DENVER - The Denver Broncos open the season Sunday ranked among the favorites to represent the AFC again in the Super Bowl, and with good reason. Peyton Manning, the NFL's reigning MVP, has looked sharp all summer. The defense is revamped with newcomers DeMarcus Ware, Aqib Talib and T.J. Ward added to a unit bolstered by the return of Von Miller and Chris Harris from torn anterior cruciate ligaments.
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To end up in Glendale, Ariz., as a participant in Super Bowl XLIX, the Broncos not only need to get the best of their AFC brethren, they also must defeat history.
You might call it the Super Bowl Loss Syndrome.
As hard as it is to repeat as a Super Bowl champion, it has been even tougher to rebound from a loss in the Roman Numeral Game.
Seven teams have made it back to the Super Bowl after losing in the final game the previous year. Of the past 20 Super Bowl losers, not a single one made it back to the Super Bowl the next year.
It hasn't happened since the resilient Buffalo Bills went back for XXVIII, the last of their four Super Bowl appearances. Since then, nine of the 20 didn't make the playoffs the next year.
The Atlanta Falcons and Oakland Raiders represent the worst-case scenarios. Atlanta tumbled to 5-11 a season after being blown out in XXXIII. After XXXVII, Oakland was 4-12 in 2003 and has not had a winning season since.
More recently, the two Super Bowl losers before Denver, the San Francisco 49ers and New England Patriots, came back to reach conference title games.
The Broncos might be the best-equipped of any recent Super Bowl loser, given offseason enhancements. John Elway says the team has assembled the deepest squad yet on his watch as executive vice president. But he's cautious. Denver has lost middle linebacker Danny Trevathan for six to eight weeks with a broken shinbone, and wideout Wes Welker, who recently suffered his third concussion in 10 months, was suspended for the first four games after testing positive for a banned amphetamine.
"There are so many things that are still going to come up this season," Elway said. "There are going to be a lot more bumps in the road. Health is going to be a big part of it. We feel good about where we are. … But we also know that you don't win it on paper."
Elway can relate to the challenge. He rode off into the sunset after the 1998 season, when the Broncos repeated as Super Bowl champs. He also quarterbacked three teams that lost Super Bowls. One returned to lose Super Bowl XXII; the other two didn't make the playoffs, finishing 8-8 and 5-11.
Manning has been there before, too. After a loss in XLIV, the Indianapolis Colts came back to win the AFC South but suffered a playoff-opening loss.
Fox's Panthers and Giants missed the playoffs after their Super Bowl defeats, finishing with 7-9 records.
He took a key lesson from the setbacks that he draws on: "If you spend too much time looking back, you're not spending enough time looking forward."
The Broncos, drubbed 43-8, were the fourth team to lose a Super Bowl by at least 35 points.
Naturally, Fox wanted to get that out of his system as quickly as possible. He watched a replay of the game on the flight home from New Jersey after the loss, then immediately jumped into this season. With a shorter offseason facing Super Bowl teams, Fox delved into personnel evaluations within days of the Super Bowl.
During training camp, Manning gave a scathing analysis of the quality of a particular practice, intimating that a championship team must prepare accordingly, even during the dog days of camp. It will take such a mind-set for the Broncos to achieve their ultimate goal.
The 1972 Miami Dolphins know it too well. That squad and the 1971 Dallas Cowboys unit are the only teams to win a Super Bowl the year after losing one.
The Dolphins have long maintained that the Super Bowl loss provided some of the emotional fuel that carried them to the only perfect season in NFL history.
Still, the challenge of overcoming a Super Bowl setback hasn't changed with the times.
"We're not the first team to ever experience this," Fox said. "The reality is there will be 31 unhappy ones and one happy one."
Yet the bigger the loss, the bigger the challenge.
Broncos built to weather absence like Wes Welker's
Wes Welker's suspension didn't exactly send the Denver Broncos into a scramble. Their adaptable offense is built to weather such setbacks.
Sure, they were miffed at the timing of the NFL's punishment, five days before their opener against Indianapolis. And Peyton Manning acknowledged it won't be easy to replace the game's pre-eminent slot receiver over a brutal first month, especially on third downs.
They've been preparing for this eventuality, however.
With Welker's history of head injuries - he had two last season - they'd have been remiss not to have other solutions available in the slot.
Welker sustained his third concussion in 10 months on Aug. 23. He returned to practice this week. But 24 hours later, the league banned him from the Broncos' facilities for a month for violating the NFL's performance enhancing drug policy.
