Ryan O’Halloran: Well, here we are again. The Bron­cos enter Week 17 with noth­ing on the line but pride … and first-round draft posi­tion. At 5–10 enter­ing Sunday’s game against Las Vegas, the fran­chise will try and avoid only their third sea­son since 1991 with at least 11 loss­es. When did this sea­son fall off the rails? When did the cur­rent real­i­ty — much clos­er to the bot­tom of the league than the top — crys­tal­lize? The prob­lem with the state of the Bron­cos, there are so many choic­es. To begin the con­ver­sa­tion, I’ll start with Sept. 8, just six days before the open­er, when out­side line­backer Von Miller sus­tained what became a sea­son-end­ing ankle injury. Just like that, coach Vic Fangio’s blue­print — Miller and Bradley Chubb win­ning off the edges — was gone and the Bron­cos’ defense was play­ing uphill.

Kyle New­man: Miller going down for the year before even play­ing a snap was an omen of the ill-for­tune to come. While that was the first major blow to Fan­gio & Co.’s chance at con­tend­ing for a wild card, the fate of anoth­er lost sea­son was sealed before Sep­tem­ber end­ed. After drop­ping the open­er to the Titans in which cor­ner­back A.J. Bouye suf­fered a shoul­der injury that shelved him for over a month, Den­ver not only lost a close game in Pitts­burgh in Week 2, but also Court­land Sut­ton (sea­son-end­ing knee injury) and Drew Lock (missed two games with a shoul­der injury). By the time about 5,000 boos echoed around Empow­er Field in the Week 3 blowout to Tam­pa Bay — where the Bron­cos lost defen­sive end Jur­rell Casey to a sea­son-end­ing biceps injury — the calami­tous onslaught was on.

O’Halloran: Of the Bron­cos’ 10 loss­es, the Atlanta game was par­tic­u­lar­ly inex­cus­able. The pre­vi­ous week, the Bron­cos ral­lied to beat the Los Ange­les Charg­ers 31–30 to improve to 3–4. A trip to the reel­ing Fal­cons, who were 2–6 and already fired their coach and gen­er­al man­ag­er, rep­re­sent­ed a chance to get to .500 for the first time since Decem­ber 2018 and enter the play­off pic­ture. Instead, Atlanta built a 20–3 half­time lead and led by 21 points in the fourth quar­ter before an emp­ty-calo­rie come­back effort by the Bron­cos (34–27). The lack of cor­ner­back depth was exposed, as was a mad­den­ing inabil­i­ty to main­tain momen­tum from week-to-week.

New­man: It’s not like the 4–11 Fal­cons (losers of five of their last six) have proven to be some rev­e­la­tion since beat­ing the Bron­cos. Atlanta is sim­ply a bad team, just like Den­ver. The dec­i­ma­tion in the desert the next Sun­day at the hands of the archri­val Raiders (also high­ly incon­sis­tent) offered fur­ther proof as the Bron­cos were embar­rassed 37–12. Drew Lock looked lost, throw­ing four inter­cep­tions, while the ground game did next-to-noth­ing with 66 yards. Instead of bounc­ing back from a deflat­ing defeat in Atlanta, the Bron­cos sunk deep­er, just as the trend has been over the last five years.

O’Halloran: Should the New Orleans Deba­cle (no avail­able quar­ter­backs in a 31–3 loss) even be con­sid­ered? It will count in the record book but should have an aster­isk next to it (com­pet­i­tive integri­ty on Thanks­giv­ing Vaca­tion). But with­in that game was the final gut punch to the Bron­cos’ hopes of reach­ing .500 and hav­ing their defense car­ry an incon­sis­tent offense. Cor­ner­back Bryce Calla­han, one of the team’s top four or five play­ers, sus­tained a first-half foot injury that proved to be sea­son-end­ing. Callahan’s inter­cep­tion fueled the come­back against the Charg­ers. His depar­ture start­ed a chain of events at cor­ner that saw Fan­gio hav­ing to play recent­ly-acquired play­ers who were out of posi­tion and/or underqualified.

New­man: Fan­gio had the decked stacked against him this year, from the slew of injuries, to COVID issues, to the moldy cher­ry on top of this bunk sea­son — Bouye’s six-game sus­pen­sion for vio­lat­ing the NFL’s pol­i­cy on per­for­mance enhanc­ing drugs. That sus­pen­sion will car­ry over two games into next sea­son — when Melvin Gor­don will like­ly serve a three-game sus­pen­sion for DUI then as well — but hope­ful­ly the Bron­cos’ bad 2020 juju won’t. I sus­pect Fan­gio returns despite the Bron­cos regress­ing in win total from Year 1 to Year 2. You could say the 62-year-old gets a par­don for all the exter­nal, non-con­trol­lable fac­tors that con­tributed to Denver’s demise. But par­dons don’t come around two years in a row.