Emmanuel Sanders: Broncos have 'enough' talent to 'win right now'

Fans in the Mile High City are dejected, like any fanbase whose team is 0-3 would be. But adding insult to injury for Broncos Country is how this team has absolutely dashed the hopes that 2019 would be a turnaround year.

One of the reasons fans were so optimistic heading into this season is because the Denver Broncos clearly have talent. Despite back-to-back losing seasons in 2017 and 2018, the Broncos still had several holdovers from the Super Bowl 50 championship and have since stacked a couple of very good draft classes.

Throw in a few strategic signings in free agency to cover some remaining roster holes — including a former Super Bowl MVP transplanted quarterback — sprinkled in the arrival of Vic Fangio — one of the most respected defensive coaches in all of football — and the fanbase was on cloud-nine all offseason long.

Three weeks into the season, Broncos Country has crashed back down to Earth. Reality has checked in and it looks a heck of a lot like the Vance Joseph product the Broncos trotted out onto the field for two years.

But is this 0-3 Broncos squad underachieving? Or were even the best-laid plans of John Elway and Vic Fangio not enough to get this team on track?

Perhaps it's time for the Broncos to officially (and fully) embrace the rebuild and look to the future when it comes to the expectation of establishing a winning brand again. Listening to wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders, though, that would be a misguided approach.

Sanders believes this team has what it takes to compete now, which flies in the face of the Broncos' cellar-dwelling position in the AFC West standings.

“I understand where you’re coming from, but at the same time, I think we have a good enough team to win now," Sanders said on Tuesday ahead of the Broncos' Week 4 bout with the 1-2 Jacksonville Jaguars. "We’ve just got to stop shooting ourselves in the foot and I feel like that’s what we’ve been doing. Hopefully we can stop doing that.”

Sanders isn't wrong. The Broncos did a good job of protecting the ball in Weeks 1 and 2, turning it over just once (a red zone interception thrown by Joe Flacco Sanders' way). However, in Week 3 at Lambeau Field, the floodgates opened and Denver coughed up the ball a whopping three times, which led to 14 Green Bay Packers' points. The Broncos lost 27-16.

That's only one example of this team shooting itself in the foot. I could highlight the 4th-&-15 play in Week 2 that the Chicago Bears converted via a 25-yard completion to Allen Robinson, setting up the walk-off, game-winning field goal. I could bring your attention to Garett Bolles' plethora of holding penalties in that same game, a missed extra point in Week 3 and several other aspects of this Broncos squad thus far, including the ignominious distinction of being the first team since sacks became an official statistic to open the first three games without a QB take-down or a takeaway.

“We’re young and we’ve got some young guys," Sanders said. "I look at [TE] Noah Fant, a young guy. I look at [OL] Dalton [Risner]. I still loot at Bolles, he’s young. The year we went to the Super Bowl, we had veteran guys even on the special teams. We had older guys on the special teams. We’re young. I understand that sometimes it can get frustrating because you want to win, but at the same time you’ve got to understand these guys are young and they’ve got to grow to be professionals."

Going through the ups and downs of the NFL and being on the losing end of some close games is one of the ways many pro players learn and develop. But those young players only learn if they're on a team with the right coaches and with a locker room culture heading in the right direction.

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One of the concerns I have, and I know many of my fellow journalists feel the same way, is that this team has lost its soul in a sense. That the Broncos have not only forgotten how to win but over two really bad years under Vance Joseph, they've become okay with losing.

When that happens to a locker room, it really is incumbent on the front office to blow it all up, ship off the veterans and start over. If this Broncos squad continues to slide, that's exactly the fate that awaits them.

"You don’t step into the NFL and say, ‘Oh yeah, that guys is a pro.’ Some people it takes three or four years for them to even get in the groove of it,' Sanders said. "You’ve got to understand, you guys are just thinking about football, but these guys are balancing stuff off the field to try to just get a rhythm of just being a true pro.”

One would hope that for those young players still learning the ropes and balancing what it means to be a pro with both on- and off-field demands and distractions, that the veterans could help bring them along, show them the way and set the example. But once again, I have to wonder whether even the veteran holdovers from Super Bowl 50 have become complacent and beaten down in the face of so...much...losing.

Sanders believes this team has what it takes to win now. While it's encouraging to hear one of the Broncos' Pro Bowl veterans show confidence in what this team has, in the face of immense pressure and three-straight losses, it becomes meaningless talking points if the product on the field and the end result don't change. So what does 'winning now' mean exactly to a vet like Sanders?

“Obviously winning every game," Sanders said. "You look at the Oakland game, I feel like we should have won that. You look at Chicago, we should have won that. I feel like even versus Green Bay, we don’t turn the ball over three times, I feel like we should have won that game. You can’t sit up here and say we’re young and we’re in a rebuilding stage and all this stuff and say this team can’t win because we can win. We’ve shown we can win, but the thing is we’re shooting ourselves in the foot. We’re not creating turnovers on defense and we’re turning the ball over on offense. We can’t do that, that is the recipe for disaster. That’s why we’re sitting at 0-3."

If 'if's and but's were candy and nuts, we'd all have a very Merry Christmas'. You know the saying. Woulda, shoulda, coulda.

All the Broncos can do is talk, while keeping their nose to the grindstone at practice. It's not too late to turn the ship around and make something of this season, though. The next three games are very winnable — Jacksonville, at L.A. Chargers and home for Tennessee. You get to 3-3 and it's a brand-new season.

"Right now, we’re working to try to—hopefully the tide will turn and we start getting those takeaways and start scoring and start finishing drives," Sanders said. "We are able to move the ball and we’ve got a good defense, we’ve got great players on the defensive side. It all just has to click.”

That's where the veteran savvy and coaching expertise of Vic Fangio, Ed Donatell, Mike Munchak and the rest of them is supposed to step in and bridge the gap. It hasn't happened yet, but that doesn't mean that it can't or that it won't.

Follow Chad on Twitter @ChadNJensen and @MileHighHuddle.