The Broncos Are Being Massively Overrated While the Packers Are Actually Fine: A Week 4 Reality Check on Who's Really Built to Win It All

Here's what I know for certain about the 2024 NFL season after three weeks. The teams everybody is hyping are not the teams built to win the Super Bowl. The teams people are writing off might actually be the ones with real staying power. And if you're reading hot takes about Super Bowl stock shifting after one bad week or one good week, you're reading garbage. That's not analysis. That's panic. That's the NFL media doing what it does best, which is overreacting to a small sample size like it's the playoff picture in December.

Let me be direct about something. The Denver Broncos are not as good as people think right now. I know they're sitting at 3-0. I know they beat the Raiders and the Jets and the Saints in Week 3. I understand the narrative. The Broncos are the sexy pick. Sean Payton is back. Russell Wilson is cooking. The defense is aggressive and disruptive. All of that is true. None of it means they're a legitimate threat to win the Super Bowl. This is a team that won three games against some of the worst football being played in the NFL right now. The Raiders are a dumpster fire. The Jets are a dumpster fire with a quarterback problem. The Saints are a dumpster fire with an aging roster. Beating bad teams in September means something, but it doesn't mean you're great. It means you're better than bad teams.

Now look at what's actually coming for Denver. They have to go play Kansas City. They have to deal with the Baltimore Ravens. They're going to see the Cleveland Browns in a division where the defense is elite across the board. That's when we find out if Denver is real or if Denver is a mirage. That's when Russell Wilson has to execute against actual coverage schemes designed to expose his weaknesses. That's when Sean Payton has to prove he can manage a game against a coaching peer, not against Jeff Ulbrich and the Jets. I'm not saying the Broncos are bad. I'm saying Denver is fundamentally being overvalued because the market sees 3-0 and assumes that trajectory continues. It won't. Denver's schedule is about to get very difficult very quickly, and when reality hits, we're going to see who this team actually is.

Here's the verdict on Denver right now. They're a fringe playoff team with a puncher's chance, not a legitimate Super Bowl contender. They have talent, sure. But talent in September means nothing if you can't execute in October. The Broncos are going to lose multiple games in the next month. When that happens, everyone is going to act shocked. They shouldn't be.

Now let me address what's being said about the Green Bay Packers, because this is where the narrative is completely wrong. People are looking at the Packers sitting at 2-1 and saying they're falling apart. They're saying Green Bay has fallen to the bottom of the NFC North. They're saying the Packers made a mistake with this roster construction. All of that is absolute nonsense. The Packers are fine. The Packers are actually better positioned than their record suggests.

Green Bay just beat the Chicago Bears. They took care of business against a divisional opponent in a game where they didn't have to be spectacular. They just had to be competent. That's playoff football. That's the mentality that wins in January. Yes, they lost to the New Orleans Saints in Week 1. That was a bad loss. But one bad loss does not define your season. The Packers defense is elite. I'm not being hyperbolic. They're in the top three in the league in efficiency, and they're playing the right way. They're generating pressure without sending extra bodies. They're covering ground. They're not making mental mistakes. Matt LaFleur is coaching a controlled, disciplined scheme on that side of the ball, and it's working.

On offense, the Packers have a quarterback situation that everyone wants to panic about. Jordan Love threw some bad passes early in the season. So what? He also threw good passes. He's a second-year starting quarterback playing in a cold weather system with limited weapons at receiver. There's development happening. There's growth. Love is not Drew Brees, but he doesn't need to be. He needs to be competent and efficient. The Packers have built a system that doesn't require him to be a lone genius slinging the football all over the field. They have a running game. They have efficiency metrics working in their favor.

The Packers schedule is actually forgiving over the next month. They get to stay in their division where they know the systems and they know the opponents. They get to build confidence in their fundamentals. They get to develop rhythm with their players. And when they get out of their division and face better competition, they're going to be stronger because they spent time in September building something sustainable. The Packers are a team that's building correctly, not a team that's falling apart.

Let me tell you what bothers me about how people are assessing this league right now. Everyone wants to extrapolate three weeks of football into a full sixteen week narrative. Everyone wants to say this team is elite and that team is finished. The truth is far more boring. Most teams are somewhere in the middle. Most teams are going to look different in Week 10 than they look in Week 3. The teams that get undervalued early are typically the teams that understand football fundamentals. The teams that get overvalued early are typically the teams that are winning in September by doing things that don't scale in October.

Denver is winning by being aggressive on defense and generating takeaways. Takeaways are real, but they also fluctuate. The Broncos are not going to force five turnovers every week. When the turnover creation normalizes, their margin for error gets smaller. That's when we see who they really are. Green Bay is winning by being disciplined and by not beating themselves. That's the stuff that scales. That's the stuff that works in the playoffs.

I also need to address the broader question about what games actually matter in Week 4. The answer is all of them matter, but not all of them tell you the same thing. When Denver plays Kansas City, you're going to learn whether Denver can execute their system against an elite coach who's seen every trick in the book. When Green Bay plays the Colts, you're going to learn whether the Packers can win on the road against an offense that can score. These are meaningful data points that tell you something about sustainability, not just about who won the game.

The NFL is a league where September feels important but usually isn't. The teams that look best in September are often not the teams that finish strong. The teams that look worst in September often improve dramatically. This is why you don't plant flags after three weeks. This is why Super Bowl stock reporting in Week 4 is mostly just entertainment. It's not prediction. It's just looking at what happened and assuming it continues in a straight line forever.

So here's my final take on where we are. The Broncos are going to come back to earth. They're going to lose multiple games in the next month. When that happens, everyone is going to act like I didn't tell them this was coming. The Packers are going to win more games than people think because they're built on fundamentals. They're going to make the playoffs. They might make a run. And all of this talk about them falling apart is going to look silly when they're still playing in January. Stop overreacting to September football. Start paying attention to who's doing things that work in the playoffs. That's where real analysis starts, and that's where you actually identify Super Bowl teams.