Sure, the Broncos need to win on Sunday like they need to win on any Sunday. Particularly against a 2-10 team dealing with more dysfunction than the Kardashians’ old mansion in the Hidden Hills. Particularly when Denver will go on to face four teams with records of .500 or better to finish out the regular season.

But with the Broncos on the hunt for the top seed in the AFC and a first-round playoff bye, this game in Las Vegas suddenly carries significant weight, on the basis of some rather complicated seeding machinations.

There are two key tiebreakers that could determine the AFC this season, with the Broncos sitting at 10-2 behind the top-seeded New England Patriots (11-2). The first: overall conference record. Both Denver and New England are 6-2 this season in the conference, and any loss for either team from this point forward is critical: Four of the Broncos’ final five regular-season matchups are against AFC opponents, and all four of the Patriots’ final games come within the AFC.

The more important factor, though, is a tiebreaker for record against common opponents (second in priority to conference record). The Patriots lost their first game of the season 20-13 to the Raiders, back when times looked a whole lot sunnier in Las Vegas. If the Broncos win on Sunday, they’d have this tiebreaker locked up, a huge point of leverage through the rest of the year.

“Anytime you get a good roll going, and the league kinda feels how you get to these later games — you figure out who gon’ be playoff teams and things like that — we know we gotta tighten up if we want to make this push for real,” defensive tackle Malcolm Roach said.

That starts Sunday, against a Raiders team that made it plenty hard for the Broncos during their Thursday Night matchup in November.

This will be the first time that Denver sees a divisional foe for the second time this season, and worlds have shifted in the short month since the Broncos won a sloppy 10-7 TNF game over the Raiders. Buried in a six-game losing streak, Las Vegas head coach Pete Carroll has canned two coordinators — most notably offensive mind Chip Kelly, hired away from national champion Ohio State this offseason to operate a Raiders attack bristling with skill players.

In their first game with interim OC Greg Olson, though, the Raiders didn’t look much different against the Chargers last Sunday. Veteran QB Geno Smith still handled a majority of the workload, as Las Vegas now has the fourth-highest rate of passing plays in the league this season (61.6%). But rookie RB Ashton Jeanty did get 15 carries, as Olson is tasked with figuring out how to juice a league-worst rushing attack.

“Just having worked against Pete for so many years, there’s a certain amount of stress you put on your defense when you’re throwing it maybe (two-thirds) — and he wants to establish a running game, and all of that goes into complementary football, time of possession, those type of things,” head coach Sean Payton said Wednesday.

The problem for Las Vegas is that those 15 carries went nowhere. Jeanty averaged 2.1 yards per carry last Sunday, and the 2025 No. 6 pick has run for just 2.3 yards per carry across his last three games. There’s little for the Raiders to do with a largely inept offensive line.