The Denver Broncos Are Out of Excuses

The United States Men's National Team was eliminated from the World Cup earlier this week. (And yet FIFA still insists on playing the thing out. Whatever.) For both soccer diehards and the newest throng of casual fans, the USMNT's run to the knockout round was a shot of adrenaline for an otherwise thin sports summer. Americans' general aversion to "communist kickball" was brushed aside with Clint Dempsey's first-minute goal against Ghana, a startling draw against Portugal, and a narrow loss against world soccer powerhouse Germany.

That was good enough to escape the "Group of Death," a feat which exceeded the expectations of most US fans and experts. And despite a disappointing loss to Belgium in the round of 16, stateside soccer enjoyed the benefit of the journey trumping the destination. Even though the USMNT had no chance at winning the World Cup, the tournament was still a fun ride.

The Denver Broncos will enjoy no such luxury this season.

This year's Broncos, fraught with expectations, are the opposite of Cinderella. They won the Peyton Manning Sweepstakes of 2012 and Denver has won back-to-back division titles. But after each of those promising regular seasons, Broncos fans would see their postseason hopes for glory engulfed in virtual flames.

The first was a double-overtime playoff loss to Baltimore. That derailment came as much from a late Manning interception as to Rahim Moore's eye for the deep ball. The Ravens would hoist the Lombardi trophy three weeks later, and then take one of Denver's best linebackers, Elvis Dumervil, in a bizarre agent fuck-up the following month.

The second was arguably more unkind: a blowout loss in the Super Bowl. This in an era where the big game blowout was thought to be an artifact from a bygone civilization (but one the Broncos, with five Super Bowl losses, know all too well). The Seahawks, with their young, homegrown roster, managed a safety on the first play from scrimmage and never looked back.

After breaking the bank for Manning two years ago, the Broncos have duct-taped the bank back together—and smashed it to bits again, this time landing a stunning class of free agents with over 100-million-dollars-worth of blue and orange money.

The Broncos, to be fair, are spending money, and doing so smartly. There are no Mike Wallace contracts on this roster, and the closest to that last season, that of cornerback Champ Bailey (who was due $10.5 million), was ushered off the books in March. On the contrary, few teams are getting better value at wide receiver than Denver. Their top three wide receivers, Wes Welker, Demaryius Thomas and the incoming Emmanuel Sanders, have a combined cap hit of $16.7 million, according to Sportrac. That's a half-million less than Wallace's cap hit for the Dolphins in 2014.

And unlike many NFL teams, Denver is spending most of the money possible under the most recent CBA. Very few things piss off fans more than a front office carrying eight figures of salary cap space into the preseason, something that almost half the teams in the league will do this summer. According to the NFLPA's daily League Cap Report, 12 NFL teams currently have cap space in excess of $10 million. Denver sits 26th in the NFLPA's ranking, with a little over $4 million in cap space. The front office, led by team president John Elway, is doing its job.

The burden now lies with Manning, the future Hall Of Famer who many in the media seem too eager to just shove into Canton already and be done with it. Manning, who turned 38 in March, has been fending off questions of retirement since missing all of 2011 with that neck injury. He dodged it again in June. "I still enjoy the work and preparation," he told the Associated Press. Manning still has three seasons left on that mammoth five-year deal that lured him to Colorado. He's giving every indication that, if Elway permits him, he'll see it through.

Elway's preference for starting a 40-year-old quarterback in 2016 will depend greatly on how much hardware Manning can deliver to him before then. Elway himself played until he was 38, and winning his second straight Super Bowl at the end of the 1998 season surely made that decision easier. With Manning's age and the new influx of veterans approaching their own respective SELL BY dates, the window for Denver is rapidly closing.

It's almost cruel for a team to start their season knowing that anything less than a Super Bowl will be a disappointment. Sure, lots of other teams say that their goal is to win it all, but it's another when your team and the media and the fans and everyone else on Twitter expects it to happen. These Broncos might not be a team of destiny, if only because the whole idea is so elusive in the NFL, relative to other sports.

If the Miami Heat have taught us anything about Teams Of Destiny, it's that the regular season is a slog to be survived, and typically a precursor of what to expect in the postseason's final act. Former "Saturday Night Live" writer Jack Handey would have been proud of this season's Heat through their first 100 games. LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh were the proverbial shark tied to the elephant's back, trampling and eating everything on their schedule. And then, with Wade hurt, they ran into a seasoned San Antonio team that knew how to play tired and hurt. The Spurs finished the NBA Finals on top, and the Heat dragged their Eastern Conference championship back to South Beach in what could only feel like a disappointing season.

And such a season like that can't be any fun for the fans, either. Certainly, the fair-weather fans in Miami, leaving Finals games early, don't apply here. But fans of other perennial powerhouse teams, such as those of the Boston Red Sox, get a sense of how hard it is to enjoy a title when the bar is so high. After winning the World Series three times in the last ten years, Boston-area fans and media seem overtly eager to dissect every aspect of where the team might be struggling. Compound that with the alleged complacency of players whose ring fingers and wallets are getting heavier, and nobody's having any fun.

I've only seen my team (teams, really) win it all twice, and I'll concede that that's possibly two more times than your team has won anything. I remember sitting in front of my television, alone, watching the Reds win Game 4 of the 1990 World Series with more vividness and clarity than I remember what I ate for breakfast this morning. I was among better company in January of 2003, watching Ohio State upset Miami among fellow Buckeyes, and then walking down to High Street to high-five what seemed like the entire student body as the Columbus SWAT team looked on anxiously.

For both of those seasons, those title runs came nearly out of nowhere. And they were fun. While the Reds were still stacked with outfield depth, a great bullpen and a third baseman who wore goggles, expectations were tempered under first-year manager Lou Piniella. But the team hit the ground running, winning its first nine games of the season and never relinquishing first place in the NL West. We were thrilled to see our team playing the mighty A's, who had won it all the season before. And seeing the sweep was even more thrilling because it was not supposed to happen.

Watching Jim Tressel's Buckeyes and those 1990 Reds take home titles … those were gifts. And like any gift, it's not nearly as special when it's expected, when you know it's coming. Denver won't have the chance to get on that emotional roller coaster, to wave its collective arms in the air as the track rises and falls and turns. No. For them, every week will be a slog, every game a checkmark on the to-do list. Winning will be a job, not just in September, but also in January and, destiny permitting, in February.

Josh is a freelance sportswriter, analyst and host. You may know him from such websites as Deadspin, Kissing Suzy Kolber, With Leather, WashingtonPost.com, and Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @JoshZerkle.