The Denver Broncos escaped with a 26-21 road victory over the Carolina Panthers on Sunday and improved their record this season to 7-2. They have now won five games in a row.
However, this game should never have been that close.
The Broncos jumped out to a 10-0 lead and were pushing for more when Bo Nix threw a critical interception deep in Panthers territory. Carolina took that momentum swing and went up 14-13 in the third quarter before getting down to the Denver 1-yard line, threatening to put more points on the board.
That's when Devon Key made the play of the game and perhaps the NFL weekend when he came up with an incredible interception in the end zone. The Broncos used that momentum swing to go down the field and cap off a 14-play drive
with a 9-yard touchdown run by Jonah Coleman.
After a touchdown pass to Pat Bryant put them up 26-14, the Broncos appeared ready to cruise to victory. But the Panthers didn't lie down. With just over three minutes to play and facing a 4th-and-18, Bryce Young found John Metchie for a 25-yard gain down to the Broncos' 9-yard line. On the very next play, they scored a touchdown to pull within five points.
Still, all the Broncos needed to do was pick up a couple of first downs to force the Panthers to use their three timeouts. On 2nd-and-8, rather than a standard handoff, the Broncos chose to pitch it to Jonah Coleman, and a near disaster occurred.
COLEMAN FUMBLES THE BALL ALL THE WAY INSIDE THE BRONCOS 5 pic.twitter.com/0NWCbSMYH3
— Oate Noats (@OatetheNoats) November 8, 2026
Fortunately, Coleman was able to fall on the ball to prevent the turnover, but it did destroy the Broncos' drive and forced them to punt back to Carolina, where it took a strip-sack and fumble recovery by Nik Bonitto to clinch the win.
After the game, Bo Nix and Sean Payton each took responsibility for the fumble taking place.
“Ah. We'll look at it. Bad call by me," said Payton. "There's a play I liked, where you run a flip play in the four-minute, and I would have called something different.”
Payton and Nix were spotted by CBS cameras having a heated moment on the sideline after the fumble.
"That was a short-yardage play for us and they came out in the defense we weren't expecting," Nix said when asked about the fumble after the game. "And so I got to do a better job pitching him the football, can't let the ball get on the ground. When it was loose, I was not thinking good things about what if they got it, and all of a sudden that's the change of the game. I thought Jonah did a great job of just getting back there, hustling and getting on the football.”
It's admirable for both the starting quarterback and the head coach to place blame on themselves in that moment, but it's also on Coleman for not just catching the ball. Following the game, Coleman said he "had to get back on the ball regardless of what happened."
It was a play that went bad, but luckily for the Broncos, it didn't turn out as badly as it could have.
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This article originally appeared on Broncos Wire: Bo Nix and Sean Payton both accept blame for fumbled pitch to Jonah Coleman
