Want to be in the Super Bowl picture? Slay Cheese.
“This weekend is a big, big game,” former Broncos running back C.J. Anderson said earlier this week when I asked him about Denver (11-2) hosting the Green Bay Packers (9-3-1) in a tussle of division leaders Sunday at Empower Field.
“People say, ‘It’s a test.’ It’s not really a test … it’s going to be a good game. Obviously, I expect us to pull it out, especially at home. I do think it’ll be interesting seeing (Denver’s defense) playing against (Green Bay quarterback) Jordan Love. But our defense under (coordinator Vance Joseph) has been awesome against multiple QBs in this league and finding ways to sack them. That’s winning football.”
Like the rest of Broncos Country, Anderson’s a little — well — cheesed off at the national narratives getting slapped like Post-It notes on the backs of QB Bo Nix and his teammates.
The Broncos are fake contenders. The Broncos’ offense stinks. The Broncos’ QB isn’t right for the system. The Broncos’ passing game hurts my eyes. The Broncos are too one-sided, too lop-sided, to possibly win it all.
Anderson’s heard this crap before. About 10 years ago, now that you mention it. If this defense feels very 2015 Broncos, so does the national noise and network disdain.
C.J. would also like to remind the talking heads on both coasts to go look up how that movie ended. He’ll wait.
“We started hearing all about how the offense struggled.” Anderson laughed. “We heard how Peyton Manning ‘doesn’t fit’ in (Gary) Kubiak’s system. How Peyton was older. How he couldn’t move around.”
Yada begat yada after yada after yada. Then came the Packers. Peyton Manning vs. Aaron Rodgers. Title fight vibes.
“That was sort of the turning point,” Anderson recalled. “The start to (seeing) where we could be.”
That Super Bowl season hopped up another level — legitimacy, hype — when the Packers visited Denver on Nov. 1, 2015.
Green Bay brought out the Cheeseheads. The Broncos whipped out the sledgehammers.
Anderson ran for 101 yards and a score. Manning racked 340 yards through the air while Demaryius Thomas posted 168 receiving yards. Rodgers was throttled to 77 yards passing and the Broncos rolled, 29-10.
Suddenly, the world knew what Broncomaniacs had already figured out: The No Fly Zone was for real.
“This 2025 team for real?” I asked Anderson.
“They’re probably better than we were on offense, honestly,” C.J., now 34 and the head football coach at Benicia (Calif.) High School, replied.
“They take care of the football. They move the ball. They’re scoring. They’re converting third downs. They play great on defense. That was our formula to winning the Super Bowl. And that’s the same thing from them now.”
To his eyes, the trust/faith from Sean Payton’s offense is the same as ’15, the ability to shrug away punts knowing that the defense could pin an opponent down for series after series.
Those Broncos were 9-3 in one-score contests during the regular season. These Broncos are 9-2 in tilts decided by eight points or fewer — thanks, in part, to a bizarre Raiders field goal as time expired last weekend.
“The difference is Peyton would put us in the best play, and I don’t know of Bo has the same green light in Sean Payton’s system,” Anderson reflected. “We were playing with a Hall-of-Fame QB, so that if (Kubiak) called the wrong play or had us in the wrong look, Peyton got us out of it.”
The bones are the same, even if some of the meat has a different aftertaste. The 2015 Broncos had an older Manning and a young (ish) Brock Osweiler at QB as opposed to 2025’s singular signal-caller in Nix. Both teams dealt with key skill-position injuries. Manning cowboyed through quad and foot problems; Osweiler separated his non-throwing shoulder.
The 2025 Broncos’ MVP on offense for the first 10 weeks was tailback J.K. Dobbins, who went on Injured Reserve in mid-November with a foot injury. Since then, the Broncos have featured a true time-share, led by second-round rookie RJ Harvey (3.9 yards per carry) with dashes of Jaleel McLaughlin (3.8 per carry), Tyler Badie (4.2 per carry) and grindy, north-south fullback Adam Prentice — a cult hero in the making after averaging 2.3 touches for 20.3 yards over his last three contests.
“They’re fun to watch,” Anderson said.
“So, say, 2025 Broncos meets 2015 Broncos at full strength,” I countered. “Who wins?”
A pause.
“That’s a great question,” Anderson mused. “Obviously, I would give us the edge.
“The question is, do Nik Bonitto and Jonathon Cooper, do those guys get to Peyton, as quickly as Peyton got the ball out?
“And Pat Surtain II and Riley Moss, could they cover our guys? We’re talking about DT and Emmanuel Sanders — All-Pro-caliber players (at wide receiver) …
“VJ is solid. Wade (Phillips) was a great game-planner. I think, up front, to be honest, I think we probably had a little bit more depth than they have. Of course, I’m going to always take us. We won it all … (but) I wouldn’t mind seeing that game.”
He wouldn’t mind more respect for his beloved orange and blue, either. While Love’s settled in as a top-10 QB in this league, he’s also good for at least one, and sometimes two, critical brain-cramps per contest. The Packers QB threw for 180 yards here in 2023. Yet down 19-17 with 1:40 to go, Love fired off a lollipop on third-and-20 at midfield into double coverage. Broncos safety P.J. Locke secured the pick at the Broncos’ 12 to ice the game.
“You can’t control the teams on your schedule,” Anderson said. “When I look at (2015), it was kind of the same. We were winning all these one-score games and everybody else was trying to figure (us) out (and said), ‘Well, they haven’t really played anybody.’
“Then we had a big game against the Packers and said, ‘Here we go. This is what it is.’”
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