ENGLEWOOD, Colo. Courtland Sutton doesn't need a film session to measure how far the Broncos have traveled. He looks around the practice field.
The last time Denver played the Los Angeles Rams, in 2022, it was a blowout, and the fallout from that afternoon reshaped the franchise. That's the frame the AP's preview of Sunday's rematch (Sept. 27 in Denver) hangs on, and Sutton is the connective tissue between then and now.
There's a new head coach. The roster has been overhauled. The AP opens its story with Sutton taking in the changes around him at practice, which is the cleanest way to put it. One receiver stayed. The building around him didn't.
This is how a reset actually reads from the inside. Not a single news conference, not a single draft class, but a bad Sunday against the Rams turned into the hinge, and every decision since has swung on it.
Denver enters the rematch trying to snap a skid, per CBS Sports. The easy story is revenge. The truer one is evaluation. Beating the Rams in September tells you less than whether the men Sutton sees at practice can hold a standard into December.
Sutton's view is the useful one because he's the rare player who can compare the two versions of this team without squinting. He knows what the 2022 locker room felt like when the season slid, and he knows what this one feels like now. Whatever he says about the difference carries more weight than a coach's press conference, because he was there for the thing everyone is trying to move past.
My verdict: the 2022 loss will keep getting cited as the origin point of this era until Denver produces something that stands on its own, and a September win over the Rams doesn't qualify. What qualifies is a season that makes the blowout irrelevant. I think this Broncos team is closer to that than the last three were, and I'd bet the rematch looks nothing like the game that started all of it.
