Garett Bolles spoke from the bottom of a hole deeper than the 50-point loss his team had just suffered.

The veteran offensive lineman couldn’t hold in bubbling frustration as his seventh professional season started with a third straight defeat, this one a 70-20 embarrassment at the hands of the Miami Dolphins on Sept. 24, 2023.

Four head coaches, two general managers and a raft of offensive coordinators and offensive line coaches into his career, Bolles had seen some personal highs but no postseason games. Heck, he hadn’t been part of a team with a winning record.

Three games into the Sean Payton era, none of the good stuff felt any closer, either.

“I’m tired of losing, man,” Bolles said that day as he wiped his hand across his face. “I’ve been here for seven years and all I’ve done is lose. It’s frustrating.”

Bolles called that day rock bottom, and it probably was, though by mid-October Denver found itself 1-5.

Since then, the Broncos have begun writing a different kind of story. They surged into contention last year and then faded late. They benched and subsequently released quarterback Russell Wilson. Cut Justin Simmons, too. Drafted Bo Nix. Put together a much more complete defensive front seven.

Beginning with a win against Green Bay last year, the Broncos under Payton won 16 of their next 25 games, including an expectation-blasting 9-5 start to 2024.

But now they’ve lost their past two and likely have to win Sunday against Kansas City to finally put that playoff drought to bed. To get to the postseason for the first time since winning the Super Bowl in 2016. To shake the albatross off the back of Bolles, Denver’s longest-tenured Bronco, and its other elder statesman, receiver Courtland Sutton.

“They’ve put up with a lot of garbage over the years and it’s time we give them the ability to cash in,” Broncos right tackle Mike McGlinchey said Wednesday. “We’re excited to do that. We talked about that as an offense today. You’re not just playing for yourself. You’re playing for your city, you’re playing for your organization, you’re certainly playing for the players that have been here for a long time.”

The remaining duo

If the 2024 Broncos are remembered for being “young and hungry,” as Payton dubbed them during training camp, then Sutton and Bolles are older and desperate.

They’ve each seen what players who last this many years in the NFL tend to see. Season-ending injuries. Life-changing contract extensions. Coaches and teammates come and go.

They’ve seen and felt it all. Except for what it’s like to play in the postseason.The last piece to solidifying that spot has proved elusive the past two weeks.

Denver squandered chances against the Los Angeles Chargers and then Cincinnati. Now there’s just Kansas City, which already has the No. 1 seed wrapped up and will not play quarterback Patrick Mahomes or several others on Sunday, standing between the Broncos and a date on wild-card weekend.

“It means a lot to be in this situation and to be playing meaningful games in December and to have this opportunity,” Sutton said this week. “Finishing the last game of the season, divisional game, at home with a chance to go to the playoffs. You couldn’t — yeah, you could say that it would have been nice to go into this game and have your position locked in and everything like that, but in terms of a storybook theme that you couldn’t write up any better, this is the best opportunity that we could have.”

Sutton’s first six seasons in the NFL, the Broncos went 38-61. Tack on a 5-11 rookie campaign for Bolles, and he’s at 43-72.

The past two seasons have come with on-field improvement, but not always smooth sailing individually.

Sutton caught 10 touchdown passes last year but skipped all voluntary workouts last offseason to make it clear he wanted a contract extension that never came. Instead, the sides worked out a set of incentives, most of which Sutton has hit.

Bolles entered 2024 knowing it was the final year of his contract and didn’t know whether he’d be back until late in the season, when the team and his agent worked out a four-year contract extension.

“In this organization, when you talk about some of the greats, as they come around you get to speak to them and they played in those types of games,” Bolles said of impactful, late-season football last month when he signed the extension. “Just the culture that we’ve had here for so many years to now. It’s awesome to be where we’re at. It’s not over, it’s not done. We still have a lot of work to do, but we’re putting people in the right positions to be successful.”

Culture adapters

Sutton and Bolles weren’t among the raft of changes that Payton and general manager George Paton made to the locker room after the 2023 season, but Sutton and Bolles weren’t locks to be part of the long-term picture, either. Sutton still isn’t, unless the sides agree on a postseason extension.

McGlinchey called the pair “instrumental” to Denver exceeding expectations this year.

“Courtland is one of the most impressive people I’ve been around on top of his game,” he said. “His ability to ignite a locker room, his personality is infectious. He never quits. He’s never complaining. And I think the two of them are huge reasons why we’re having the success we’re having.”

Tight end Adam Trautman is steeped in the Church of Payton. He was drafted by New Orleans in 2020 and traded to the Broncos not long after Payton got the job here.

Sutton and Bolles, though, had to first buy what Payton was selling. Then preach it.

“It accelerates everything when your best players buy into the culture and then the younger guys have no option but to follow it,” Trautman said.

He’s known Bolles since he first declared for the NFL draft — they share an agent — and you won’t find many people who speak in higher regard about Sutton, either.

“With No. 1 receivers, you don’t really get, in general on most teams, legitimate leadership where they don’t care if they’re getting the ball,” Trautman said. “That’s hard to find. He’s a true No. 1 receiver in this league and he never bitches about anything. Never, like, ‘Give me the ball.’ He never does that stuff. As a player, that’s a huge thing. You see that on teams across the league.

“That could be because he’s bought into the culture, but it’s also just, that’s who he is as a person.”

Reach out and grab it

Joe Lombardi is about to wrap up his 19th NFL regular season.

The trophy given to the Super Bowl winner is literally named after his grandfather.

You won’t catch the Broncos’ offensive coordinator taking moments like these for granted, even though he’s coached in the playoffs in 10 of his 18 previous seasons and won a Super Bowl.

A chance to clinch a postseason spot? And then to play on the biggest stage? It doesn’t get better than that.

Even better if it means breaking a long dry spell in Denver.

“I was looking around the room and you think of Garett Bolles, Courtland, guys that have been here and haven’t made it to the postseason,” Lombardi said Thursday. “Then you’ve got young guys who don’t know any better who think maybe this opportunity comes around every year. Trying to have those guys understand that you don’t get second chances.

“So when you have this opportunity you’ve got to grasp it and go make it happen. You definitely feel a sense of urgency in a game like this.”

McGlinchey was in his second year in San Francisco when the 49ers jumped from 4-12 in 2018 to 13-3 in 2019. They ripped through the playoffs and to the Super Bowl, where they lost to the Chiefs.

“The week before we were going in, I was talking to some coaches and some players that had been in the game a long, long time,” McGlinchey said. “Twenty-some years. And they’d never done it. Never even been there. And the rarity, to have success in this league and to make those kinds of runs, you have to appreciate them when they come.”

The chance hasn’t come yet for the Broncos, but it’s right there for the taking.

“We can’t let this opportunity slip through our fingers,” McGlinchey said.

It would be a first for Payton in Denver, just like it would be a first for rookie quarterback Bo Nix and fourth-year cornerstones Quinn Meinerz and Pat Surtain II.

It would be a first for Paton as a general manager and for the Walton-Penner ownership group.

Nobody’s been waiting longer for it, though, than Bolles and Sutton.

“I know the guys are ready for the opportunity and ready for this moment that has been put in front of us,” Sutton said. “I’m just looking forward to being able to go out there and showcase why we deserve to have that last spot and take off with it.”