The Denver Broncos have a big prime time matchup this Sunday against the Los Angeles Rams and while much of the discussion will be around the quarterbacks, there is one battle that is always a strong matchup to watch: Pat Surtain vs. Davante Adams.
Early in Surtain’s career, he was cooked by Adams when he was a member of the Las Vegas Raiders. But the tide began to shift Surtain’s way in 2023 and beyond with Adams increasingly getting locked down.
“It’s good battles, good competition,” Surtain said
this week. “It’s going to be another battle on Sunday. [I’m] Looking forward to it.
In his last two games against Denver (back in 2023), Adams had a combined 11 catches for 112 yards and one touchdowns. Decent for most wide receivers, but in 2022 he torched Surtain for 16 catches for a whooping 242 yards and two touchdowns.
With Adams getting older, this could be a sport where Surtain dominates as Adams did in 2022. We shall see.
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Potent quotables
Bo Nix
On the importance of building brotherhood within the team
“Close teams play for one another and the tighter the team, usually the more you’re willing to give and [the] more passion, and effort and intensity you play with. So when you care about the guys you’re out there competing with, it means a lot. I think it helps in competition like that. It’s sometimes tough in a professional league to have a close team because you have so many different walks of life, but we have a close team. There are a lot of guys on our team that been here for a while, and then we’ve just welcomed in the new guys that have joined us and they just fall right in.”
On why the offense performs better in the second half and how to sustain that for a full game
“I think two plays in that first half, and it looks like we scored 14 points and it’s completely different, we’re not really talking about a slow start or anything. We had two really good drives that we just didn’t score points on. I think that in the second half, that translated to touchdowns and we got a good lead. So we just have to focus on those things to get the ball in the end zone. Then I think that is really what we could look like as a team. If we score points there, we’re in the 30s [points scored] and it’s a really good outing for us against a really good team. So we just have to find ways to finish the drive, score in the red zone, convert on a few more third downs so we can get to the red zone. It’s just complete football.”
On what stands out from the Rams defense on film and the challenges they present
“They have a veteran defense. They have a really good front. They really play through their front four, their front five, the guys that are the defensive line that are in there. They’ve done a good job of building on their back end this off season with some corner depth. But they’re going to be good, they’re going to provide a challenge for us. They’ve won a lot of games in the past couple years, and I feel like they’re similar to us. They had a very similar season last year where they could have gone all the way. So they’re loaded up front. They have a really good young core. They have some older veteran guys obviously with some guys coming back. It’s going to present us with a challenge, but our offensive line’s really good and we’re going to fall back on them and then just at skill, we have to be aggressive and go make plays.”
On his reaction to Rams DE Aaron Donald coming out of retirement
“For a guy like that who’s played so much football at a dominant level, if anything, he could be better because he’s got some good rest. It’s exciting to play the greats, it always is. I know he’s a really good football player, and he’s going to provide a challenge that we haven’t necessarily faced before. He’s literally one of the best at his position of all time, so you don’t play those many Sundays. He’s going to be a good player, he’s going to play more and more as the season goes with rep count. I’m sure he’s just getting back in the swing of things, but a dominant player for a long time. So I honestly don’t expect anything different, we just have to limit the time he’s dominant.”
On facing veteran QB Matthew Stafford
“It’ll be a really fun game because of that. I’ve always watched him, looked up to him and admired the way he plays the game. He’s just extremely smart. He has a really strong arm, he’s just always been fun to watch. As our quarterback room, since I’ve been here for the last couple years, we’ve enjoyed watching their offense and watching him play. So it’ll be fun to go against him. It’ll be fun to meet him for the first time, I haven’t ever met him. But at this point in the league, you feel like you play a great quarterback every Sunday. So for me, he’s another guy that I can cross off the list that I could say I watched in person, and I think it’ll be a fun battle between our two teams.”
On if he has more freedom to make adjustments at the line of scrimmage
“I think just that’s how we’ve been operating and that’s how he [Offensive Coordinator Davis Webb] wants really to get our offensive system going and let the quarterback play the game through his eyes and get us to the right plays and not… Ultimately as an offense, you just want to limit the times you run bad plays into bad looks. So for us, it’s all about getting to the right football play so that we give ourselves the best advantage. There’s a lot on our plate as a quarterback, but there’s also a lot on his plate and we do a good job. As I’m on the field seeing things, he’s on the sideline seeing things. We communicate, we get to the right look and I expect that to just continue to build as the season goes on.”
On WR Jaylen Waddle’s route on the final third-down conversion
“We ran that play because we really wanted man. We wanted him to get matched up on the nickel and sure enough, we see it and we’re champing at the bit just to get the play off. I didn’t realize he ran such a good route and had that outcome really until watching it. When he’s that open, you’re like, ‘I just don’t want to miss him.’ Don’t overthrow him, don’t miss him. So he caught it, and he got down and saved some time. That’s just the element that he provides. It was a really great route, really impressive. He’s going to be really difficult to guard in man-to-man situations as the game goes on because we have two of the other guys that are basically getting held as they’re running their routes because they’re tough to guard as well. So we just have a really good personnel grouping when those guys are out on the field, and it’s not easy to play man-to-man against them. They’re just difficult to guard, tough matchups.”
