Broncos-Chiefs Week 14 Matchup Flexed Out of Primetime
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You must take a deep breath to comprehend just how bad the Denver Broncos are this season.
The Broncos have poorly performed enough for their Week 14 game vs. the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday Night Football, which was supposed to showcase heavyweight NFL poster boy Patrick Mahomes going against Russell Wilson, to be flexed out from the premium national slot.
In its place will go the critical AFC duel between the Miami Dolphins and Los Angeles Chargers on primetime. Of course, that has the bonus of featuring a pair of young, exciting quarterbacks who aren't afraid to air it out.
Watching ascending signal-callers Justin Herbert and Tua Tagovailoa battle certainly will draw a bigger television audience than Mahomes predictably outduelling the busted flush that Wilson now resembles.
That makes sense, especially considering the Broncos under Wilson are currently dead last in the NFL when it comes to putting points on the board. Only averaging a paltry 14.3 points per game will never keep the audience engaged in a jam-packed December slate of NFL games.
Thus, the Broncos will be jettisoned into the 2:05 pm MDT time slot on December 11 instead. That will likely now be a game with heavy no-shows and should also find Chiefs fans massively populating the stands.
In the bigger picture, the decision represents another stunning indictment of how far the Broncos have fallen from competitive relevancy. In less than an entire season, the Broncos have gone from airing on the major networks' primetime slate of games to being spat out the other end unceremoniously.
There is simply no soft-soaping the predicament, and the blame lands squarely on the shoulders of three men: GM George Paton, rookie head coach Nathaniel Hackett, and Wilson, the presently hapless quarterback.
How this depressing narrative changes remains to be seen, but one thing is guaranteed: it won't feature the current status quo. Long have the Broncos' top brass shouted from the rooftops about returning to the elite ranks of the NFL, and for that to happen, they had to appear in as many primetime games as possible.
Sadly for all concerned, the brutal reality is that the Broncos are further away from the promised land than perhaps ever before, and the whole nation knows it.
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