The worst Christmas ever proved to be the gift that keeps on giving to the Denver Broncos.

Amid the hot mess of a humiliating 51-14 loss in Los Angeles on the final Sunday of 2022, it was extremely hard to see any easy way out for a once-proud NFL team.

But it certainly showed new Broncos owner Greg Penner there was no time to waste in making major changes to a franchise that had lost its way.

“On the football side,” Penner told me. “I definitely underestimated what was coming during that first season (of ownership), and what it was going to take to get us to a really competitive level.”

In less than 1,000 sunrises since that Christmas Day Disaster, the Broncos have not only been rebuilt, but completely remade.

There’s a new coach, new quarterback, new practice facility, new culture.

The big announcement last week of plans to build a new multibillion-dollar football stadium on the Burnham Yard site in Denver, without taxpayer funding, was a celebration of the Broncos’ new way of doing business.

“Pushing the envelope. Always thinking about a better way of doing things. That’s what we’re always trying to do,” Penner said Friday, during an exclusive interview with The Denver Gazette.

“It’s not about finding the easy answer. It’s about finding the best answer.”

Nearly three years ago, on a holiday ruined by a beatdown in L.A., I distinctly recall Penner walking solemnly toward the visitors’ locker room in SoFi Stadium with eyes as cold as lumps of coal.

A once-proud NFL franchise his group had purchased for $4.65 billion had stopped playing football worth a dime. And maybe the loss stung all the worse because it was the first regular-season meeting in the football rivalry of the Walmart empire.

The retail giant founded by brothers Bud and Sam Walton in 1962 is now represented on the football field by the Broncos and Rams, owned by Stan Kroenke, whose holdings also dominate the Colorado sports landscape.

“I think there was a little bit of feeling sorry for us,” Penner said. “Which is not what we want.”

Forget the family ties. That lopsided loss in L.A. hit different, with a thump that reminded how much heavy lifting would be required to lift the Broncos by both Greg and Carrie, his wife, and active owner in the team’s operation.

As Sam Walton’s granddaughter, Carrie’s side of the Walmart empire is estimated to be worth well in excess of $100 billion.

Yes, billion. With a huge B.

But contrary to what football fans and pundits like to assume, all those big B’s don’t guarantee W’s for the Broncos.

“Oh, no,” Penner said. “You look around the sports world and find plenty of examples of how spending a lot more money hasn’t resulted in the outcome you want. It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, yeah. (The Broncos) have all these resources. They can just spend, spend, spend.’ And certainly it helps when you’re looking at building a new training facility. But money by itself is not how you get to winning.”  

On the other hand, Penner stubbornly refused to let a tough financial decision to part ways with quarterback Russell Wilson, which cost the Broncos more than $80 million in dead money against its player payroll from 2024 through this season, be a major delay in building a playoff contender.

“No excuses,” Penner said.

After firing Nathaniel Hackett within 24 hours of the Christmas Day Disaster, the coach he hired to pull the Broncos out of the abyss seems an odd fit for the cool and calculating style of Penner.

Sean Payton is a football pirate. He swashbuckles into every situation, loudly turning it upside down, creating the chaos that allows him to restore order to his own specifications.

But the volatile coach’s relationship with Penner works, perhaps because the team’s chief executive officer is a boss comfortable listening to everybody else speak before delivering the final word.

“As an owner, a lot of the learning curve is what’s the right way to work with a coach and general manager. You want to be present, for everyone to know there’s accountability. But you don’t want to meddle to the point where you’re at every practice and team meeting,” Penner said.

“There’s no textbook for what it looks like to be an NFL owner. But you have to understand the micro – the nuances of the salary cap and how we’re measuring a player’s physical recovery – to be able to have the right macro perspective. Now that doesn’t mean you’re making decisions for people, because that would be meddling. At the same time, if you’re thinking I can look at the big picture all the time, it doesn’t work. You have to be present.”

After Denver won more than 300 NFL games and three league championships during the ownership of Pat Bowlen, there was understandable fear the golden age of Broncos football had passed with his death in 2019.

Although the squabbling among his children was often ugly, the painful decision to sell allowed the franchise to move in bold, new directions that would’ve been more unlikely had the Broncos stayed in the Bowlen family.

Unlike Bowlen, whose team bent the salary cap rules in the 1990s on the way to championship success with quarterback John Elway, that helped convince taxpayers to provide 75 percent of the funding for a stadium that opened in 2001.

“From Day 1 with our conversations with the mayor and governor,” Penner said, “we wanted to find a way to build a new stadium without new taxes.”

Always passionate, sometimes profane and often as flamboyant as the fur coat he liked wearing on the Denver sideline, Mr. B’s way of doing things brought three Lombardi trophies home to Colorado.

With actions that speak far louder than their reserved words, Greg and Carrie Penner have moved the way the Broncos do business into the 21st century, with the vision for success that extends far beyond tomorrow.

“We have such a great (football) history in Denver,” Penner said. “The pressure I feel is never letting the fans down.”

The Broncos are not only back to dreaming big, but are blessed with the vision, resources and persistence to be legit championship contenders.

Well, as long as we’re dreaming …

What better way or better place to resume the Walmart family football rivalry than at the Super Bowl, where the Broncos could do much more than even the score against Kroenke and his Rams. 

“Hopefully, the next time we play ‘em,” Penner said, “we’ll whip their butts.”