Back in October, if you had told me the Broncos would miss the postseason all together, I would have told you you were crazy.

The Broncos started the season 6-0, and were one of the hottest teams in the league. They were attracting attention for all the right reasons. It seemed that the Broncos had become an elite team without Jay Cutler and Mike Shanahan, and that Josh McDaniels would lead the Broncos to their first playoff berth in four years.

With a 3.5 game lead over the Chargers heading into their bye week, the playoffs seemed like a guarantee, and rightly so.

But the Broncos proceeded to lose eight of their last 10 contests, the eighth on Sunday afternoon against the lowly Kansas City Chiefs who had nothing to play for other than to knock their division foes out of playoff contention for the fourth straight season.

They did just that, and in convincing fashion. The Chiefs laid a pounding on the Denver Broncos, beating the playoff hopefuls 44-24 at Invesco Field at Mile High. It was the first time Kansas City had ever won at Invesco Field, nine years after the stadium's opening.

As if that weren't embarrassing enough, the Broncos had to deal with the deactivations of star offensive players Brandon Marshall and Tony Scheffler for what seemed like a great portion of the week even though it was only a couple of days. Marshall and Scheffler were held out of Sunday's game by McDaniels because of what the coach claimed were accountability issues. Also in the case of Marshall, McDaniels said a hamstring injury that was bothering Marshall wasn't as serious as the receiver claimed, not serious enough to keep him out of a game at any rate. So the coach did that on his own.

The season started with a soap opera, and it ended with one.

While NFL fans can be quite dramatic, this loss is going to leave a bitter taste in the mouths of the Broncos faithful for a long time to come. Denver was coming around to their young, fiery head coach after a tumultuous offseason, and now they feel he can be blamed for this late season collapse. When it all comes down to it, the players gave this season up, and they didn't do it as a team.

It is extremely unfortunate that the Broncos missed out on the playoffs, but they didn't deserve the postseason. The Broncos blew a three-game division lead two years in a row, and is one of only a handful of teams in NFL history to start the season 6-0 and not make it to the big dance.

It was the first time in Denver Broncos history that a team started 6-0 and didn't reach the Super Bowl.

So where do the Broncos go from here? There is a trust within the true Bronco fan base, those who pay attention to everything that goes on around the organization rather than what the mainstream media feeds us, that the Broncos' management is among the best in the NFL.

Just look what they were able to do with a team whose roster was changed by over 50 percent, a rookie head coach, a new defensive scheme, and one of the most complex offensive systems in the NFL.

Let us not forget, the Broncos are a rebuilding team, and some squads would kill to be able to go 8-8 in a rebuilding year, competing while still knowing they have a year or more to go in the rebuilding process. The Broncos' late season collapse is discouraging, and there is no way to sugarcoat it. They had an opportunity to be great, and they lost whatever mojo they had early in the season.

But not all is lost.

The Broncos are going to receive a very nice top-15 draft pick from the Chicago Bears as the final piece of the Cutler trade, and to me it seems likely they will move both Marshall and Scheffler this offseason, which is probably for the better.

Denver is moving on with Josh McDaniels, whether certain players like it or not. It's his way, or the highway, and some fans hate him for that. In fact, some are already calling for this guy to be fired after just one season at the helm, but the Broncos do not run their organization that way. They are a strong group of professionals, and they will recover from this ignominious ending to a once promising season.

--- SAYRE BEDINGER.