If Sunday's AFC Championship Game is close, the Denver Broncos are confident they can defeat the New England Patriots to advance to the Super Bowl. Why? Because they've done it all year.
"I've been saying, of course you want to blow somebody out once in a while," Broncos linebacker Von Miller said, via ESPN.com. "I think we're battle-tested, and I've been telling everybody, when it gets hot, we just play."
Out of Denver's 17 games played, 13 (76.5 percent) have been decided by seven points or fewer this season. The Broncos are 10-3 in those contests.
The Broncos' defense has been responsible for many of the tight wins, forcing turnovers at the end: An interception of Joe Flacco in the end zone in the opener; strip of Jamaal Charles for a touchdown; stripping Teddy Bridgewater with 29 seconds left in Week 4; recovering AJ McCarron's late fumble to help secure the No. 1 seed; forcing Fitzgerald Toussaint's fumble last week to set up the game-winning score; and several others.
"We've been in these situations so many times that you don't even panic anymore," Emmanuel Sanders said. "You just know that we're going to come through. This team has plenty of resilience. You never know where the big play is going to come, but everybody expects to make it ... maybe people nobody expects to do it, they do it."
In the Broncos' victory over the Patriots earlier this season -- a six-point win -- a special teams turnover turned the tide of the contest and C.J. Anderson rode all over the New England defense, including the game-winning touchdown.
Some call the rash of close outcomes fluky. The Broncos call it skill.
"But 10 wins? That's not luck," Chris Harris Jr. said. "I think you have to have the talent, and guys have to believe in what you're doing. Everybody has to play to the end. I don't think we always did that before."
