After stunning the Philadelphia Eagles on Oct. 5, the Denver Broncos believe they can take on anybody.
“It’s a great win,” Nix said. “It proves that we can go on the road and beat these tough teams, and we can be a tough team to play. So that’s good for our confidence.”
The two teams traded field goals in the first quarter. Midway through the second quarter, on 3rd and 17, Eagles QB Jalen Hurts heaved a pass deep downfield to WR DeVonta Smith, who had a step on corner Riley Moss. The 60-yard pass set up a touchdown pass to tight end Dallas Goedert a few plays later. Hurts threw another touchdown pass to open the second half, this one a 48-yarder to running back Saquon Barkley.
The Broncos’ offense was unable to complete drives throughout the first half after the field goal. Nix missed a number of deep balls: a deep shot to Sutton on Denver’s first possession; a potential touchdown throw to WR Trent Sherfield Sr. in the second quarter; another long bomb down the boundary intended for WR Troy Franklin, who was tangled up with Eagles cornerback Kelee Ringo; and another sideline throw to WR Marvin Mims at the end of the first half that originally drew a flag on Ringo but was waved off.
The Broncos’ offense began to find a rhythm at the end of the third quarter.
Running back J.K. Dobbins scored the first touchdown with just over 13 minutes left in the fourth quarter. After stopping the Eagles on their next possession, Nix completed three deep passes in a row to tight end Evan Engram, then Sutton twice.
On first and 10 from the Philadelphia 11-yard line, Nix threw to Engram, who wriggled out of a tackle by defensive tackle Jalen Carter and dove for a touchdown.
Nix found Franklin on the 2-point conversion attempt to take Denver’s first lead.
The Broncos kicked a field goal with 1:11 left to play to go up 21-17. The Eagles drove down the field on the back of a defensive penalty and a deep completion from Hurts to WR Jahan Dotson. The final Hail Mary pass made it into the hands of Smith, but was broken up by cornerback Patrick Surtain II and batted out of bounds by safety Brandon Jones.
Bonitto praised his teammates’ resilience.
“One thing our team [is] not going to do is ever quit,” he said. “We have some very resilient people in that locker room. I feel like we’ve been in that spot so many times where we’ll be down a score or two and just find a way to fight back and continue to keep playing.”
Sutton was introspective about how difficult it is to remain engaged when a team is losing by two scores late.
“I sit here and say how everybody’s resilient and everybody has this no-blink mentality, but we’re all human at the end of the day,” Sutton said.
“You look up at the score, you’re down 14 to the defending champs, on the road, and there’s a split-second decision that you have to make within yourself, and it’s like, hey, am I going to fall into the human nature and say, ‘dang, they got us,’ or [am I] going to say, ‘No. I’ve got a whole bunch of guys around me that believe in what they’re capable of.’ And if you can get every single person on the sideline to have that same faith ... you can see it turn ... it takes one play for a team to be able to say, ‘All right, we’re back in it.’”
Nix said the offense believed they just needed that one play.
“We just kind of had this sense of just need[ing] one drive,” Nix added. “Let’s go down the field, one play at a time. Let’s put a drive together. We stopped talking about points. We said, ”We’ve got to go get a touchdown. Points is not just what we want. We want to go get six.' And we kind of spoke it into existence. We just kept on going.”
“I said look, you don’t get a chance to play these games that have a ton of upside. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s downside, but there’s a ton of upside relative to defining what you become. And this is one of them,” he said.
“I think they were confident coming in. I asked them afterwards, ‘Who are you afraid of?’ [There] is a fine line between a groove and a rut. It was a good win.”
