DENVER — As the Broncos broke a defensive huddle late in the fourth quarter Monday night, P.J. Locke caught the eye of fellow defensive back Ja’Quan McMillian and found a brief moment, even amid the blaring noise, to reminisce.
“Talking to J-Mac, I said, ‘Man, our paths to the NFL were never easy,’” Locke said. “Why should this be any different?”
Nothing had come easy for the Broncos against the Cleveland Browns as the game at Empower Field at Mile High drew to a close. They were torched for more than 550 yards. They had no answer for their former teammate, Jerry Jeudy, who tallied more receiving yards than any Broncos opponent ever had in a game before this one. And now the Browns were moving to the edge of field-goal range as time ticked away, ready to finish the job and deal a major blow to Denver’s playoff hopes.
GO DEEPER
Broncos respond late in shootout vs. Browns for 41-32 win: Takeaways
“It was one of those games that was testing our chemistry. Testing our connection,” Locke said. “It was sort of ugly on the sideline, too, for a second. We just had to pull everybody together and say, ‘We’re getting tested right now.’”
As McMillian left the huddle, he smiled at Locke’s words about their shared journeys, two former undrafted free agents who grinded their way into starting roles. McMillian told Locke he was right. Then, he intercepted Jameis Winston’s pass intended for Elijah Moore near midfield, bounced up from the turf and sprinted into the end zone for a touchdown that sealed the Broncos’ 41-32 victory.
“That’s nothing but God, man,” Locke said.
PICK SIX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
📺: ESPN pic.twitter.com/k1UhkLh75X
— Denver Broncos (@Broncos) December 3, 2024
Locke used the word “ugly” multiple times when discussing a game that was more of a roller coaster than any the Broncos had dared to ride this season. Bo Nix threw a 93-yard touchdown pass to Marvin Mims Jr. in the third quarter — an artful dart of a pass from his own end zone on third down — only to watch Winston hit Jeudy for a 70-yard touchdown on the game’s very next play.
The Broncos’ defense scored a touchdown late in the second quarter when Nik Bonitto, barreling toward an All-Pro season, picked off Winston and returned the ball 71 yards for a touchdown. The Broncos then promptly gave up a 70-yard touchdown drive in 85 seconds. Nix threw an interception on a confounding deep pass to Mims on the first play of a drive early in the fourth quarter — head coach Sean Payton blamed it on his poor play call — and then guided the Broncos on a drive that led to a go-ahead field goal from Wil Lutz the next time the rookie quarterback took the field.
There were enough twists and turns like that to cause motion sickness.
“I told them in the locker room, ‘Look, it wasn’t pretty,’” Payton said. “Yet, in the end, we did what we had to do, especially late.”
The Broncos gave their playoff bid a valuable boost by improving to 8-5 and creating a two-game cushion on anyone else chasing them in the AFC. The Broncos have the same record — though not the head-to-head tiebreaker — as the Baltimore Ravens, who occupy the No. 6 seed in the conference. And they are only one game back in the loss column of the Los Angeles Chargers, with the two teams set to meet again in less than three weeks.
They gained something else important on Monday, too. They won a high-stakes game in December when they weren’t at their best, playing their 13th game in as many weeks, the long-awaited bye week on the other side. They won on a night when they couldn’t find answers for Jeudy, whose performance (235 yards and a touchdown) was even bigger than his talk in the week leading up to the game.
“Jerry Jeudy, don’t mess around now,” outside linebacker Jonathon Cooper, a teammate of Jeudy’s for three seasons in Denver, said with a grin after the game. “He don’t like us.”
Jeudy wanted to be traded last season, dissatisfied with his role, and his wish was granted this offseason. It was a slow start in Cleveland, but he’s had a renaissance since Winston took over for Deshaun Watson as the Browns’ starting quarterback. No receiver in the NFL has had better numbers since Week 8. The Broncos certainly missed the presence of starting outside cornerback Riley Moss, as veteran Levi Wallace was repeatedly beaten in coverage, but the bottom line is they couldn’t handle a player who told a reporter this week he wanted to “whip their ass” when talking about his former team.
“We were going to match him with Pat (Surtain) and then just the simple slot (alignment), moving him over to the other side, we’ve got to be able to handle that,” Payton said. “It’s too easy (for the opponent) offensively for us to do that.”
But the defense responded when it had to Monday night. Nix did the same.
The rookie quarterback threw a jaw-dropping pass to Mims in the third quarter. Out of his own end zone, he launched the ball up the seam, 45 yards in the air, and fit it into the only possible sliver of space it could fit — over the linebacker, just past the fingertips of cornerback Denzel Ward and into Mims’ hands. It was a play the duo barely missed earlier in the season, then nailed in a big moment Monday.
NIX. MIMS. 93 YARDS TO THE CRIB.
📺: #CLEvsDEN on ESPN
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus pic.twitter.com/pHzTvYKEoK— NFL (@NFL) December 3, 2024
“I had the middle open and I just shot it (up the field),” Mims said. “Bo trusted me and put it in the perfect place, literally. I lost sight of it for a second. I didn’t know (Ward) was that close. Right when the ball got right there, his hand waved right by my face.”
The interception by Nix in the fourth quarter, his second of the game, put the Broncos in a bind. The Browns responded with a score that gave them a 32-31 lead with 9 minutes left. But the rookie quarterback answered, demonstrating the poise a steady heartbeat teammates have raved about this season. He completed five passes and scrambled for a 6-yard gain on the ensuing drive, which ended in Lutz’s go-ahead field goal after Payton eschewed a chance to go for it on fourth-and-1 from the 9-yard line.
“I had a play,” Payton said. “I just wanted to see what we were getting, and then I did not like the play once I saw what we were getting. It was a full-blitz zero look. I felt like that time helped me to kick the field goal.”
The Broncos were content to turn it over to a defense that had already suffered through plenty of “ugly” moments. But it hadn’t lost faith. They knew the big play was coming.
“I just kept telling the guys, ‘I’m going to make a play,’” McMillian said. “I just felt it all game.”
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(Photo of Ja’Quan McMillian: Isaiah J. Downing / Imagn Images)
