DENVER — Here we go again.
That was the nightmare déjà vu the Denver Broncos flashed back to as they trotted into the locker room down 14-3 at halftime on Sunday against the Los Angeles Chargers. The flashback was to just one week before where tempers flared from the defense to the offense after the 43-16 drumming by the Kansas City Chiefs.
“There’s always yelling when you have a half like that,” Drew Lock explained about the heated locker room during halftime on Sunday. “There was yelling after the Chiefs game and much deserved slash needed yelling though after that Chiefs game. And it kind of was déjà vu coming into that locker room again. All the yelling and screaming, offense isn’t playing well, blah, blah, blah.”
In the first half of Sunday’s game against the Chargers, the Broncos’ offense was so bad. Through 30 minutes of play, Lock and Co. had mustered 60 total yards, two rushing yards, two first downs and three points. But the offense couldn’t even take credit for the three points as Justin Simmons’ interception put the team in field goal range.
“You’re being nice by saying ‘So bad,’ it was worse than that,” Fangio said about Denver’s offense in the first half.
And for a second-straight week, the defense was not pleased with the offense’s lack of production.
Despite tempers flaring, the head coach kept his same message to the team.
“I just told them what I always tell them. I think any time you start changing messages — your message has to stay the same,” Fangio said, explaining his halftime speech to the team. “You know, we’re a bunch of fighters. We play hard. We play physical. We play for each other. We’re going to play as a team. One for all, all for one. And we had to keep doing that. And if we made a couple plays, got a couple stops, we can get it turned.”
Instead of yelling back at the defense for allowing back-to-back touchdowns drives in the final six minutes to close out the first half, Lock took Fangio’s words to heart and gathered his offense.
“I just got up in front of the offense and said, ‘Listen. It’s so easy for us to come in here and scream and yell and get mad and talk about what we’re doing bad, but we just need to man up and when the plays come our way, we need to make them. And myself included. I’m not yelling at y’all. I’m obviously talking to myself right now — screaming at myself,” Lock explained. “And that’s exactly what we went out and did. We started rough there — I threw a pick — and the plays came and there wasn’t one that we turned down.”
Looking himself in the mirror down 11 points, no one was more upset about Lock’s 68.2 first-half passer rating than Drew himself.
“I wasn’t doing the best job, so obviously I was a little pissed off. I always get mad at myself. There will never be someone that makes me more mad than me being mad at myself. It will always be that way,” the Broncos’ quarterback said, reflecting on his first-half performance. “But I came in the locker room and when I gave that talk, it kind of all just flushed out of me. It was like ‘Alright. I vocalized it, like a therapy session, I vocalized it, I said it and it’s good to go now.'”
In the second half, instead of turning against one another, the team manned up, as Lock instructed, and relied on each other.
Down 24-3 midway through the third quarter, the Broncos’ offense outscored the Chargers 28-6 in the final 22 minutes of the game. In the fourth quarter, Lock was nearly perfect as he went 14-of-18 for 155 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions and a passer rating of 142.1.
“Drew was very calm the whole time,” K.J. Hamler, who caught the game-winning touchdown, said, explaining Lock’s mentality starting from his halftime speech through the end of the game. “I think that’s what you need in a quarterback. You don’t need him being stressed.”
At halftime, Lock didn’t yell back. He didn’t fight back. Instead, he challenged himself in front of his offensive peers as he flushed out any unwanted anger.
“We have come together as a team, not that we weren’t, and it’s very easy after last week’s game and after the first half we had, not just 14-3, but 24-3. If you’re not a team, you’re not going to come close to coming back in this game,” Fangio said about the Broncos’ tremendous 31-30 comeback victory. “I would have felt the same way as far as the team goes if we hadn’t scored there at the end, but obviously the score just cements it even more. Our team is a team.”
At 23-years old, Drew Lock didn’t chirp back when everything was going against him, his offense and his team. Instead, he challenged himself in front of his team. That challenge played a role in the Broncos’ biggest comeback win in a decade.
“It’s been fun to keep this team together and we’ve got to keep doing it,” Lock said with pride. “It was awesome to be the quarterback of this team today.”
At halftime, the Broncos were staring a 2-5 record straight in the face. The cellar of the AFC West was only 30 minutes of football away.
After a speech and a phenomenal comeback, the Broncos now only sit a game and a half out of the playoff chase.
