After three games and a 2-1 start, the Denver Broncos have led for a total of 9 minutes and 19 seconds, the third-lowest amount of time leading for a 2-1 team since the beginning of the Super Bowl era in 1966.
In these days of advanced metrics and fingertip access to boundless reams of information on the Internet, drilling down into the minutiae of a team's performance and history can result in the discovery of some oddly specific and unique statistics.
Take the Denver Broncos and their three-game start to the 2026 NFL season. On Thursday night's NFL GameDay Kickoff show before the Pittsburgh Steelers-Cleveland Browns contest, the NFL Network dug up and presented this gem:
Since the Super Bowl era began with the 1966 season, among teams that started with a 2-1 record, the Broncos have led for 9 minutes, 19 seconds of the 180 total minutes of game time. That's the third-lowest amount of time 2-1 teams have led, trailing only the 1971 Chicago Bears, who led for just 2:26 in winning two of their first three games, and the 1981 Cincinnati Bengals, who were ahead for 8:38 in starting 2-1.
If you're looking for any type of predictive omen in those numbers, the results are mixed. The Bengals went on to finish 12-4 and advance to Super Bowl XVI where they lost to the San Francisco 49ers. The Bears, on the other hand, finished a playoff-less 6-8 and third in the old NFC North division.
The unique stat also prompted NFL GameDay Kickoff host Rhett Lewis to wonder when the Broncos would do their fans a favor and maybe get off to a faster start and cruise home to an easy victory?
Former Jacksonville Jaguars and Oakland Raiders running back and current NFL Network analyst Maurice Jones-Drew offered a somewhat tongue-in-cheek response.
"Do they want to, though?" Jones-Drew wondered. "This is what they did last year. I don't know. I just want our Broncos fans and viewers to understand, do you want to? Because whatever the Broncos do at halftime they figure out what's going on and they correct it and they go out and make plays and they find a way to win, however it's done. Obviously, it didn't happen with the [Kansas City] Chiefs in Week One, but they've done that over the past couple years and that's an awesome trait to have, make halftime adjustments and go out and score 30 points in two quarters [against the Los Angeles Rams] is amazing."
Jones-Drew also did offer a succinct opinion on how the Broncos could get off to faster starts.
"Run the football, keep that offensive line going forward and then create explosive plays with play-action pass," he said.
Along those lines, the types of plays new Broncos play-caller Davis Webb has signaled for and when he's called them have been a hot topic of discussion in Denver since the season commenced.
The focus on Webb's calls has been turned up because this is the first season that Denver head coach Sean Payton has removed play-calling from his to-do list and handed it to a subordinate.
For his part, Payton did express frustration after the defeat of the Rams regarding the Broncos' tendency to fall behind early before rallying in the second half, which they also did in their Week Two defeat of Jacksonville, saying that the early no-shows would "cost us in bigger games."
At this point, no one in Denver wants to know what the smallest amount of time a team has led after a 3-1 start, so the Broncos will hope to start quicker and take themselves out of that unique equation when they travel to play the 49ers on Sunday (2:25 p.m. MT on CBS) and hopefully emerge with a relatively easy victory.