Receivers are interchangeable in offensive coordinator Adam Gase's scheme.
"The thing is, even when Wes was here, we were all playing everywhere," Emmanuel Sanders said. "The outside guys were playing the inside. The inside guys were playing the outside. This isn't one of those systems where you have an outside receiver and you have an inside receiver. Everyone is moving around.
"And I've told you guys before, this is one of the toughest offenses I've been a part of and why is that? Because you have to know every single position on the field, because you never know where Adam Gase is going to stick you."
Even star receiver Demaryius Thomas and tight end Jacob Tamme, both of whom are 6-foot-3 and 230 pounds, can run routes over the middle in place of Welker, who's 5-9.
It's all about being on the same wavelength as Manning and making the right decisions to get open while getting jostled by defenders.
"It's kind of the way that we've developed our system. One of the ways I describe it is that X, Y, Z, F, it's irrelevant," Gase said of the NFL's nomenclature for the different receiver positions. "I can put blank circles here, and we should understand who should do what just by our play calls.
"So, that's why (Welker's suspension) wasn't really a big shell shock for anyone in that room."
With flexibility at such a premium in Denver, GM John Elway made the versatile Sanders his top target in free agency and signed him to a three-year, $15 million deal in March.
Sanders missed much of camp with a strained thigh but put on a show against Houston with five catches for 128 yards and TDs covering 67 and 29 yards.
Sanders said he's "really comfortable in the slot," where he played almost exclusively his first three years in the league before moving outside almost full-time his final year in Pittsburgh last season.
About the only receiver who's not comfortable inside yet is second-round draft pick Cody Latimer, who nonetheless figures to get plenty of snaps on the outside with Welker out.
So does Bubba Caldwell, who stepped in during Welker's absence last season and caught two TD passes against San Diego in a December game.
Welker caught 73 passes for 778 yards and a career-high 10 TDs last year despite missing the final month of the season. He caught 18 passes for 160 yards and a TD in the playoffs.
Welker practiced Monday for the first time since his latest head injury, a result of Houston safety D.J. Swearinger's hit Aug. 23. And he was expected to be available for their opener before he was suspended.
It's not like the Broncos had to crumple their game plan and start from scratch, though.
"Every receiver, every tight end knows what's going on at every position, so you can always put somebody in a different spot," Thomas said. "I'm not going to say everybody can do it like Wes. But everybody knows what to do. So, as long as you got people in that know what to do, I feel like Peyton will be comfortable with that."
Notes: Tamme restructured his contract. He was due to make $3 million this season. He'll make $1.25 million with a chance to double that through incentives. ... Denver's defenders watched a film on the old "Orange Crush" defense this week. "It definitely got us pumped up," safety T.J. Ward said. ... The Broncos are launching a 500-bike valet at their stadium this season in hopes of reducing game-day traffic congestion.
Peyton Manning: Wes Welker's suspension a 'self-inflicted wound'
It was supposed to be the day that Wes Welker showed up at work and received clearance to practice - one of the final hurdles to pass before he'd be deemed able to play in Sunday's season opener.
But Welker was allowed inside Denver Broncos' headquarters only briefly Wednesday morning, enough time to stand in front of a team meeting and apologize for a four-game suspension that began Tuesday night, when the NFL upheld Welker's punishment for a positive test for a banned amphetamine. By the time the Broncos took the field, Welker was gone, and he won't be allowed back until Oct. 6.
"Wes just wanted us to know how important this team is to him, how much we mean to him, and what he's going to do when he gets back," tight end Julius Thomas said. "There is nothing he can do to change where he is at right now, but we know that when he comes back, he'll be a man on a mission and we're looking forward to embracing him when that day comes."
Welker's suspension came as a surprise to the Broncos only in its timing, so late on Tuesday that coaches had already spent the day planning as if Welker would be able to be on the field against the Indianapolis Colts. When the team received definitive word that Welker's appeal had failed - he missed two practices last month to attend the hearing - those plans were scrapped.
The Broncos were instead left to devise a plan for who will fill Welker's role as the team's primary slot receiver, a trusty third-down weapon for Peyton Manning and proven red-zone threat who had 10 touchdowns last season.
Welker, meanwhile, gets five weeks away from football (four game weeks, and Denver's bye), time the Broncos are hoping Welker will use to stay in shape while also allowing himself to completely recover from his latest concussion.
The concussion Welker suffered in a preseason game on Aug. 23 was his third in the last 10 months.
"Sometimes, these things are blessings in disguise. I'm sure this extra (five) weeks will give him plenty of time to heal," head coach John Fox said.
