Jan. 11, 2026, 5:01 a.m. MT<\/p>\n
The Denver Broncos<\/a> now know what to expect in a playoff atmosphere. This time, they have an edge: home-field advantage and the full force of the Mile High faithful (and thin air!) behind them. And they are ready.<\/p>\n Denver played a lot of close games this season, which could help them come the playoffs, where most of the games come down to just a few plays. Quarterback Bo Nix talked about how this could help them in January.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019ve been fortunate this year to play in a lot of close games and we\u2019ve won a lot of close games,” said Nix. “It hasn\u2019t been the pretty\u2026 The ones that you want. The flashy, big-time wins. The ones where you get to go over there and sit, rest a little bit in the fourth [quarter]. It\u2019s part of it. Sometimes you have to go and play the tough ones. It\u2019s better to win some of these tough ones than lose them, obviously, for our position. It has put us in a position to understand what winning football is like. We\u2019ve played a lot of playoff teams in these tough situations.”<\/p>\n Some of the playoff teams the Broncos<\/a> have faced this year include the Los Angeles Chargers, Philadelphia Eagles<\/a>, Houston Texans<\/a>, Green Bay Packers<\/a> and the Jacksonville Jaguars<\/a>. The Broncos<\/a> went 4-2 in those games, with two of those wins and one loss being a one-score game; three games (Denver played two against the Chargers) were more than one score, and the Broncos<\/a> went 2-1 in those games.<\/p>\n “A lot of them have felt a little bit what physical, competitive football feels like,” Nix said. “A lot of guys fighting for a seed or fighting to get in the tournament in general. I think it\u2019ll help us. It definitely won\u2019t hurt us. It\u2019ll give us the experience and speed up the experience for some of the young guys like myself [to] give us the best chance to hopefully go in here and understand how to win some of these games.\u201d<\/p>\n Need a news break? Check out the all new PLAY hub with puzzles, games and more!<\/a><\/p>\n Cornerback Pat Surtain also spoke about the playoff atmospheres Denver has been in this year.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had some playoff atmospheres this year where we had some adversity early on in the game and we find a way to bounce back and finish games,” said Surtain. “I feel like we are definitely battle-tested in that regard and we always find ways to win. Just in the playoffs, though, we can\u2019t find ourselves shooting ourselves in the foot consistently. We have to find ways to really dominate and find ways to get a faster start. I think that\u2019s what we need to focus on moving forward. As a team, we are battle-tested. We are strong as a unit and it showed over the whole season.\u201d<\/p>\n Denver’s battle-readiness will be tested when they face their next opponent at Mile High in the divisional round.<\/p>\n Social: Follow\u00a0Broncos Wire<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Twitter\/X<\/a>!\u00a0Did you know:\u00a0These 25 celebrities are Broncos fans<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan. 11, 2026, 5:01 a.m. MT The Denver Broncos now know what to expect in a playoff atmosphere.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[95878,791,7,6,95879,95880,95882,97108,96115,95886,95976,95953,95936,95895,95906,96116,96191,95883,95881],"class_list":{"0":"post-668858","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-accessfree","9":"tag-co","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-sstssportsnflbroncos","13":"tag-sstsnbroncos","14":"tag-tagamerican-football","15":"tag-tagbo-nix","16":"tag-tagdenver","17":"tag-tagdenver-broncos","18":"tag-taggreen-bay-packers","19":"tag-taghouston-texans","20":"tag-tagjacksonville-jaguars","21":"tag-tagnfl-hub","22":"tag-tagoverall-positive","23":"tag-tagpatrick-surtain-ii","24":"tag-tagphiladelphia-eagles","25":"tag-tagsports-news","26":"tag-typestory"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115876689824884327","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}