7 thoughts after Denver’s comeback win

PHILADELPHIA — The Broncos came to the City of Brotherly Love and kicked off a long road trip with the most impressive victory of the Sean Payton era. Here are seven thoughts following the 21-17 win.

1. Sean Payton failed the down-8 challenge early in the fourth quarter, then set the Broncos up for a win using his own brand of aggressiveness.

When Denver running back J.K. Dobbins plunged into the end zone with 13:16 remaining in regulation Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field, Broncos coach Sean Payton faced one of the classic modern-day coaching decisions.

Trailing 17-9, Payton had to decide between kicking the extra point or going for two.

The traditional route, of course, is to take the extra point and get within seven. Modern analytics and decision-making, though, tend to lean toward going for two.

The idea is this: If you convert two-point conversions at anything higher than a 50/50 rate, then that’s the play because you have to score two touchdowns anyway, and with two cracks at going for two, you’re likely to get at least one. If you get the two points on the first try, then a touchdown and an extra point can win you a game. But failing to get the two on the first try can’t lose you the game.

Payton said afterward that he was sitting on a stash of two-point plays that he loved and wanted the chance to run against Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio, Payton’s long-time friend and on-field adversary.

It was interesting, then, that Payton first chose the conventional route, sending the kicking unit onto the field for the PAT to get within 17-10.

The Broncos defense went to work and got the offense the ball right back after Philadelphia started its ensuing offensive drive with a holding penalty and ended up punting on fourth-and-16 following a short completion, an incompletion and a third-down Ja’Quan McMillian sack of Jalen Hurts.

Nix, for really the only time on the night, kicked Denver’s passing game into high gear with completions to Evan Engram for 18 on a spear route, then Courtland Sutton for 14 more. After two runs for 5 yards and an offensive pass interference put the Broncos in third-and-15, Nix hit Sutton for 34 down to the Eagles 11 and went back to Engram — who was not the primary option on the play — for a touchdown to get within 17-16 with 7:36 remaining.

At this point, Denver was rolling, and Payton decided it was time to eschew the traditional route and try to take the lead.

“We came here to win a game, and I had two or three calls that I loved,” Payton said. “So, sometimes you use those calls inside the five, but we got to a call that I had a lot of confidence in and the guys executed.”

Indeed, they did.

Payton put two tight ends to the right of Denver’s offensive formation and had receiver Troy Franklin alone on that side, with Courtland Sutton to the left and J.K. Dobbins behind Nix under center.

Nate Adkins motioned hard across the formation to the left. On the snap, Franklin jabbed hard like was running a slant and then busted it back toward the sideline.

He created instant separation from cornerback Kelee Ringo, and Nix pinned an accurate, on-time throw on him.

It looks easy, but it’s not. Franklin is the primary route the whole way, and Sutton’s running a crosser as the only other route. Both tight ends blocked. Dobbins cut-blocked a free rusher. Nix sprinted to his right and threw it on the run.

“Troy’s got a really, really good first step,” Payton explained. “So when you watch the route, it’s one jab and it’s quick and he was fantastic on it. It was a good throw, it’s a throw you got to make on the run.”

Franklin spent much of the offseason working on getting more explosive. He said Payton wanted him to stop and start like a Tesla. That route in that moment is exactly why.

“I’ve been doing it all week, so I put my mindset in, ‘Just trust your technique and don’t do anything different than what you’ve done in practice,’” Franklin said. “It’s just really selling that jab. I sold it enough and got open.”

Payton has likened two-point conversion plays to Christmas presents in the past. Sometimes, if you’ve got a first-and-goal or a critical situation in that area of the field, you’re going to use your best play. A touchdown, obviously, is worth more than a two-point conversion.

In this instance, though, Dobbins’ 2-yard touchdown run earlier in the fourth quarter was just a simple plow-ahead run.

Payton, then, had several options at his disposal for the two-point play.

He chose wisely.

“Sometimes you play a game and you’ve got four other calls that you would love to have gotten to, and we won’t play these guys or that defense for (a long time) and they just kind of float away,” he said almost wistfully after the game. “There were two others, but that was one of them.”

When Payton loves a play, his players know it during practice. He’ll stop a walk-through and explain exactly how and when it’s going to hit, or he’ll revisit another time something similar worked.

This was one of those plays.

The Broncos had been working on it for weeks in practice, Nix said, waiting for the opportunity to use it.

“He’s got his ways of letting us know that he loves this play, for sure,” Franklin said. “We’ll get it done for him.”

So, Payton made an interesting decision not using the arrow on the first touchdown of the fourth quarter, but he felt supremely confident that he had it in the quiver with the lead in the balance later.

“It was perfect,” he said. “We felt …  let’s do that. Let’s keep being aggressive.”

2. Bo Nix and the offense got rolling in a major way in the fourth quarter after 45 minutes of pretty much nada.

When the third quarter actually ended, the Broncos were on the move, down to the Philadelphia 32-yard line on an eventual touchdown drive, but had only three points on the board for the game.

Through the first 45 minutes, Nix was 15 of 29 for 114 yards (3.9 per attempt). The Broncos had 199 yards to the Eagles’ 260, were just 3 of 12 on third down and had not yet put the ball in the red zone.

By the time Denver polished off its 21-17 win, all of those numbers looked considerably different.

Nix went 9 of 10 for 128 yards and a touchdown in the fourth quarter plus the two-point conversion throw to Franklin. The Broncos rang up nine first downs in the final 15 minutes after 12 in the opening three quarters. Denver out-gained the Eagles 159-42.

“To tell you the truth, it’s not easy going out there down 17-3 and you haven’t had much success,” Nix said. “It’s tough to get things going. You want to have juice, but you just know what’s happened to you already.

