Why Your Team Sucks 2025: Denver Broncos | Defector:

I remember growing up with my grandfather and father yelling at the TV whenever they watched football. I always thought it was silly to get angry about a team doing poorly. Disappointed, sure. You want your team to win. But I consider myself a reasonable fan. I try to go into a season with reasonable expectations to limit my disappointment. I don't ever want to be that asshole breaking TVs, stomping around, throwing a fit. And that was as a child. I'm an adult now and still feel the same. Disappointed, sure. But never enraged.

Reader, let me set the scene of my fall from grace.

It all comes down to a 35-yard field goal. The score is 16-14 Chiefs. It's a chip shot. No problem. I'm smiling at easily the best Broncos football I've watched in a decade. Finally. My team has come together after nearly a decade of listlessness.

The Chiefs block it and win.

I threw the laptop off my lap like it was a snake. I charged the TV in my living room like it was a threat to my family. I swore and cussed as if I had lost my ancestral home playing dice. I reached back with my fist to punch a wall and I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of a picture frame. I had become what I never wanted to. I was losing my shit over a 5-5 football team. I was embarrassed and ashamed of myself.

The only witnesses were my dogs, who both fled to the stairs in horror of what I had done, shock in their eyes. It is a strange thing to be judged by an animal and know the animal is right. I had lost a piece of myself that day.