ENGLEWOOD, Colo — This isn't high school, or even college. There isn't a "Win one for the Victor" rallying cry going on inside both Broncos locker rooms this week.
But there is respect and admiration for a coach who has put everything he had into the job, even if more losses were recorded than wins. The final two weeks of the 2021 season are less about the Broncos’ razor-thin chance of reaching the postseason for the first time since 2015, and more about whether head coach Vic Fangio will return for the final year of his contract in 2022.
“Yeah, guys are aware. We hear all the chatter that goes around,’’ star safety Justin Simmons said. “That’s a question a bunch of guys get asked. I know me personally, I think you guys know me well enough, I hear it, I don’t really give it too much attention. I’m an in-the-now-type of guy. I’ve said before, I like to be where my feet are. And we’ve got two games left.’’
And then Simmons more directly addressed the topic of his head coach.
“There’s been tough games. You may not always agree on how things are going, but at the end of the day, you have respect for people that put in the work like Vic does week-in and week-out to try and help us and prepare us for a chance to win,’’ Simmons said. “That’s something that I’ll always respect. I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s a point where we’re saying as a team, ‘Hey, we need to fight here so we can do X, Y and Z to help certain coaches’ jobs here.’
“But if you’re asking me if I’ve loved having coach Vic here as a coach, I think I said that earlier, he’s been nothing but great to me and I’ve learned so much from him and I’ve loved having him as a coach. I think the fact that we do go out there and play hard every week is a testament to how much we enjoy coach and his staff.”
Other players deflected questions about their head coach’s future.
“I can’t speak to what the front office is going to do,’’ outside linebacker Malik Reed said in a Zoom interview Wednesday with 9NEWS. “My goal is to go out there and go play, and play to win. That’s all my focus is on right now, and I’ll let the front office handle those things.”
“We may talk a little bit, but really at the same time we talk about how we can turn this around and what we can do better,’’ left tackle Garett Bolles said Monday.
He’s in the main locker room inside team headquarters. Younger players have been moved to the Pat Bowlen Fieldhouse locker room as a way to social distance in light of the spreading COVID-19 virus.
“Sometimes it’s the coaches’ fault, sometimes it’s our fault. We can’t point fingers, we have to come together as a group and come together as a team and really figure this out," Bolles said.
“That’s George (Paton, the general manager’s) job," he said. "It’s not our job who we want to bring in, who’s not. George knows us, George knows our heart. George knows we love him and put all the trust into him and we love coach Fangio, we think he does a good job. We just need to find a way to win.”
After going 7-9 and 5-11 in Fangio’s first two seasons, the Broncos are 7-8 this year after losing their previous two games by a combined 9 points to the Bengals and Raiders. Had the Broncos pulled out both games, they would have been holding down one of the AFC’s seven playoff seeds. Instead, the Broncos must now beat the Chargers in Los Angeles and the Chiefs in Denver in their final two games, and have seven other games over the next two weeks fall their way, to reach the playoffs.
Broncos players realize their chances are slim if not none.
“It’s extremely disappointing,’’ Simmons said. “I think the biggest disappointment was with all the expectations we had. Obviously there’s a fan base, but I mean as a team going into this thing. And knowing the work that we put in, OTAs and training camp and all the goals we had coming into this season and not us following through on those goals. Especially with the talent that we have.
“I feel like we really had something special to really make something happen, and like you said, the final nail is not in our coffin but the odds are not in our favor. And so it’s just disappointing. You always want to take advantage of the opportunity when it’s in front of you, and unfortunately that’s something we did not do this year. And especially in games when we needed them the most.”
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