Ezekiel Elliot dug his own grave against Broncos with bulletin-board worthy comments

DENVER — You want the bull? You get the horns.

“It’s going to be the same four plays,” Ezekiel Elliot told Dallas reporters this week. “It’s going to be you versus us. You got to stop us; you got to be better than us.”

Whether he was aiming that directly at the Denver Broncos or not, the words of the NFL’s leading rusher in 2016 made their way directly onto the proverbial Broncos bulletin board this week.

“When you have someone coming in your house, and they’re like, ‘We’re gonna just come in, we have four plays, that’s all we run.’ Zeke was talking about, ‘We have four plays, and we’re gonna run them, and we don’t give a crap who’s in front of us,'” explained nose tackle Domata Peko. “When you’re a defensive lineman you’re like, ‘Okay. That’s a challenge.’ We accepted the challenge.”

“He said it in the media,” added Derek Wolfe. “He said they run four plays and you gotta stop ’em. We were like, ‘Okay… Challenge accepted.’ I think we won.”

They did.

“How many yards did Zeke have?” Shelby Harris asked.

Nine carries for eight yards.

“I’m pretty sure we stopped the run,” he said with a smile wider than any hole the Cowboys line carved all night.

The Broncos were straight up dominant against the run, holding Elliott to less than one yard per carry, stopping his streak of 15-straight 80-yard games, dividing that number by 10.

It wasn’t exactly a surprise to them, though, Derek “Babe Ruth” Wolfe called his shot in a meeting before the game.

“I told the whole team last night, ‘We need to flip the switch on them. We’re gonna run the ball down their throats, we’re gonna shut their run game down, and that’s how we win this game. We did that.”

Wolfe, his teammates, and maybe 76,919 Orange & Blue-clad fans were just about the only ones in the stadium who believed that was a possibility coming into the game.

Don’t worry, they knew that, too.

“A lot of people? You mean nobody expected us to win this game,” Shelby Harris barked. “Everyone counted us out; everyone said they were gonna run all over us. No. No. It’s not easy. No. You ain’t about to just run the ball on us like that. Respect us.”

“We heard all the talk about the Dallas line being the best line in the league, Zeke being the leading rusher,” added safety Darian Stewart. “If that doesn’t get you fired up, you don’t belong in this league, man.”

They don’t necessarily need it, but the Broncos defense always finds outside motivation, it almost makes things more fun for them. Even Philip Rivers said he tones down his trash talk when he plays Denver, “This is a front you want to be careful making too mad or getting too angry,” he said.

On Sunday, you saw what happens when they get too mad or too angry.

Now, the world is quickly realizing that these are not the 2016 Broncos. Or at least they should be.

“If they didn’t take notice this week, we still comin’,” said linebacker Todd Davis.

“We don’t care what they think,” chimed in Stewart. “We’re just gonna keep working, getting better every week and keep trying to bust everybody’s a** in.”

Watch out, NFL, the Broncos got their swagger back.