Can some­body please find coach Vic Fan­gio a mask he likes, maybe some­thing with orange and blue span­gles, so Uncle Vic won’t get docked anoth­er $100,000 in fines?

As long as you’re up, would you mind also grab­bing me a blind­fold? These beat-up Bron­cos are done at 0–2. I’ve seen enough.

But like mom­ma always said, it will all work out for the best, so long as Den­ver gets Clem­son quar­ter­back Trevor Lawrence in the 2021 NFL draft.

John Elway has been look­ing for John Elway, ever since he took over as archi­tect of this Den­ver ros­ter near­ly a decade ago. Well, at long last, here is Elway’s chance.

“When you look at Trevor Lawrence, he is a gen­er­a­tional tal­ent. He is John Elway,” for­mer NFL gen­er­al man­ag­er Mike Tan­nebaum, who ran the Jets from 2006–2012, told ESPN in the spring.

No offense to Drew Lock, who has quick­ly proven to be a com­pe­tent if injury-prone pro quar­ter­back. But Lock is no Lawrence, wide­ly con­sid­ered to be the best QB prospect since Andrew Luck. With a 31–1 record as Clemson’s starter, Lawrence could well win anoth­er nation­al cham­pi­onship with the Tigers (if the pan­dem­ic allows) and become the pro­hib­i­tive favorite to be select­ed No. 1 over­all in the draft.

After two games, is it too ear­ly for Den­ver to tank? Yes, if you lis­ten to the Broncos.

“We’re not hit­ting the pan­ic but­ton,” cor­ner­back Bryce Calla­han said Wednesday.

But it’s cer­tain­ly not too ear­ly to start dream­ing and schem­ing for next year.

The Bron­cos are cur­rent­ly favored to win only three of their remain­ing 14 games, accord­ing to the sim­u­la­tions spewed out by the com­put­er at FiveThirtyEight.

While there are prob­a­bly a whole bunch of 3‑and-outs between now and a last-place fin­ish in the AFC West for the Bron­cos, I would take a 4–12 record right now. Then I’d trade the No. 4 over­all pick and line­backer Von Miller for the priv­i­lege of mov­ing atop the draft board, where the selec­tion of Lawrence could final­ly start the Bron­cos back on the road to cham­pi­onship contention.

This fran­chise is in a fog, with no clear vision on how to get back to elite sta­tus. Hey, the same could prob­a­bly be said of Uncle Vic.

In fact, Fan­gio said the rea­son he got hit with a six-fig­ure fine for fail­ure to con­sis­tent­ly wear a mask over his nose and mouth on the side­line dur­ing the loss at Pitts­burgh was because his glass­es kept fog­ging up.

I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly like wear­ing a mask either, Uncle Vic. Who does? But I nev­er take mine off in the press box dur­ing Bron­cos games (at least until the hot dogs are served at halftime).

“I’m wear­ing (a mask) because the NFL says we have to wear it,” Fan­gio said, “and I’m a loy­al employ­ee of the NFL.”

Dur­ing three sea­sons play­ing for the top col­lege foot­ball pro­gram in Amer­i­ca, Jer­ry Jeudy lost four times. That’s right. He lost four games total with the Crim­son Tide. As a rook­ie with the Bron­cos, Jeudy could eas­i­ly lose five before Halloween

“I am not lik­ing los­ing, com­ing from Alaba­ma,” Jeudy said.

Nobody expect­ed the Bron­cos to be legit con­tenders in 2020. But how could any­body have pos­si­bly antic­i­pat­ed this sea­son to take such a bad turn so quickly?

It’s not so much that they’ve dropped two winnable games in frus­trat­ing ways that bad NFL teams seem to invent. The real sense of dread results from Denver’s most dan­ger­ous offen­sive play­er (Court­land Sut­ton) and most tal­ent­ed defend­er (Miller) being lost to injuries that will require exten­sive rehabilitation.

The next three months fig­ure to be more about hon­or­ing the grind than chas­ing glo­ry for the Broncos.

For starters, Fan­gio vows to pay more atten­tion to all those death-by-inch­es details, like not let­ting his mask slip on the sideline.

“I’m going to do my best to do bet­ter,” said Fan­gio, with all the enthu­si­asm of a kid who promis­es to eat his peas and carrots.

There’s no mask­ing all the issues on both sides of the foot­ball for the Bron­cos, though.

Of course, these play­ers won’t quit. But what’s the point of anoth­er 7–9 or 6–10 sea­son for Denver?

Although by the time he returns from injury the team could be head­ed into the bye week with a 1–6 record, Lock has the capa­bil­i­ty to be a sol­id quar­ter­back in this league. But his ceil­ing is clos­er to Jake Plum­mer than Patrick Mahomes.

And since when was good enough con­sid­ered accept­able in Bron­cos Coun­try? This team’s lone goal, as Elway con­stant­ly reminds us, is to win rings. Some­thing has got to change for this fran­chise in a dra­mat­ic way.

Tank for Trevor?

That’s not what I’m sug­gest­ing, because there’s no need to tank.

This Bron­cos team is bad enough to lose 12 or 13 games with­out even trying.