Welker's suspension is just the latest in a string of off-field issues that have plagued the Broncos in recent years. He's the second significant contributor to get in trouble this year, joining kicker Matt Prater, who is serving a four-game ban for an alcohol-related substance abuse policy violation. The Broncos also lost Von Miller to a six-game ban last year and former Bronco D.J. Williams to a nine-game suspension in 2012.
It's an ugly track record for one of the NFL's best teams. But the Broncos survived Miller's suspension - they went 6-0 without him - and a variety of other issues last year, including Fox's emergency heart surgery, to win the AFC championship.
Still, a suspension for a former team captain, a veteran player with a sterling off-field reputation, came as a bombshell. This isn't an ACL tear, or even a head injury. This should have been preventable.
"Losing Wes is a self-inflicted wound. It's different than an injury, but I still put it in the adversity category," Manning said.
"You find out a little bit about your team, and can you handle it? It's easy when everything is going smooth and you don't have any kind of adversity. Hopefully last year will have prepared us for these types of situations," Manning said. "The third year running we've had a starting player suspended. That's not something the Broncos want to brag about, but it's the reality. We have been able to win games despite that. Says something about the way we've handled and persevered through some circumstances we would rather not have been there. There's no question it's a test, and we'll see how we handle this test."
The Broncos made moves in recent months and weeks to prepare for time without Welker, for concussion or legal reasons. Denver signed versatile receiver Emmanuel Sanders in March, and he's expected to spend more time lining up in the slot in Welker's absence. Denver also kept undrafted rookie receiver Isiah Burse, a pure slot receiver and kick returner, on the 53-man roster, and on Wednesday promoted receiver Nathan Palmer off the practice squad
Tight end Jacob Tamme could also see more work, particularly on third downs, and second-round pick Cody Latimer might receive some of Welker's red zone targets.
"The players that are here, we'll stick together, raise our level of play and try to persevere," Manning said. "It won't be easy. It would be disrespectful to and inaccurate to say it's an easy transition to lose Wes Welker. It's a challenge and one our team has accepted and we're going to try to find way to overcome it."
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Follow Lindsay H. Jones on Twitter @bylindsayhjones.
PHOTOS: 2014 NFL PLAYER SUSPENSIONS
Peyton Manning's record year a thing of the past
What's the lasting memory of Peyton Manning's MVP season last year?
Was it connecting with Julius Thomas for his 55th touchdown pass? Or standing amid falling confetti at Sports Authority Field after winning the AFC title game? Perhaps either should have been, but chances are when you think of Manning's season, you picture him with eyes wide open as the first snap of Super Bowl XLVIII whizzes past his head.
Manning didn't spend the last seven months hiding from that 43-8 loss to the Seattle Seahawks and the worst game of his two-year tenure with the Broncos. Instead, he devoured film of his 2013 season - the good, the bad and definitely that Super Bowl.
"I still haven't looked at the three (Super Bowls) I lost (as a player)," Broncos vice president and general manager John Elway said. "They were able to put that behind him, and that's good."
Everything that has happened in the seven months since the loss has been about fixing what went wrong in the Super Bowl and taking lessons from the 18 games that came before it.
Though Manning remains the focal point of the Broncos roster, Elway said it was important to build a better team around him.
It wouldn't do the Broncos any good in 2014 if Manning and the offense score 40 points a game if the defense gives up nearly that many. It wouldn't matter if Manning could throw for 300 yards a game if Denver's running game isn't strong enough to convert a third-and-1.
"We've got to get to the point to where we're a complete football team," Elway said. "We can't rely on (Manning) to win it because he can't win it by himself. ... To win a world championship, you have to be a great football team and you have to be well-rounded. I think we've moved closer to that."
To watch Manning practice now, at 38, is to understand why he dismissed dozens of questions about retirement before the Super Bowl.
Watch him shake his head in disgust when Pro Bowl receiver Demaryius Thomas comes up a yard short on a route.
Watch him pull second-year running back Montee Ball over to the end zone to go through routes while the special-teamers practice on another field.
Watch him run to the end zone in a preseason game to curse out an opposing safety for making a hit Manning thought was dirty.
"It's a new season. There are players on this team that weren't on last year's team. I think every player has to look at it that way," Manning said. "It's the 2014 season, and just because you did certain things last year means nothing as far as this upcoming season.
"I've always thought the NFL doesn't owe you anything. Nothing is given. You have to go out there and earn it."
(Copyright © 2014 USA TODAY)
