Broncos’ Garett Bolles, Courtland Sutton look to end playoff drought

Garett Bolles spoke from the bottom of a hole deeper than the 50-point loss his team had just suffered.

The veteran offensive lineman couldn’t contain his bubbling frustration as his seventh professional season began with a third straight loss, this one a 70-20 embarrassment at the hands of the Miami Dolphins on September 24, 2023.

Four head coaches, two general managers and a slew of offensive coordinators and offensive line coaches during his career, Bolles had seen personal highs but no postseason games. Hell, he hadn’t been on a team with a winning record.

Three games into the Sean Payton era, none of the good stuff seemed any closer either.

“I’m tired of losing, man,” Bolles said that day, wiping his face with his hand. “I’ve been here seven years and all I’ve done is lose. It’s frustrating.

Bolles called rock bottom that day, and it probably was, even though by mid-October Denver found itself 1-5.

Since then, the Broncos have started to write a different story. They entered the fray last year, then faded late. They benched the bench and then released quarterback Russell Wilson. Also cut Justin Simmons. Bo Nix. Establish a much more complete seven-man defensive front.

Starting with a win over Green Bay last year, the Broncos under Payton won 16 of their next 25 games, including a blistering 9-5 start through 2024.

But now they’ve lost their last two games and will likely need to win Sunday against Kansas City to finally end this playoff drought. Getting to the playoffs for the first time since winning the Super Bowl in 2015. Getting rid of the albatross on the back of Bolles, Denver’s longest-tenured Bronco, and its other elder statesman, wide receiver Courtland Sutton.

“They’ve put up with a lot of garbage over the years and it’s time we give them the opportunity to take advantage of it,” Broncos right tackle Mike McGlinchey said Wednesday. “We’re excited to do this.” We talked about it today as an infraction. You’re not just playing for yourself. You play for your city, you play for your organization, you definitely play for the players that have been here a long time.

The remaining duo

If the 2024 Broncos are remembered as “young and hungry,” as Payton dubbed them during training camp, then Sutton and Bolles are older and desperate.

They each saw what players who last this many years in the NFL tend to see. End of season injuries. Life-changing contract extensions. Coaches and teammates come and go.

They saw and felt everything. Except what it feels like to play in the playoffs.

The final piece of consolidating this position has proven elusive over the past two weeks.

Denver wasted opportunities against the Los Angeles Chargers and then against Cincinnati. Now that leaves Kansas City, which already has the No. 1 seed and won’t play quarterback Patrick Mahomes or several others on Sunday, placing itself between the Broncos and a wild weekend date. -card.

“It means a lot to be in this situation, to play meaningful games in December and to have this opportunity,” Sutton said this week. “Finish the last game of the season, divisional game, at home with a chance to go to the playoffs. You couldn’t – yeah, you could say it would have been nice to go into this game and have your position locked in and everything like that, but in terms of a storybook theme you couldn’t write it better , this is the best opportunity we can have.

In Sutton’s first six seasons in the NFL, the Broncos went 38-61. Add in a 5-11 rookie campaign for Bolles, and he’s 43-72.

The last two seasons have seen improvements on the field, but not always smooth sailing on an individual level.

Sutton caught 10 touchdown passes last year, but skipped all voluntary workouts last offseason to make it clear he wanted a contract extension that never came. Instead, the parties developed a package of incentives, most of which Sutton implemented.

Bolles entered 2024 knowing it was the final year of his contract and didn’t know if he would be back until late in the season, when the team and his agent negotiated a four-year contract extension.

“In this organization, when you talk about some of the greats, as they come up, you can talk to them and they played in these types of games,” Bolles said of the hard-hitting late-season football. season last month when he signed the extension. . “Exactly the culture we have had here for so many years. It’s great to be where we are. It’s not over, it’s not over. We still have a lot of work to do, but we are putting people in the right positions to succeed.

Crop adapters

Sutton and Bolles weren’t part of the suite of changes Payton and general manager George Paton made to the locker room after the 2023 season, but Sutton and Bolles weren’t ready to be part of the long-term picture either. Sutton still isn’t, unless the parties agree on an extension of the playoffs.

McGlinchey called the pair “instrumental” in Denver exceeding expectations this year.

“Courtland is one of the most impressive people I have been around at the top of his game,” he said. “His ability to ignite a locker room, his personality is contagious. He never gives up. He never complains. And I think those two reasons are a big part of our success.

Tight end Adam Trautman is steeped in the church of Payton. He was drafted by New Orleans in 2020 and traded to the Broncos shortly after Payton got the job here.

Sutton and Bolles, however, first had to buy what Payton was selling. So preach it.

“It accelerates everything when your best players buy into the culture and the younger players have no choice but to follow it,” Trautman said.

He’s known Bolles since he first declared for the NFL draft — they share an agent — and you won’t find many people who speak in higher regard of Sutton, either.

“With No. 1 receivers, you don’t really get, in general on most teams, legitimate leadership where they don’t care if they get the ball,” Trautman said. “It’s hard to find. He’s a true No. 1 receiver in this league and he never complains about anything. Never like, “Give me the ball.” He never does that kind of thing. As a player, it’s a huge thing. You see this in teams all over the league.

“That could be because he bought into the culture, but it’s also just who he is as a person.”

Reach out and grab it

Joe Lombardi is about to conclude his 19th NFL regular season.

The trophy awarded to the Super Bowl winner literally bears his grandfather’s name.

You won’t see the Broncos’ offensive coordinator taking moments like these for granted, even though he’s coached in the playoffs in 10 of his previous 18 seasons and won a Super Bowl.

A chance at a playoff spot? And then play on the biggest stage? It doesn’t get any better than that.

Even better if it means breaking a long drought in Denver.

“I was looking around the room and you think of Garett Bolles, Courtland, the guys that have been here and didn’t make the playoffs,” Lombardi said Thursday. “Then there are young people who don’t know about it and who think that this opportunity maybe presents itself every year. I’m trying to make these guys understand that you don’t get a second chance.

“So when you have this opportunity, you have to take it and make it happen. You definitely feel a sense of urgency in a game like this.

McGlinchey was in his second year in San Francisco when the 49ers went from 4-12 in 2018 to 13-3 in 2019. They made it through the playoffs and the Super Bowl, where they lost to the Chiefs.

“The week before we left, I was talking to coaches and players who had been in the game for a long, long time,” McGlinchey said. “About twenty years. And they never did. I’ve never even been there. And the rarity, to be successful in this league and make these kinds of races, you have to appreciate them when they come.

The opportunity hasn’t presented itself yet for the Broncos, but it’s up for grabs.

“We can’t let this opportunity slip through our fingers,” McGlinchey said.

It would be a first for Payton in Denver, just as it would be a first for rookie quarterback Bo Nix and fourth-year cornerstones Quinn Meinerz and Pat Surtain II.

This would be a first for Paton as chief executive and for the Walton-Penner ownership group.

No one has been waiting for this longer than Bolles and Sutton.

“I know the guys are ready to take the opportunity and take on this moment that’s in front of us,” Sutton said. “I just can’t wait to be able to go out there and show why we deserve to have that last spot and take off with it.”

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Originally published: January 3, 2025 at 11:32 AM MST