FOX Sports has unleashed a bold forecast for the 2025 Denver Broncos, predicting Sean Payton’s squad to win the AFC West and dispatch the rival Kansas City Chiefs in the Wild Card Round of the playoffs.
According to NFL reporter Henry McKenna’s vision, the Broncos will earn the No. 3 seed and fall to the eventual Super Bowl-champion Buffalo Bills in the Divisional Round.
“There are two organizations that — to me — look exhausted: Kansas City and Detroit,” McKenna wrote on May 15. “The Chiefs just put their heart and soul into the three-peat and failed brutally on the biggest stage. And while I think there’s a big-brother complex where Andy Reid lords over both Sean McDermott and John Harbaugh, I don’t think that’s true of Sean Payton, who will bump a fatigued Reid, Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce out of the offseason.”
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The Broncos and Chiefs split their divisional showdowns last season, with the former losing a 16-14 heartbreaker in Kansas City — aka The Alex Forsyth Game — before shutting out the latter’s backups, 38-0, at Empower Field in a victory that clinched Denver’s first postseason appearance since 2015.
“I mean we could have very easily been 2-0 against the Chiefs this year,” Broncos CEO Greg Penner told the media in January. “Our absolute goal next year is to win our division. I think [QB] Bo [Nix] talking about no prima donnas is a great testament to the culture that [Head Coach] Sean [Payton] is building here, which is we want to be a winning culture. We have to have really high expectations, and everybody has to be in it together.”
This year’s series calls for the Broncos to host the Chiefs in Week 11 and hit the road for a Christmas Night contest at Arrowhead in Week 17 — a nationally televised affair that will likely carry massive conference implications.
And, if the aforementioned prognostication were to become reality, a potential division-clincher.
“The players—I know felt after the game—that this has to be our standard moving forward. We have to go to the playoffs,” Broncos general manager George Paton said on Jan. 15 following the club’s playoff exit at Buffalo. “You’re going to play teams like the Bills, like the Ravens, like the Chiefs. So how do we get there? Really that’s our goal this whole offseason—try to find that secret sauce. We need to have another really good offseason, another really good plan. I know we will. Sean, myself, Greg, the coaches [and] the scouts, we’ll all get together and it starts with evaluating your own team. The determining your needs, your musts, your wants, as Sean talked about. Then you’re chasing. You’re trying to fill those all offseason. That’s how you close the gap. Have another good offseason. Keep developing these young players. We’re a young team. We have a rookie quarterback… We have a lot going our way. We have $52 million in cap room. We have a great coaching staff. We have I think the best ownership group in the NFL. We have a lot going in our favor.”