“We have an experienced front. We have experience on the outside, and the younger guys, they just kind of hop in line and just do what the older guys are doing. We just kind of had this sense that we just needed one drive. … We stopped talking about points. We said, ‘Look, we’ve got to go get a touchdown, points are not just what we want. We want to go get six.’ We kind of spoke it into existence.”

Nix has played well in crunch time previously in his career. He led frenzied comebacks that ultimately came up short last year against the Los Angeles Chargers at home and Cincinnati on the road. He led a beauty of a drive at Kansas City that put the Broncos on the doorstep of a building-block win before Wil Lutz’s game-winning field goal was blocked.

But this was perhaps the best Nix has played late in a game. The fact that it came after long stretches of poor play from the offense — the Broncos had seven punts and a 55-yard field goal to show for their first eight drives — made it all the more impressive.

3. The Broncos are finally allowed to talk about London, and man, what a difference a win makes before the trip.

Sure, traveling home is better after a win every single time. The difference for Denver in this instance is massive.

Consider this: After the game, the Broncos weren’t headed straight to the airport. They instead boarded buses that took them back to their downtown Philadelphia hotel for dinner, treatment and a couple of hours of film work for the coaches.

Only after that did the Broncos head for the airport to board their charter flight bound for London.

Talk about a long day.

The win, however, set up a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

“Oh my god,” defensive tackle D.J. Jones said with a laugh when asked about how much better the trans-Atlantic travel would be after a win. “That’s all I can say about that. I plead the fifth.”

They’ll arrive in England late Monday morning and make their way well north of the city to their hotel, where they’ll have something approaching a normal Monday schedule.

“We’ll run, lift, work out, watch the tape,” Payton said.

Then Tuesday is the player off-day like normal, and Wednesday they’re into the normal practice week at Tottenham’s training facility.

Payton spent all of last week demanding that nothing about London come up in conversation within the building. They didn’t talk about logistics outside of a quick meeting. They didn’t talk schedule or anything.

Most staff didn’t even get basic information about hotel arrangements or anything ahead of time.

“It wasn’t in the itineraries,” Payton said. “There was not one thing about the ‘L word’ — nothing. I said something about bringing an extra bag on Friday, and that’s it.”

These are the types of situations when Payton’s tactics can seem overboard, but they seem to pay off their fair share.

Teams that play on the road before traveling to London typically don’t fare very well. Payton has now won twice under that very scenario — Sunday and in 2017 at Carolina. That win in Charlotte, by the way, put an 0-2 start to bed and kicked off a run of eight straight victories.

This is also the second straight year the Broncos have started a week-plus road trip with a victory. Last year, of course, Denver dominated Tampa Bay in Week 3 before spending a week at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia. Then the club traveled to New Jersey to play the Jets.

Now again in 2025, the Jets represent the second leg of a long Broncos sojourn.

“Definitely with the flight and the week away from home, you want to have a win,” Allen said. “Similar to Tampa last year. Going to the Greenbrier with a win is definitely nicer than going with a loss. That’s probably why everybody’s so excited. Now we can have a nice week in London.”

4. The nature of Denver’s comeback was incredibly rare — and aided by baffling play-calling from Philadelphia

The Broncos had almost never won a game like this. Literally.

In games Denver trailed by 14 or more in the fourth quarter, the club entered Sunday with one win and 112 losses.

Bartender: Make it a double. The Broncos are now 2-112 in those settings.

As laid out above, Denver did a whole lot right to put itself in that position.

The Eagles, too, did a whole lot wrong.

First-year offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo will rightfully get questioned for only getting running back Saquon Barkley the ball nine times total — the fewest in a game he’s finished for his career — but his late-game playcalling was also hard to rationalize.

Here are the three drives Philadelphia had with the lead in the second half:

• Five plays (one first down), 23 yards, punt, 2:01 time of possession

• Three plays (0), minus-16, punt, 1:05 TOP

• Three plays (0), minus-6, 2:03 TOP

In that stretch, the Eagles did not call a designed run. Well, actually, they handed the ball off to Barkley one time, but it didn’t count because they got called for holding.

Otherwise, Hurts dropped back on all 11 plays. The first two were completed for a total of 19 yards. After that: Five incompletions, two sacks, a 4-yard scramble and a 7-yard completion.

That is offensive malpractice when leading a game in the second half.

That’s in part what allowed Payton to stick with his own run game, which kept chugging and chugging and finally hit its stride to the tune of 94 second-half yards.

5. Payton did something he’s rarely done in his Broncos tenure, which makes a Sunday night injury all the more unfortunate.

The Broncos head coach has been impatient with his run game in the past. Particularly so when his team has fallen behind early in games.

There have been numerous occasions when he’s stood at the podium after a game and explained big run-pass discrepancies by saying that you can’t really keep running the ball once you’re behind.

Except on Sunday, he did. And it worked.

That’s not going to be a recipe every time the Broncos are trailing by two scores in the second half, but Payton deserves substantial credit for feeling the game could swing if the Broncos kept pounding away on the ground.

And boy, did they ever.

The Broncos ran 19 times for 94 yards in the second half despite trailing by 14 by the time they touched the ball for the first time in the third quarter.

That’s an endorsement of not only running back J.K. Dobbins, but even more Denver’s big veteran offensive line.

“A lot of people ask me, how are you so patient?” Dobbins said after the game. “Well, I’ve got some big guys protecting me. Some very good o-linemen protecting me. So I get to play cat-and-mouse. That’s what I’m out there playing. I’m playing tag like a little kid. I’ve got the big boys protecting me.”

It also makes the Sunday night news of a biceps injury to left guard Ben Powers all the more unfortunate.