DENVER — Against the WFT, it was all about WTF.
Yes, the scoreboard revealed a Broncos win by a 17-10 count. But it came despite their best efforts to mismanage and bungle what should have been a relatively uneventful series of downs in the final 37 seconds.
“Whatever worst words you can use to describe it,” Broncos coach Vic Fangio said, “you can use to describe it.”
Gladly, Vic.
The end-game management and execution set football back 42 years and 346 days. I can be so precise because that is the day of the “Miracle at the Meadowlands,” when the New York Giants turned a certain victory over the Philadelphia Eagles into a defeat that defined an entire generation of football for Big Blue.
But more on that later.
With 37 seconds remaining, the Broncos appeared to have control of the proceedings after a Justin Simmons end-zone interception and return to the Denver 22-yard line. Multiple Twitter accounts and even the FOX game broadcast declared matters decided; “Denver is gonna snap this four-game losing streak,” play-by-play announcer Brandon Gaudin declared as Simmons’ INT return concluded.
Whoops.
For one thing, there would be no going into the victory formation. Not with Washington still in possession of all three timeouts. Three kneeldowns in that scenario would surely lead to a punt with about 24 seconds remaining.
And given some of the Broncos’ punt misfortunes this year, Denver needed to try for a first down — while also forcing the Football Team to use its timeouts and minimizing risk.
First-and-10: Teddy Bridgewater handed off to Javonte Williams. The rookie running back lost the ball in a thicket of players after gaining a yard. Dalton Risner fell on it. The play was ruled dead, and didn’t even go into the game book as a fumble. But that was a bullet dodged.
“Luckily we were down; the ball came out then,” Fangio said.
Still, this call is perfectly defensible; it gained just one yard, but it forced Washington to use a timeout. It was an error of execution and a potential play made by the Washington defense, not a miscue of game management.
Then came second-and-9.
The moment Bridgewater rolled right off the play-fake bootleg and tried to lob a pass to Williams near the right sideline, a not-insignificant amount of the 64,218 on hand — and probably a fair total of the 11,755 no-shows who watched at home – had one question:
“Why are you passing?”
“The offensive coaches all thought the boot play had a chance to work on the second one to get the first down,” Fangio said.
But it also ran the risk of stopping the clock without Washington needing to use a timeout.
Bridgewater put the blame of execution on himself.
“Either go down, take a sack or try to complete the ball,” he said. “Just missed it. If I had the chance to do it all over, I probably would have just taken the sack, but I think you learn from today, move forward.”
In the short term, the Broncos moved forward to third-and-9. The call was a sweep to Gordon. Noah Fant had responsibility for Washington Pro Bowl edge rusher Chase Young. Fant tried to guide Young wide and behind Gordon, but Young worked inside and knocked the football out of Gordon’s right arm.
Three plays that were the perfect storm of poor execution and shoddy game management, and Washington had one final chance to win with 21 seconds left and the ball at the Denver 24-yard line.
“It was awful. It was a terrible, terrible series of downs for us,” Fangio said.
All that saved Sunday’s meltdown from being in the “Debacle in Denver” was Fangio’s defense, which finally came up big when it was needed most.
Shredded by injuries that left backups at five front-seven positions and slot cornerback, the Broncos’ depleted D trudged onto the field to repeat the task of saving the game. Just three plays and 16 seconds had passed since what seemed like the game-sealing stop via Simmons’ interception.
“Obviously, the frustration, surprise or shock — whatever word you want to use that you all were feeling. Imagine what they were feeling,” Fangio said. “They had to go out there and play.”
And they did. Washington lost six yards on four plays — three incompletions and Malik Reed’s second sack in as many possessions.
“I was impressed,” Fangio said. “They went out there, strapped it up, and got it done.”
But the defense shouldn’t have had to — at least not like that. If the normal processes of such a scenario had taken place, the Broncos would have — at worst — been punting with approximately 24 seconds remaining.
They wouldn’t have been out of the woods yet — after all, one of Sam Martin’s 34 punts this year was deflected and another was returned 42 yards by Devin Duvernay — but they would have been in a position where only a miracle would have saved the Football Team.
Instead, the Broncos handed Washington a viable opportunity that never should have existed thanks to poor execution and management.
“Football is life,” read a sign brought by one fan dressed as Ted Lasso at Sunday’s game. But to paraphrase kit-man-turned-wonder-kid-turned-bad-guy Nate Shelley, “The Broncos’ game management is death.”
But because the Football Team could merely recover Gordon’s fumble and not advance it — and because the defense came up big when it should never have been needed — the Broncos avoided the fate of the 1978 Giants, who merely had to run out the clock to seal a 17-12 win over the Eagles.
On that long-ago afternoon in New Jersey, Philadelphia had no timeouts, so the handoff called by Giants offensive coordinator Bob Gibson was particularly inexplicable — so much that Giants players pleaded with quarterback Joe Pisarcik to change the call in the huddle. He didn’t — and then he bobbled the snap, caromed the ball off Larry Csonka’s leg, and set up Herm Edwards to become a household name in football. Edwards scooped up the football on the bounce and scored.
Now, the Broncos’ Halloween slapdashery was not quite on the level of those Giants.
But it’s worth noting what happened afterward. The next day, the Giants fired Gibson; he never coached again. Five weeks later, they fired their head coach, John McVay — yes, Sean’s grandfather — although the elder McVay eventually rebounded with a phenomenal decades-long run in the San Francisco 49ers’ front office.
Don’t expect anything like that this week.
But on a day in which the Broncos stopped their losing streak, the final moments did nothing to ebb the cresting tide of supporter unrest and fan apathy that batters Broncos headquarters from the outside.
The air may be chilling, but the heat continues to rise.
