Meet the 'Raptor' who brought the Broncos' defense back from extinction

 

DENVER — Is he Alexander Johnson? Or is he A.J. Johnson?

Forget about both.

Just call the Broncos’ emerging young linebacker “Dino,” a moniker he had at the University of Tennessee, and one he finally has been able to unleash with the Broncos after over a year spent on the practice squad and the fringe of the 53-man roster before he finally got his chance to start last week in Los Angeles.

It’s short for “Dinosaur,” complete with the call of a velociraptor, which he will make in the huddle, on the sideline, or after any big play he executes.

“That’s like his alter ego,” safety Justin Simmons said. “Like Brian Dawkins and ‘Weapon X’ — not comparing them, obviously — but A.J. and ‘Dino,’ that’s his thing.”

And some dinosaurs like to devour everything in their path — which is what Johnson has done the last two weeks. He helped turn the Broncos’ defense from timid — as it was in the second half against Jacksonville — to tyrannical.

In the 16-0 win over the Tennessee Titans on Sunday, the Broncos once again held their foe without an offensive touchdown, something they had not done in consecutive games since September 2009.

“Guys are calling themselves ‘G.O.A.T.’ and stuff like that,” Johnson said. I’m the dinousaur, and dinosaurs eat the goat, so I’m out there trying to ball out and have fun with it.

“It seems like it’s working.”

“Seems” doesn’t begin to scratch the surface. In the last two games, he has an interception, 1.5 sacks and 17 tackles — one of which saved a touchdown near the end of the first half last week at Los Angeles.

“He’s starting to settle down,” Simmons said. “He’s starting to make plays. He’s starting to see the game slow down a little bit.”

Or, perhaps, he’s simply playing faster than others. Say, as fast as a velociraptor?

“Man, it’s hard to say. I can be any dinosaur,” Johnson said.

“I like to think of myself like in ‘Jurassic World,’ where you’ve got that modified dinosaur … that can do everything. It can hunt. It can relate with humans.”

Johnson the Raptor. It fits.

“It ain’t huge, but it’s big, fast and strong,” he explained.

“A lot of people would be like, ‘Are you a T-Rex?’ Uh, I can be a T-Rex at certain times, but when it’s time for me to move and go fast and go seek and hunt, it’s the velociraptor.”

And raptors often work best by swarming in packs. Time after time Sunday, a Titans receiving target or ballcarrier was met by a wave of blue jerseys.

Often, that cluster included fellow inside linebacker Todd Davis — otherwise known as “Bam Bam.”

And that is how it will stay. Davis isn’t going to be another dinosaur. He’ll settle for the “Flintstones” homage.

“He can’t come in and try to change,” Davis said, smiling. “We’re not all of a sudden reptiles now. I’m ‘Bam Bam’ and that’s ‘Dino.'”

Together they helped smash the Titans’ offense into pebbles. Davis was right behind Johnson among the Broncos’ leaders in tackles, finishing with seven total stops.

“Man, he’s the puzzle-keeper,” Johnson said. “He’s the ‘mike’ (middle linebacker). He’s holding it down, getting all the communications.

“I was just talking to him earlier, when [the Titans] were doing fast huddle, and I was like, ‘Man, I salute you. You’re real for doing that.’ You’re tired, they’re doing the hurry-up, and you’re still able to communicate and get the guys lined up and get everybody where they’re supposed to be when they’re going fast? That’s real tough.

“And he did it like it was butter.”

Johnson is playing well. But his explosiveness is just part of the bigger picture, one that involves Mike Purcell anchoring the base defense at nose tackle, defensive linemen Shelby Harris, Derek Wolfe and DeMarcus Walker combining for 5.5 sacks and their pressure helping the secondary intercept three passes. That provided the Broncos their second consecutive game with three takeaways.

While Johnson’s dynamic play jumps out for a team and a season that cried out for it, he knows it’s not about him.

“People will say, ‘You’re their secret.’ No, I don’t think nothing like that,” Johnson said. “I just want to get in there and do my part, have fun and in any way possible, come up with the win. That’s what we did.”

And at 2-4 and with a ghastly eight-game regular-season losing streak in their rear-view mirror, the Broncos are feeling better about themselves than at any other point since November 2016 — right before a four-game losing streak tossed them out of the playoff race and into a chasm from which they’re just now emerging.

They must be perfect — or within a gnat’s eyelash of it — to get back into the playoff race. NFL history is filled with teams that started 0-4 and clawed their way back to respectability, but found postseason salvation just out of reach.

So unless this two-game streak is the start of a feel-good revival that would be worthy of a big-budget movie — like, say, ones featuring velociraptors — this year is about getting the team back on its feet and finding players who can drag the Broncos back from a funk that lingered for two full seasons and parts of two others, including this one.

“Dino” looks like one of those pieces.