Why Alexander Johnson keeps his focus on the plays that got away

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Alexander Johnson had the game ball and the football from his first regular-season interception stowed away as he prepared to return to Denver from Los Angeles late Sunday afternoon.

But the football on his mind was the one he didn’t have — the football thrown in his direction by Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers during the fourth quarter.

“It was an easier one,” he lamented.

“I got excited. I seen the ball coming, so I was looking at it, and once I seen it coming, my eyes went downfield to try to take off running, and everybody knows you’re supposed to keep your eyes on the ball first, and then go. So hopefully I will never drop another one.”

It was a rare miscue in a regular-season debut that altered his trajectory and that of his team. Arguably no player had a greater impact on the Broncos’ first win since Dec. 2 of last year than Johnson.

Johnson had nine total tackles — including one for a loss. He had two touchdown-saving plays, effectively deciding the game with his stop of Austin Ekeler in the flat at the 1-yard line seconds before halftime and his third-quarter end-zone interception of Rivers.

Most importantly, Johnson did not miss any tackles — one week after the Broncos collectively racked up 14 of them in their loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Yet it was the interception that got away stuck in his head.

“Next time, I’ll make sure I don’t take my eyes off the ball and look it through,” he said.

On the interception Johnson did grab, it was all about the eyes then, too. As he drifted into the end zone, he kept his eyes perched on the backfield.

“I was just reading eyes and playing the middle and I saw [Rivers] look back, and I looked back and he threw it to me, and I was ready; I caught the ball.”

Of course, given that it was his first interception in any game since 2014, he wanted more. For an instant, the vision of a long return flashed in his mind’s eye.

“I was actually looking to take the ball out of the end zone, and a couple of teammates were like, ‘Get down! Get down!'” Johnson said.

He did.

But he wasn’t perfect, something Broncos coach Vic Fangio pointed out multiple times in the last three days.

And Johnson’s challenge is different this week. The Chargers try to spread the ball around and operate in space.

The Tennessee Titans want to slam it squarely down your throat.

Since Derrick Henry’s breakthrough 238-yard game against the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 14 of last season, only the Ravens, Seahawks and Vikings run on a higher percentage of downs than the Titans, who kept it on the ground 49.2 percent of the time in that nine-game span.

The 250-pound running back is difficult to tackle one-on-one. Johnson, though, has no fear. When asked how tough it was to tackle Henry — who he faced in college — he paused, smiled and laughed.

“I don’t think it’s tough,” he said. “Personally I feel like I can tackle anybody, any running back. It’s just going and being aggressive, wrapping up and being physical.”

That’s well and good, and as Fangio said Wednesday, Johnson has “got some thump.”

But in Fangio’s eyes, Johnson was far from perfect Sunday.

“Now he made a bushelful of mistakes too that he had a rabbit’s foot in his pocket that he didn’t pay for,” Fangio said. “We have to get those rectified quickly.”

And that’s where it helps that Johnson spent more time focused on the play he didn’t make rather than those he did. The coach saw the mistakes, and Johnson did, too.

“I think about what I did bad so I can improve on that,” Johnson said. “Good plays, that’s what you’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to make good plays; we’re not supposed to make bad plays.

“So when you make a bad play, you want to correct yourself and do better than that.”

The Broncos need that.