DENVER (AP) — The Denver Broncos ' defense went back to the basics after a disastrous opener in Kansas City. It focused on the most fundamental part of football there is — tackling.
It was shored up in a hurry.
The defense limited Trevor Lawrence and the Jacksonville offense to three points in the second half — and none over the final 24 minutes — allowing Bo Nix to stage a comeback as the Broncos rallied for a 20-13 win
Sunday.“Look, our job is to
play the game and give the ball to the offense,” linebacker Alex Singleton said after his defense's rebound.
A job made easier by simply wrapping up.
The Broncos re-emphasized fundamentals all week after missing a whopping 28 tackles in a 31-10 loss to Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs. They held the Jaguars under 100 yards rushing Sunday and kept Lawrence out of the end zone after he threw for three TDs and ran for another in a 34-20 win in Denver last December.
“It was being better this week and being one step better, having that short-term memory,” Pat Surtain II explained. “Erase that week and just focus on this week ahead."
The Broncos (1-1) were one of the top defenses in the league last season, but it wasn't on display in Week 1. That could possibly be chalked up to not playing all that many snaps in the preseason.
One thing's for sure — the team's confidence never wavered.
“It’s funny how everyone was freaking out after one game,” defensive lineman Zach Allen said. “We got back on track today.”
Trailing 13-3 in the third quarter, the defense dug in as Nix and the offense found their groove in reeling off 17 straight points to snap the Jaguars' nine-game regular-season winning streak.
The Jaguars finished the game by going interception, missed field goal and punt. The Broncos' last four drives looked like this: field goal, TD, TD and victory formation.
“It was a good day for the team to bounce back,” said cornerback Riley Moss, who picked off Lawrence's pass late in the third quarter. “There’s still things that we’ve got to work on. It wasn’t a perfect game, but we got the ‘W.’”
Last December, Lawrence threw for 279 yards and three TDs with no interceptions. This time, it was a different story. Lawrence threw for 138 yards in the first half but only 51 more the rest of the way. What's more, the Broncos held the Jaguars to 2 of 6 on third-down conversions in the second half.
“As as far what they did, it wasn’t anything that surprised us,” Lawrence said. "They played really good up front. They got after us a little bit and I thought we played on our heels a little bit.”
In constant pursuit was pass rusher Nik Bonitto, who had three QB hits. He led a group that kept constant pressure on Lawrence.
“They’re a great offense,” Bonitto said. “But at the same time, we look at last year's game and we see it was really just missed tackles that gave them a lot of points and even this year making sure that we’re playing to our standard.”
One of the biggest sequences of the game was in the third quarter and the Jaguars facing a first-and-goal at the 9. Denver held them to a field goal to make it 13-3 and keep the game in range.
“We made game-changing plays," said Surtain, whose team hosts the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday night. “That’s what we did — just finding ways to get them off the field, finding ways to win third down. That was huge.”
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AP freelancer Ashlyn Stapleton contributed to this report.
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