I Remember ... the Broncos' last win in Foxborough

Third in an occasional series

Previously:

• I Remember … the Broncos’ saddest quarterback competition
• I Remember … when Jerry Rice was a Bronco

In the Broncos’ last five trips to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., the Broncos lost each time by an average score of 39-19.

Only the Nov. 24, 2013 game in which the Broncos coughed up a 24-0 halftime lead in a 34-31 overtime loss was close, and that game remains seared in Broncos consciousness as the biggest second-half collapse in team history. Three were losses by at least three scores; another, a 31-21 loss in 2012, was only respectable because Denver scored two touchdowns to narrow the deficit after trailing 31-7 in the third quarter.

Nothing good transpired for the Broncos in the last dozen years in Foxborough.

Nothing but good transpired in their three previous games against teams quarterbacked by Cam Newton.

And now Newton is a Patriot.

If he plays when the Broncos visit New England in Week 5, one streak will end.

And if the streak that survives is the Broncos’ undefeated history against Newton-led teams, there is a good chance that their defense will carry them — just as it did the last time they won at Gillette Stadium nearly 14 years ago.

A HISTORIC START

Would you believe that at the start of the 2006 season, the Broncos’ defense was playing at a higher level than the unit that won Super Bowl 50?

Denver came into this Week 3 game against the Patriots 1-1 because its offense had mustered just one touchdown and 19 total points in the first two weeks of the season. All of the 24 points surrendered in those two games — an 18-10 loss to the St. Louis Rams and a 9-6 overtime win over the Kansas City Chiefs — came via field goals.

In New England, they shut the Patriots out for the first 50 minutes and 47 seconds of the game. By the time New England finally scored on an 8-yard Tom Brady-to-Doug Gabriel touchdown pass, it was only good enough to bring the Patriots within 10 points. Thanks to a pair of Javon Walker touchdown catches — including an 83-yard catch-and-run 1:57 into the fourth quarter — Denver led 17-0 before the Patriots finally scored.

“I hated it,” Champ Bailey said afterward. “I wanted the goose egg.”

The Brady-to-Gabriel touchdown ended the Broncos’ season-opening run of 11 quarters without allowing a touchdown. No team had ever gone that long without an opponent crossing the goal line to open a season in 64 years, since the 1942 Chicago Cardinals.

“Shoot, ’72 would be good, but when you’re talking ’42, that opens your eyes,” safety John Lynch said after the game.

This was the apex of Larry Coyer’s four-season stint as defensive coordinator.  Bailey was at his lockdown peak. Lynch carried over his high level of play from the previous season, with Nick Ferguson’s aggression providing an ideal complement. Second-year defensive backs Darrent Williams and Domonique Foxworth had taken the next steps in their development and were playing like seasoned pros. And with Al Wilson still healthy at middle linebacker and flanked by D.J. Williams and Ian Gold, the Broncos had a core of linebackers and defensive backs that was arguably the league’s best at that moment.

Denver was able to generate sufficient pressure on Brady without blitzing and threw a variety of coverages at the Patriots, whose receiving corps was among the weakest of the Brady era. Randy Moss and Wes Welker were still a year away from wearing the Flying Elvis on their silver helmets; in Week 3, the Patriots’ corps of pass-catchers included Gabriel, tight ends Ben Watson and Daniel Graham, running backs Laurence Maroney and Kevin Faulk, veteran receiver Troy Brown and the late Reche Caldwell.

Denver exposed the limitations of Brady’s targets on third down.  On Brady’s first nine dropbacks on third down, the Patriots averaged just 2.8 yards per play and moved the chains once. Brady completed just one of his first eight third-down attempts — a 23-yarder to Caldwell — and scrambled once under pressure for 2 yards. By the time he found any more success, the Patriots trailed by two scores with under three minutes remaining and the Broncos were simply keeping the Pats in front of them, allowing New England to gain yardage and lose time.

How good was it?

From a scoreboard perspective, it was the best any defense did against a Brady-led Patriots team in Foxborough.

Brady started 165 games for New England at home in his 20 seasons with the team. Never in any of those games did the Patriots score fewer points than they did that night against the Broncos.

And it was part of a six-game run for Denver’s defense that saw it surrender just 44 points. No team since 1978 — the year in which the schedule expanded to 16 games — ever allowed fewer points in its first six contests than the 2006 Broncos.

So what prevented this defense from joining the 1977 and 2015 units in the pantheon of transcendent Broncos defenses?

The seas were calm until the Indianapolis Colts landed in Denver for a Week 8 showdown. They picked the lock, mainly by protecting Peyton Manning. That allowed him to find Darrent Williams, who surrendered two touchdown catches and a two-point conversion to Reggie Wayne. After giving up just two touchdowns in six games — and then holding the Colts to just a pair of first-half field goals — the Broncos yielded three in a half and fell, 34-31.

Denver hit Brady 15 times in Week 3, mostly with four-man rushes. Thirteen of the hits came from the Broncos’ defensive line, comprised mostly of ex-Cleveland Browns dubbed the “Browncos.”

In Week 8 against the Colts, the Broncos hit Manning once. So to generate pressure in the following weeks, the Broncos had to blitz more often, which created holes on the back end that opposing offenses exploited.

The Colts had found the recipe to poison the Broncos’ once robust defense, and most of the Broncos’ final seven opponents were able to mimic it successfully.

A team that allowed just 7.3 points per game in its first six contests and held five foes to single digits was gashed for 26.1 points a week after that. A 5-1 start became a 9-7 finish, and the once immovable object was pushed out of the postseason picture.

Jake Plummer was the first scapegoat, benched after 11 games in favor of Jay Cutler. Coyer was the second; he was dismissed on Jan. 9, 2007 — nine days after the season ended and three days after Williams was buried in Fort Worth, Texas. Jim Bates replaced Coyer, and the defense collapsed entirely in the following two seasons.

It was an unimaginable outcome for a defense that started a season as no other has since the Second World War. The systematic dismantling of Brady and the Patriots was their crowning achievement.

Denver may not need that much defense to defeat the Patriots in Week 5 this year. But a redux of their lockdown effort from early in the 2006 season wouldn’t hurt.

A FEW MORE NOTES FROM THE NIGHT …

• This was the Broncos’ first appearance on Sunday Night Football after NBC won the contract heading into the 2006 season. Because NBC had been out of NFL broadcasting for the previous eight seasons, it was the Broncos’ first game on the Peacock network since Super Bowl XXXII.
• Two “China Bowl” logos were painted on the Gillette Stadium field, to promote a preseason game between the Patriots and Seattle Seahawks scheduled to take place in Beijing, China the following summer. Since that contest was designed to be part of Beijing’s build-up to the 2008 Summer Olympics that it would host, and since NBC aired both the Olympics and this Broncos-Patriots clash, the broadcast made multiple mentions of the scheduled exhibition game. The halftime show at Gillette Stadium featured Chinese dancers, fireworks and Olympic mascots. It was all for naught. Just over six months later, the NFL postponed the China Bowl for two years, until 2009. In 2008, the league scrapped the game altogether. The notion of an eventual NFL game in Beijing has never completely evaporated, but given the current economic and sociopolitical climate, it seems farther away now.
• Even with the late touchdown allowed to the Patriots, the Broncos still finished the first three games of 2006 with just one touchdown permitted to an opposing offense. The 2009 Broncos matched this feat, but the 2019 Patriots surpassed it, as the only two touchdowns they allowed in their first three games came via a muffed punt recovered in the end zone and a pick-six (thrown by Jarrett Stidham).