After getting 'smacked' in playoffs, Garett Bolles says Broncos will work harder

The Denver Broncos had their best season since their Super Bowl-winning campaign in 2015 last fall. With an elite defense and a promising rookie quarterback, the Broncos went 10-7 in the regular season and earned a showdown with the Buffalo Bills in the first round of the playoffs.

Denver was humbled in Buffalo with a 31-7 loss and a first-round exit. Despite that loss, Broncos left tackle Garett Bolles still emphasized the positives from the 2024 campaign.

“I think we've done a lot of great things [in 2024]," Bolles said after the season. "We made the postseason for the first time in eight years in my career since I've been here. That just tells you how old I am. This team is special. I think we have a lot of special dudes. I think we have a young quarterback and when you have a quarterback in this league, you can go a long way. I think [Bo Nix] is just scratching the surface of what he can do [and] what he can do for this team. We have playmakers. We have ballers on this team. We have guys that want to be successful, [and] that want to go as far as we can.

"Obviously [the playoff loss was] a game that none of us want to be a part of. We got smacked right in our faces. There's only two ways you can look at it. You either can look down and just let it drag you down [with] everything that we've built this year, get into next year and let it fall apart, or we can look at this and we can build upon it. I think that's what all of us want to do. We want to build upon it. We want to be successful. We want to continue to work harder. It starts in the offseason with how we train, and we go from there.”

Bolles and his teammates returned for spring workouts and organized team activities earlier this year and they are now on a summer break leading up to training camp. Players will report back to Broncos Park Powered by CommonSpirit later this month ahead of the start of training camp on July 25.

Last season was a step in the right direction, but the Bills game demonstrated that there's still work to be done in Denver. Bolles and Co. will look to build on last year's positives with the goal of a better postseason campaign in 2025.