LAS VEGAS — Courtland Sutton thought he needed a thesaurus.
His smile said otherwise.
The Broncos wide receiver couldn’t pull an adjective to describe sweeping the hated division-rival Las Vegas Raiders for the first time in his career, but he didn’t need one.
His reaction — a big, knowing, competitive, relieved grin — conveyed the entire message.
That this team is for real.
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That this team believes fully in the powers of rookie quarterback Bo Nix.
That the sins of this team’s past are perhaps finally in the past.
“The tide is turning,” Sutton said after catching eight passes for 97 yards and two second-half touchdowns in a 29-19 win that was uglier than the score indicated and sweeter than Sutton or anybody else in the Broncos locker room could fully articulate.
“The elite teams, 17 regular-season games, will be really ready-ready for 13 or 14 of those games and the ones they’re not, they still find a way to win,” head coach Sean Payton said. “They may lose a few, but they find a way still. I said to them today, ‘Our team a year ago doesn’t win this game.’
“But this team did.”
Payton believes that for several reasons — he quickly tried to shut down a follow-up about why and said he wasn’t speaking ill of the 2023 team — but it starts with the quarterback.
Nix has checked boxes game by game over the past several weeks.
This, perhaps for the first time, was a game the Broncos won because they had him.
Quarterback Bo Nix (10) of the Denver Broncos celebrates after the fourth quarter of the Broncos’ 29-19 win over the Las Vegas Raiders at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
In the season opener a year ago, Russell Wilson took two sacks and didn’t handle the Raiders’ pressure well, including in a key red-zone sequence early in the fourth quarter. The Broncos lost.
In the 2023 season finale, Jarrett Stidham was sacked five times and turned the ball over. The Broncos lost.
On Sunday, the Raiders emptied the tank trying to fluster Nix. They zero-blitzed him on the first snap of the game and three times in the first drive.
They caught the Broncos off guard, but couldn’t make it pay.
By the time the game ended, Nix had been sacked just once in 44 drop-backs.
“It’s all learning,” Payton said. “You can only do so much in the simulator and then all of a sudden it’s like, ‘This is what happened today.’ Both of us. They had a couple of corners out and so we go from expecting a lot of zone coverage to, here comes zero pressure.
“We made some plays in the second half with it and we made enough plays.”
Nix made a free-charging Maxx Crosby miss multiple times.
He mitigated the impact of a pair of Mike McGlinchey holding penalties by throwing darts down the middle of the field.
He didn’t press when the Broncos offense settled for field goals early and trailed 13-9 at halftime. …read more
Source:: The Denver Post – Sports