Denver Broncos: Views from a Bronco Fan Living in Boston

I bleed orange as a Denver Broncos fan, but I spent my 20’s in Massachusetts. Pats fans have become de facto members of my family. That doesn’t mean I have to like them this week.

I grew up in Colorado, moving to Massachusetts to attend UMass Amherst in 2005. For those of you who need a refresher course on something that happened over a decade ago, here is the football context we were operating within.

10 – 1

The Patriots entered that fateful Divisional Round game in Denver 10-0 in the playoffs under Belichick and Brady. ESPN ran segments all week asking if it was even possible for the NFL’s newest demigods to lose with all the chips on the line.

It was reminiscent of their series on USC as to where they fit in the all-time great teams prior to Vince Young shocking the world in the Rose Bowl. Journalism dies when the narrative precedes the facts.

My dad gave me two tickets to that divisional round game, and I went with a friend I have known since I was 18 months old. Neither of us ever saw Ben Watson catch up to Champ because we were too busy hugging and high-fiving everyone within reach once he beat what we thought was the last guy.

This was just before smartphones, so we were relying on texts from friends, and the next two minutes or so were one of the most confusing of my adolescence. What the heck happened? How could Champ not have scored? What are the refs talking about????? There was no one within 30 yards of him when he was at the 20. HELP!!!!!!

The stadium was an emotional wreck prior to Bailey’s heroics. As Brady marched down the field late in the third quarter, it seemed inevitable that he would punch it in to give the Pats a 13-10 lead they would never relinquish. All the nonsense we heard on ESPN was being prophesized right in front of our faces. You could feel the tension in the air. Then Champ reminded everyone that all-time greats play on other teams too.

I can report that play sent Pats Nation into a furious state of denial. When I got back to school for my 2nd semester, the entire region had collectively decided that the ball clearly went out the back of the endzone after Champ fumbled it (it might have, the world will never know), and the Pats should have had it on the Broncos 20 – as opposed to the 1 yard gimme that Mike Anderson punched in on the next play to put Denver up for good.

Oct 2, 2016; Foxborough, MA, USA; Fans hold a sign announcing that New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady (12) will be returning during the second half of the Buffalo Bills 16-0 win over the New England Patriots at Gillette Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Winslow Townson-USA TODAY Sports

New England Sports Fans

This is the sports mindset the region largely operates within. Everything is a grievance. The Celtics are a bit of a special case as they epitomize class and success, and the fans usually bring their A game for those contests – but football is by far their weakest sport as a fanbase.

Boston will forever be a baseball town first, and Fenway Park should be designated by the federal government as a national landmark. It’s the baseball Vatican as far as I’m concerned. Hockey is really big too – as this is the lone region other than Minnesota where the majority take it seriously as a sport for their kids.

The Patriots were never a very good team, and mostly bad prior to the birth of the millennials. Their lone appearance in the spotlight outside our collective consciousness was as the final skidmark on the 1985 Bears’ path to all time greatness. This has resulted in very few lifetime Patriot fans the way the other three teams in the city have.

When you’re wondering if the Celtics and Bruins will ever recover the magic while the Red Sox are putting you through the most advanced form of sports torture known to man (their 84 years was not like the Cubs 108 years, as the Cubs were just bad for most of it, while the Red Sox continually got their hearts stomped in at the precipice of greatness – usually by teams from New York), there isn’t much emotional energy left to commit to a bad football team.

The most passionate segment of Pats fans seems to consist of a very young fanbase. The worst of which embody all the swagger of New England with none of the smarts. I argue that the main reason the Pats were a dynasty in the early 2000’s was due to the 5 Hall of Famers (Seymour, Bruschi, McGinest, Law, Harrison) on the most underrated defense of all time – and not Tom Brady in his 1st, 2nd, and 4th year as starter.

As far as I’m concerned, Tom Brady as we know him has two Super Bowl titles (his 3rd and 4th). Charlie Weis even said that in 2001, Damon freaking Huard was really close to him on the depth chart.

There is no reason that Drew Bledsoe couldn’t have won three out of four titles, or even more. He was one of the top 10 quarterbacks in the league. Yet, a staggering amount of Patriot fans have told me that Bledsoe could never win a Super Bowl because he never made one in the first place.

Jan 24, 2016; Denver, CO, USA; Denver Broncos wide receiver Demaryius Thomas (88) celebrates with the AFC Championship trophy following the game against the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship football game at Sports Authority Field at Mile High. The Broncos defeated the Patriots 20-18 to advance to the Super Bowl. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

A Quick History Lesson

Um…guys?

The Broncos avenged the Patriots the following year, denying the Packers back to back titles en route to their back to back – all while ending the NFC’s 13 year Super Bowl winning streak. But a lot of Pats fans don’t care about any of this. Prior to last season, the only games they truly were invested in came against the Jets, Dolphins, Ravens, Giants, and whomever Peyton Manning plays for (the Bills have been added to that list now that they have Rex Ryan). I can confirm that after last year’s AFC Championship gut-punch, the Broncos have finally joined their pantheon of hatred.

On September 9th, 1960, the Boston Patriots and Denver Broncos played the first AFL game ever at Boston University Stadium. You would think that a region which prides itself by its staggering amount of history would appreciate that the pathway to the modern NFL began just down the road from many Revolutionary War battlegrounds. Both teams have represented the AFC in 11 of the last 20 Super bowls. The all-time leaderboard of AFC champions looks as such:

Denver – 8

Pittsburgh – 8

New England – 8

Buffalo – 4

Oakland – 4

This is and always has been a rivalry. It may not be the nuclear radioactivity the Jets bring to town, or the unadulterated hatred Pats fans feel every time Joe Flacco turns into Aaron Rodgers against them in the playoffs, but every single era the Patriots have been good in, the Broncos have been too.

