The most-hated man in Denver deserves some serious credit for Sunday's win

DENVER — After leading the Denver Broncos to a win over the Cleveland Browns in his first career start, a moment he had waited for his entire life, quarterback Brandon Allen stood in the middle of the locker room, holding the game ball.

In what certainly had to be one of the best moments of his life, he didn’t want the credit. In fact, he wanted the credit to go to the man who has taken more flack than just about anybody this season.

“He gave a postgame speech and he gave all the credit to Joe Flacco,” said Dalton Risner. “That’s the type of guy he is.”

He’s right, you know? Flacco does deserve some credit for that win, but it goes deeper than just helping Allen prepare for his first start.

In what may have been his last public act as a Bronco, the much-maligned quarterback decided he had had enough, and, in a pretty unprecedented moment, he spoke his mind in a way most quarterbacks never do.

“I mean, come on. I just look at it like, we’re now a 2-6 football team, and we’re like afraid to go for it in a two-minute drill, you know?” He said in the now-famous quote. “Like, who cares if you give the ball back to the guys with 1:40 left? They obviously got the field goal anyway. Once again, we’re a 2-6 football team, and it just feels like we’re kind of afraid to lose the game… What do we have to lose? Why can’t we be aggressive in some of these situations?”

On Sunday, in what was his best game as a play-caller, it certainly felt as if Rich Scangarello started to cut it loose. His gameplan, working with a QB making his first-career start,  was far from conservative.

Allen was given multiple opportunities to attack the defense vertically, and Denver’s playmakers made plays. When all was said and done, the Broncos averaged a whopping seven yards per play on offense.

“I think they listened to Joe,” one Bronco told me in the locker room after the game. “It felt like we were calling plays to win the game.”

With 2:36 left on the clock, the Broncos had the ball, facing 2nd-and-9, knowing that a single first down would win the game.

Facing 3rd-and-5 just one week before in a similar situation, Denver ran Phillip Lindsay right up the middle for next to nothing and punted it away, leading to their eventual heartbreaking loss.

This time, Scangarello went a little deeper into the playbook, putting Phillip Lindsay in the wildcat and allowing one of his playmakers to simply go make a play. Lindsay rewarded him with a gain of 16 that included a slide in bounds to keep the clock running. Game over.

“I think Joe’s words really resonated,” the same player said.

It’s important to remember that, like anyone in their first year on the job, Rich Scangarello is learning as he goes. He can still make mistakes and learn from them. He can still change his philosophies in different situations based on the results.

In the locker room after the game, tight end Andrew Beck told me that the offense had a meeting early in the week in which they harped on the point that they were all trying to be a little too perfect, and it was causing them to play tight.

“We just wanted to go out there and play ball today,” he said. “We needed a reminder that we have some really good football players on this offense, and we just needed to go out there and play football.”

As much as that meeting may have helped the players on the field, it appeared that it had an impact on Scangarello, as well. The combination of just letting the guys go out there, the fact that he was working with a first-time QB, and the strong words of Flacco seemed to get Scangarello to come out of his shell a bit. And the results were fantastic.

Will we look back on this game as the game where Scangarello found his groove? If so, maybe, just maybe, Broncos fans will look back one day and thank Joe Flacco for saying just what needed to be said.