away for a defeat that felt more like the string of losses at Arrowhead Stadium in the late 2010s and early 2020s.

Now, these Broncos aren’t anything like their forebears of several years ago. They should be able to prevent this defeat from morphing into a spiral that would sink the season before it really began, even though the next five contests are all against teams that were playoff qualifiers with 11 or more wins in 2025.

They’ve overcome shaky starts in each of the previous seasons under coach Sean Payton. And while last year doesn’t matter in terms of what this team can accomplish, it is relevant in terms of the Broncos having the “demonstrated ability” — to use Payton’s parlance — to confidently overcome setbacks.

“And that’s why we have the guys we have and the culture that’s been building here for for years,” tight end Adam Trautman said.

“We come back from this stuff. We always have — and that’s what I expect out of us.”

But it won’t just happen with the snap of two fingers — and in particular for the defense against the run, it’ll have to overcome a three-game sample size dating back to last January. While Week 1 lends itself to unusual outcomes, there appears to be one problem the Broncos must face and fix if they’re to avoid having this six-game gauntlet to start the season deal them a damaging blow.

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