There is a very clear AFC historical hierarchy, and Patriots fans are late to the party, as seven of their eight AFC titles have come in age of the internet. They’re not bad fans so much as they’re not experienced. For many of them, football started as soon as Mo Lewis hit Drew Bledsoe. The rest of their teams began playing around or before the Industrial Revolution.

Oct 9, 2016; Cleveland, OH, USA; New England Patriots fans wait for the arrival of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady before the game between the Cleveland Browns and the New England Patriots at FirstEnergy Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports

The Worst Live Sports Experience of My Life

I’ll leave you with one final dispatch from the heart of Pats nation, and we must return to the beginning of this column to properly contextualize it; back to the play that Bronco fans will forever refer to when arguing on behalf of Champ Bailey’s all-time great bona fides.

However, Patriots fans remember it as the Ben Watson play. Justifiably so. This is one of the greatest hustle plays in the history of sports.

Every child regardless of whether they play sports should have to watch that effort. Ben Watson sprinting all the way from Greeley to chase down one of the fastest corners to ever step on a football field epitomizes everything we love about sports and what they evoke from the human spirit.

Pats fans love this play. I don’t blame them. I do too. However, a lot of them have this bizarre cognitive dissonance where they completely forget WHY Ben Watson had to travel the length of the Iditarod to catch Champ. It was the first time they were forced to acknowledge that Brady is mortal. He threw off his back foot towards perhaps the greatest corner ever in the endzone with the season on the line, and a lot of Pats fans are still in denial of that failure – let alone some of Brady’s more recent ones.

The following season, the Broncos played a Sunday night game in New England. I got tickets through my girlfriend (a Patriots fan sporting a Teddy Bruschi jersey – keep that in mind), and I invited another friend from UMass who was a Pats fan, as well as my best friend from high school who went to college in the area as well.

#tbt to a freaking decade ago at Foxboro, tailgating with @brad_brezinski prior to yet another Broncos win over the Pats. Damn we’re old. pic.twitter.com/gYSGYpNTtj

— Jacob Weindling (@Jakeweindling) December 17, 2016

We sat in the lower bowl, and immediately felt the heat. “Elway sucks” and “Bailey sucks” chants would bubble up around us, but it wasn’t anything out of the norm. Things didn’t get bad until the 2nd half when Jake Plummer ripped their hearts out with an 83 yard bomb to Javon Walker to put the Broncos up 17-0 with 13:03 to go in the 4th quarter.

The entire stadium rose as Plummer’s pass sailed through the air, and as I sat down, I watched roughly a third of the fans head for the exits. There was still a ton of time left, and down three scores with the ball isn’t insurmountable, especially when you have the “undisputed greatest quarterback of all time” as nearly all Pats fans allege.

I saw a tear falling down my girlfriend’s face and asked her what was wrong. The woman behind her dumped a full cup out on her blanket as we were standing to watch the Javon Walker touchdown.

I turned to confront the woman and asked why she didn’t pour the beer on me since I was the jerk wearing a bright orange jersey. I may as well have painted a target on my back.

This particular woman sent a string of insults my girlfriend’s way that would make Andrew Dice Clay blush. All because she brought a Broncos fan to the game. People around us began to occasionally toss spare change at her (a Boston specialty – I once saw a man in his 40’s or 50’s chuck a handful of change at a kid in a Yankees hat who couldn’t have been older than 5 at a Red Sox game. They weren’t even playing the Yankees that day).

I remained unharmed. It was complete insanity.

Fights erupted all around us. My friend asked if we wanted to go in order to avoid any further danger, but there were so many people heading for the exits with a full quarter to play that we decided we were safer closer to the action, and waited until the end of the game when we knew there would be few people left.

Funny enough, every fight around us was a Pats fan versus another Pats fan. If I hadn’t been righteously terrified for mine, my friends, and my girlfriend’s safety, I would have died laughing at one that materialized with almost no time left several rows in front of us. I will never forget it as long as I live.

Jan 24, 2016; Denver, CO, USA; Denver Broncos cornerback Bradley Roby (29) intercepts the ball on a two point conversion attempt by the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship football game at Sports Authority Field at Mile High. The Broncos defeated the Patriots 20-18 to advance to the Super Bowl. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Final Thoughts

Not all Pats fans are Boston hooligans, but of those who seem like they were plucked straight out of a Ben Affleck movie? Most are Pats fans. Nearly all my friends are normal sports fans who understand that they have experienced something unprecedented and truly special over the last decade and a half between Belichick and Brady.

The rest largely believe that they deserve this success because Boston suffered through so much losing in especially painful ways for so long. These are the people who populate the WEEI’s and Barstool’s of the world, conjuring up trades like Danny Amendola straight up for Joe Thomas and wondering if they’re giving up too much. They don’t really watch football other than Pats games.

The overall hatred towards Pats nation is justified, but this ignorance does not inflict all or even most New England fans. They’re just really passionate people who have a habit of speaking before fully thinking through what they’re saying. It’s a really ugly look on the worst of them. But every fanbase has a “worst of them.” Remember the alarmingly large smattering of Bronco fans booing the highest scoring offense of all time for one bad half?

They love this franchise as much as we love the Broncos, even if a lot of them don’t appreciate the Pats in the same way that we do our team (but that’s OK, the Broncos are our Red Sox. You want to talk about how we appreciate the Avs or Nuggets versus the Celtics or Bruins? Ha! Our Rockies love is consistent though – as attendance figures prove. Denver is a two-sport town).