Garett Bolles earned this playoff trip as no other Broncos player has

DENVER — For the Denver Broncos, the misery is over.

Eight years out of the postseason. Seven of those in succession with sub-.500 records. Thirteen starting quarterbacks prior to this season. The gradual fade of the Super Bowl 50 team into the rear-view mirror, to the point where it opened the 2023 season with no players remaining from the Broncos’ last truly magic moment.

The First and Second World Wars each had a time span shorter than the Broncos’ stay in NFL irrelevance.

And Garett Bolles was there.

The team’s longest-tenured player missed the only winning season during the Broncos’ voyage through the league’s nether regions. But he saw the seven-consecutive losing seasons, each of which added another boulder of frustration to which he was chained. And for the first three of those, he was a pariah to the fan base, booed without mercy as holding penalties accumulated.

Bolles long since escaped the shackles of his early-career woes to become one of the league’s better left tackles.

Two different general managers and another pair of head coaches signed off on contract extensions for Bolles as he became a massive part of the team’s foundation. That spoke with a booming voice, far more than a century’s worth of press-conference platitudes.

“Great football players aren’t allowed to leave buildings,” right tackle Mike McGlinchey said.

And Bolles became such for the Broncos, even as the team’s struggles continued. The Broncos trod upon a grim path that finally, forcefully reached its end Sunday.

The chains of frustration — not just for Bolles, but for all with a once-powerful franchise that until 2016 never believed it would linger so long in the league’s wilderness — are now broken and buried.

The details of Sunday’s game — a 38-0 romp over the Kansas City Chiefs’ B team — will be forgotten beyond being the answers to trivia questions:

Yes, Bo Nix set a club record by opening the game with 18-straight completions. He finished with four touchdown passes, which pushed his touchdown-pass total to 29 and his all-around touchdown tally to 34, the third-highest in NFL history for a rookie quarterback.

But something different will echo from this game.

It will be the sounds of 72,690 delirious fans celebrating with a fervor unknown since Super Bowl 50, singing along with the music as the Broncos left no doubt as to the day’s outcome. It will be the sight of Nix running around the stadium and high-fiving fans.

And it will be the image of Bolles waving a Broncos flag and then planting it into the grass in exultation as the team exited the field with its season extended and a long-held dream made real.

Sunday, Bolles and the Broncos broke free of their shackles once and for all.

“I’ve gone through so many different coaches and so many different things and so many different quarterbacks,” Bolles said. “But to be in this moment, to take this franchise back to where it belongs in the playoffs and, and be one of the longest-tenured Broncos … it’s the sweetest moment that I can think of and I’m just extremely grateful.”

The only player whose tenure comes close to that of Bolles is Courtland Sutton, who arrived in the following draft class.

“‘GB’ and I got to have a little moment on the sideline when the game was getting ready to be over,” Sutton said. “You want to talk about a guy who has been through a lot, a guy who has battled through injuries, a guy who has battled through just as much as I have and you add a year on top of it.

“… To see the joy and the light in his eyes, man. To know that we have a chance. That’s all you can ask for: to have a chance.”

A chance at the dance. A chance that for most of the last seven seasons was so far away that just pressing their noses to the glass seemed out of reach.

Shoot, even the times when they were within shouting distance, they weren’t all that close.

In 2021, the Broncos sat at 7-6 with the Cincinnati Bengals arriving. They lost the game, lost starting quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, and petered out from there.

Two years later, the Broncos were 7-7 with the woebegone New England Patriots arriving for a Christmas Eve date. They stumbled for three quarters, scrambled back to tie the game and then surrendered a game-winning drive that turned any playoff hopes to dust and ended the lamentable two-year tenure of Russell Wilson as quarterback.

Finally, in 2024, it came together. Despite a leviathan $91 million dead-money figure on the salary cap, despite riding the ups and downs of a rookie quarterback learning his way, Bolles and the Broncos persevered, overcame an 0-2 start and a pair of 2-game skids in November and December and finished the job.

And despite the woes along the way, Bolles never lost faith that his playoff dream would come true.

“Yeah, I knew it was eventually going to happen,” he said. “I’ve been doubted my whole life. And I think our team has been doubted multiple times throughout the last couple years. Even this, coming into this year with the young quarterback and this and that, and Coach [Sean] Payton and this and that.

“It’s just all noise, man, but this team worked so hard and countless hours that we put in, you know, day in and day out, and I think it just paid off the way that we knew that was going to.”

And the hordes who wanted to see a team other than the Broncos in the No. 7 seed — like, say, the explosive Bengals and their MVP-caliber quarterback, Joe Burrow — will plop by their flat screens next Sunday to watch the team that many expected to occupy the NFL’s cellar.

And no one in the locker room relishes that notion like Bolles.

“Everyone from the big sports-radio talks and everyone from Jeff Saturday saying that he didn’t want us to be in here,” Bolles said. “Well, you get to watch us next week so, you, can enjoy that one, my brother.”

The multitudes at home will get to see an eighth-year left tackle who has seen it all when it comes to frustration and team failure. Now they’ll watch him on the grand stage of the postseason.

No one earned it more than No. 72.

 

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