Mary made good on the Broncos’ prayer request Sunday.
Brad Rogers’ officiating crew delivered no such intervention on an equally imperative two-point conversion attempt.
Denver’s Week 2 fate hung in the balance as Russell Wilson’s last-play, Hail Mary rainbow caromed twice and landed in the waiting arms of Brandon Johnson in the end zone. It was sealed in the loss column when Wilson turned down a wide-open Jerry Jeudy to the left and fired a pass right for Courtland Sutton, open by a sliver but getting tugged at by Commanders cornerback Benjamin St.-Juste.
The driving force behind Denver’s 35-33 loss to Washington, however, was neither the divine nor the adjudicators.
The bulk of the blame after Sean Payton’s team tied the fourth-largest blown lead at home in franchise history does not rest on whether Wilson should have stayed with Jeudy or whether Denver should have had another chance from half the distance.
Unlikely as this frantic finish was, it doesn’t materialize if not for a calamitous sequence in the middle 10 minutes of the game.
Head coach Payton thinks the recipe for a Broncos turnaround includes his players mastering situational football. Denver on Sunday failed so spectacularly late in the second quarter and early in the third that he couldn’t bring himself to even provide analysis after the game.
“It was not good, obviously,” he said. “Disappointing.”
Coaches and players often point to the importance of the “middle eight,” or the final four minutes before halftime and the first four minutes after.
The Broncos had already started to falter when that stretch arrived Sunday but had multiple opportunities to steady their ship and avoid the late-game hysterics altogether.
Denver’s collapse from a dominating 21-3 start began with a Wilson fumble and ensuing Washington touchdown drive. But Wilson and company got the ball back with 1 minute, 47 seconds remaining before halftime holding a 21-11 lead.
Not only that, they began the drive knowing they’d get the ball to start the third quarter.
The ideal, of course, is to score points on both drives. Even without a score before halftime, though, the Broncos had a golden opportunity to reclaim a double-digit lead.
“Thatap why you defer (when you win the coin toss),” Wilson said. “We want to get the ball back right (to start) the half.”
Instead, Javonte Williams carried for one yard and Wilson chucked the ball out of bounds on a broken play. Then he had Jeudy all alone in the middle of the field but fired behind him, negating any chance Jeudy had to convert a 7-yard completion into a first down.
Punt.
With 80 seconds to work with, Washington looked dead in the water before Sam Howell delivered a 35-yard strike to tight end John Bates to set up a 49-yard Joey Slye field goal at the halftime buzzer.
You know what happened from there, and it wasn’t a Denver counterpunch.
No, the Broncos Mobile slammed into reverse. Daron Payne ripped past Mike McGlinchey for a sack on Wilson, the first of five for Washington in the second half. Three-and-out. Punt again.
Five Howell snaps and 57 yards later, the game was knotted at 21.
The end result should scarcely be possible in today’s NFL. The Broncos started a drive with 1:47 left in the first half and got the ball first in the second half and went minus-18 on the scoreboard in the middle eight.
“That was a big transition moment,” Wilson said. “Just in terms of, you have a two-minute drive and we didn’t really get anything going right before the half, unfortunately. And then coming out in the second half, we get the ball, they make a few good plays and next thing you know itap three-and-out.”
The next thing you know, second-year quarterback Sam Howell leads his team to four touchdowns and a field goal in a six-drive stretch.
The next thing you know, an 18-point lead turns into a 35-24 deficit and put the Broncos, not Washington, in scramble mode.
The next thing you know, you’re going back to December 1995 to find a bigger blown lead at home for the Broncos.
The next thing you know, a Payton team is 0-2 for the sixth time in his 16 seasons as a head coach. Teams in this position have missed the playoffs 22 times in 23 tries since the playoff field expanded to 14 teams three years ago.
The next thing you know, rookie wide receiver Marvin Mims Jr. goes from two catches for 113 yards and a touchdown in the game’s opening 17 minutes to not getting targeted again the rest of the afternoon.
The next thing you know, a quarterback who started 5-of-6 for 146 yards and a pair of touchdowns is getting chastised by his coach in the postgame news conference.
“It was more than just one drive,” Payton steamed. “It was a number of drives where we were late with personnel, it took a while. Itap got to change. We had to burn timeouts in the first half and I’m not used to doing that. We’ve got to be better. I’ve got to be better. Russ has to be sharper with getting the play out.
“Maybe we have to look at how much we have in, but if we have to wristband it, we will.”
You don’t need a wristband or a top-flight red zone play selection to know, however, that giving up an 18-point lead in a section of the game where you had every advantage is not going to end well.
Thatap how the game ends up in the hands of the holy and the back judge.
“Unfortunate that it bounced that way,” right tackle Mike McGlinchey said of the closing sequence, “but you can’t ever let the game get to that. There’s no way that that game should have ever come down to that, where we needed a miracle to get it done.
“We … we just let this game slip away.”
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