Brisbane have a premiership to defend, a superstar fullback ready to dazzle, and a squad that looked every bit like a dynasty in the making.
Instead, three games into 2026, the Broncos find themselves staring at an 0-2 record (0-3 including World Club Challenge vs Hull K.R.), being defeated in England and embarrassed at home by the Panthers, then gutted in the dying minutes by a resurgent Parramatta side.
The same wounds keep opening. The same lapses keep appearing.
The final scoreboard keeps hurting.
This isn't bad luck, a bad draw, or a bad week.
This is a team repeatedly making the same six mistakes, and until they're fixed, the premiership defence is over in everything but name.
6. Inability to close big games
There is a positive buried in the mess.
The Broncos can clearly score points and fight back.
They came from 18-4 down to make it 30-24 against Hull KR, and they clawed back to lead 32-28 against the Eels in the second half.
However, the Broncos fell back into the bad habits that cost them in Round 1 each time they got momentum.
They cannot maintain pressure or discipline long enough to win a game.
Last year's premiership was built on toughness, comeback wins.
The formula of thinking they can win games with only their attack requires some degree of defensive solidity to hold leads once they're established, which is currently absent.
Brisbane's problems in 2026 are not about talent.
The issues are structural and behavioural: discipline under presure, kick-chase organisation, the inability to string together two consistent halves of football.
Coach Michael Maguire has acknowledged the work to be done, and the underlying attacking intent is still there.
With these same errors surfacing in Hull, at home against Penrith and Parramatta, they can no longer be written off as a slow start.
It's going back to bad habits and patterns.
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That’s a perceptive analysis.
I’d summarise it by saying that most of the players are not concentrating on what they have been trained to do.
If each one does what he is supposed to do (and has the skill to do) then the team would not have the problems that it is facing.