On if there is a reason for the team’s success in its last nine games against NFC opponents
“I don’t know. I think that’s just by schedule, by chance. We’ve competed against some really good teams. We’ve had some close NFC matchups. One that I remember is last year, the Eagles. They gave us a challenge, and we had to come back and same with the Giants. So we’ve had to play some complete football against these teams, and so I think it’s just by chance and by schedule. Obviously you play more AFC teams, usually typically year-to-year, so the pool is smaller. I think we’re playing good football when we play out of the league, but obviously that doesn’t win us the next game. So we just have to keep at it, and work hard out here on the field, practice hard and just get ready for the next one.”
On playing a primetime game at Empower Field at Mile High
“It’s great. I think primetime games in general are awesome. Night-time games at our stadium are awesome. We have a great electric atmosphere. It’s always fun when you grow up, you watch these primetime games. It’s usually when everybody’s watching, when all the TVs are on. You just know it’s a big deal, you know it’s a big game, you know two good teams are playing against each other. For us, we say it all the time, we know we’ll play in bigger games, but right now this is the next biggest one. We have to continue to have success in these so that we can have success as an organization. So this is the next challenge, and we’re excited to be on primetime. That’s always a really good thing. That means you have something good going, but you have to keep winning and keep staying on primetime or ultimately, it doesn’t really matter.”
Pat Surtain II
On the challenges of facing Rams QB Matthew Stafford
“It’s another challenge, we understand that. Obviously, he’s a vet, he’s been doing it for a long time. He understands schematically, offensively reading coverages, putting the ball in the right areas. He has all the intangibles that you look for in a quarterback, so it’s going to be a great challenge, but we’re going to be ready come Sunday.”
On matching up with Rams WR Davante Adams
“It’s good battles, good competition. It’s going to be another battle on Sunday. [I’m] Looking forward to it.”
On playing a primetime game at Empower Field at Mile High
“Playing primetime at home is just a different type of vibe, a different type of scenery. Having that home crowd to our advantage is pretty beneficial on our end, especially defensively. Having that crowd noise to affect the offense, I think it’s going to be pretty huge, so we’re looking forward to it. It’s going to be another fun and exciting battle at Empower [Field at Mile High]. So we have a great challenge ahead of us, so we just have to prepare and make sure we stay sharp.”
Courtland Sutton
On facing a team with Super Bowl aspirations like the Rams“I think each week is its own battle. Each week is an opportunity to go out there and showcase our best. I think I might have mentioned this before last year, but it’s not easy to win in this league. I don’t care what a team’s record is, every team has aspirations to go out there and be successful. It’s our job to go out there and put our best foot forward. The Rams are a really good team. They played really well last year, they did a lot of things really, really well and watching the film, they’re continuing to do a lot of things really well. It’s on us to have a great week of preparation on the field, meeting rooms, recovery, the whole nine, to make sure that we can go out here and put our best foot forward going against these guys.”
On the team’s brotherhood
“I think that they intertwine together in a sense of when you have such a tight-knit group in the locker room, I feel like that allows you to hold everyone to a certain standard of accountability, but then also it allows us to be able to celebrate each other as if we are legally family in a sense. Everyone wants to see each other be successful, and I think that when you have that continuity between the guys, it allows us to be able to go out there and play for each other and then have a lot of fun while we’re doing it. To see everyone have that same joy for someone else having success, I think that’s where you start to see the full total success as a team because there is no individual. Everyone is one part of a whole, and I think that when you have that mindset and that standard in a locker room, I think that’s where you start to see a lot of the success. I think the success follows that brotherhood and that family-style locker room. When you have guys that really want to do it for their brother, I think that’s where you start seeing the success following that as well.”
On WR Troy Franklin’s one-handed catch
“I was like, ‘T-Roy’ (WR Troy Franklin) you caught that one handed?’ He was like, ‘Man, it just happened so fast.’ I think that’s a credit to his work ethic and the things that he’s done over the course of the offseason and then he had an amazing training camp. So to be able to watch him make that play, he may have surprised himself, but I think he shouldn’t be as surprised as he was just because of the work that he has put in, and the attention to detail that he’s been putting into his craft over the past few months. I’m happy to see him be able to go out there and make plays. I think that our skill group, speaking specifically for the receivers, I think that there isn’t a lot of attention on us as a whole outside just a couple guys. I think that people should really understand that as a whole, we have a lot of talent in that room, and it’s fun to be able to watch guys go out there, and just make plays throughout the game, and the ball finding everybody and everyone’s able to have success.”
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