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And the Broncos’ first one under Sean Payton was certainly on the brink at halftime of Denver’s early-window game in Chicago.
The score was 21–7 Bears at that point—eventually it got to 28–7 late in the third—and the on-field product was somehow even worse.
For the second straight week, Denver had yielded a near-perfectly-quarterbacked first half: Last week, Tua Tagovailoa was 16-of-16 for 206 yards and two touchdowns against the Broncos; this week, it was Justin Fields going 16-of-17 for 231 yards and three scores (the incompletion was a half-ending Hail Mary). The Bears had twice as many yards and first downs at the half, and didn’t let Russell Wilson and the Broncos cross midfield in the second quarter as they ran off 21 straight points.
Which, really, is when Denver’s players decided enough was enough.
“Definitely, something needed to change, and that’s where I feel like our leaders like Justin Simmons and Kareem Jackson really stepped up and got this thing going,” third-year edge rusher Jonathon Cooper said, over the cell, postgame. “I said something to my unit personally, just to say, Like, we can’t worry about too much. Worry about our realm.”
And after Cooper did that, Simmons addressed the larger group, a group that had been humiliated enough in allowing 91 points over its previous six quarters.
“He said a lot more,” Cooper continues. “He said a whole lot more than that, man. But I felt like it was definitely [the] fire and [the] spark that we needed to come out in the second half and just come with a different energy and a different style. Like a different swagger when we step on the field. And we’d be the best we can be.”
Specifics?
“There was cussing involved,” Cooper says, laughing.
And now, maybe the Bleeping Broncos are back.
Russell Wilson—who’s actually been mostly fine through Denver’s rocky start—led touchdown drives of 65 and 70 yards in the second half, and then a third scoring drive that set up Wil Lutz’s 51-yard game-winner. Lutz deserves plenty of credit, too, for sealing the 31–28 win from that far out.
But as much as anyone, the guys on Vance Joseph’s (fairly) maligned defense deserve credit for digging out a path to 1–3. They got four consecutive stops to finish the game—the final three of which came on a fumble, a fourth-and-1 stop and a pick, including one defensive touchdown.
On that one, with Denver down 28–21, Nik Bonitto came free off the left edge. Closing in on Fields, the linebacker left his feet to jar the ball loose from the QB. Cooper collected it at the 35 and had nothing but open grass in front of him to lead him to his first touchdown since high school. That tied the score and set the stage for the fourth-and-1 stop, and then a 48-yard bomb from Wilson to Marvin Mims Jr. to put Lutz in position to be the hero.
“It was a normal base call,” Cooper says of his touchdown. “Nik made a hell of a play, man. Hell of a read, just getting off the ball, didn’t bite for the fake at all, obviously with the boots and everything. When he made the tackle, I didn’t know if he threw the ball [or] if it was a PBU or whatever. But I mean, I was going straight to that ball. When I picked it up, all I thought in my head was like, .
“It’s so funny on the play, man. You can see, if it was 10 more yards to go, he might’ve got me.”
But Cooper’s old college teammate didn’t. So the Bears, not the Broncos, are the team that fell to 0–4. And hope’s still flickering in Denver that the grind Payton put his players through over the spring and summer might, finally, pay dividends.
“It’s all about toughness. Football is football, and it’s a tough sport,” Cooper says. “And when you have those tough training camps and OTAs, obviously the work hours are long. But they’re necessary, so that you can go out there and finish the game like we did. That’s a fight to come back and win. You revert back to your training always whenever you find yourself in those situations.
“So I felt like everything was necessary. I feel like it’s all starting to come together for us.”
At 1–3, Cooper and the Broncos kind of have to believe it. Especially with two dates with the Chiefs scheduled over the next four weeks.
