The Jaguars got on the board first in Denver, but the Broncos have come up with an answer.
Quarterback Bo Nix found wide receiver Courtland Sutton for a 15-yard touchdown with 12:46 to play in the first half. The touchdown tied the score at 7-7.
Nix opened the scoring drive by hooking up with tight end Evan Engram for a 33-yard gain and then had a 12-yard run to keep the team moving toward the end zone.
Sutton also had a seven-yard catch before his score and already has four catches for 53 yards on the afternoon.
The crowd noise in Denver has often benefitted the Broncos, but it hurt them in the first quarter of Sunday’s game against the Jaguars.
Jacksonville committed a false start on a third-and-10, but Broncos safety P.J. Locke did not hear the whistle and hit quarterback Trevor Lawrence. Locke was flagged for unnecessary roughness for hitting Lawrence after the whistle and NFL rules said that only the Denver penalty was assessed on the play.
The Jaguars got new life thanks to the penalty and used it to drive for a 12-yard Lawrence touchdown pass to wide receiver Parker Washington.
Broncos kicker Wil Lutz had a 44-yard field goal go off the upright on the previous possession, so it is 7-0 Jaguars after one quarter of play.
There’s more bad news on the injury front for Chiefs at quarterback.
Via Matt Derrick of ChiefsDigest.com, Gardner Minshew likely suffered a torn ACL in his left knee during Sunday’s loss to the Titans.
Minshew is set to undergo an MRI on Monday to confirm the diagnosis.
Minshew appeared hobbled after Kansas City’s first drive but stayed in the contest for three more possessions. Backup Chris Oludakun played the rest of the game, with Minshew exiting after the club gave up a safety.
If Minshew did indeed tear his ACL, that would mean he and Patrick Mahomes suffered the injury in back-to-back weeks.
Complicating matters, the Chiefs have an upcoming Thursday night game against the Broncos on Christmas Day. The club will likely need to bring in another QB as the team has no other available signal-callers aside from Oludakun.
It’s one thing for us to say it. It carries much more weight when an NFL head coach says it.
Any time there’s a ball on the ground, go get it.
Broncos coach Sean Payton was asked by reporters on Friday about the crazy two-point conversion that morphed from incompletion to recovery in the end zone when running back Zach Charbonnet nonchalantly picked up the ball. The play, thanks to replay review, tied the Rams-Seahawks game at 30 in the fourth quarter.
“I saw the replay of it, and I know the play they were running,” Payton said. “Holy cow, that was — I’d never seen anything like it. Of course, when you looked at it, the No. 1 rule, and I think [former NFL coach] Wade Phillips tweeted this. . . . Any ball on the ground, defensively scoop it. I don’t care if a fan threw it from the — any ball on the ground, scoop it. So there was a unique play though, and obviously had a huge impact in the game. Absolutely, ball on the ground. But I didn’t get to watch any of the game. I just saw that clip.”
Phillips, the first defensive coordinator of the Rams under head coach Sean McVay (and a former Broncos head coach), did indeed tweet it. “That’s why you ALWAYS make your defensive players pick up every ball on the ground no matter what it looks like,” Phillips said.
Charbonnet, by all appearances, was simply getting the ball in order to give it to the officials. All players, on offense or defense, need to know that, even after the whistle is blown, any ball on the field needs to be grabbed.
There’s no downside. As Charbonnet learned, there’s a potentially gigantic upside.
Sunday’s Jaguars-Broncos game is a big one. Maybe the NFL’s biggest game this Sunday. The Broncos are 12-2, the best record in the NFL. The Jaguars are 10-4 and in first place in the AFC South. Both teams have plenty to play for as they fight for playoff position.
But the game hasn’t been scheduled like a big game.
Instead of airing on prime time or in the marquee Sunday afternoon window, Jaguars-Broncos airs as a regional broadcast on Fox at 4:05 p.m. ET on Sunday. It won’t be available on the Fox affiliates in most markets. Most of America won’t be able to watch.
That the NFL didn’t schedule Jaguars-Broncos for a broadcast window that could generate a big audience suggests that, despite the success of the teams on the field this season, the league doesn’t think the average fan is excited about a game matching up these two teams. Sunday afternoon games like Bills-Browns on CBS early, Steelers-Lions on CBS late and Chargers-Cowboys on Fox early are primed to get bigger audiences despite featuring teams with lesser records than the Jaguars and Broncos.
As we pointed out when the schedule was released in May, it’s clear from the way the NFL schedules the Jaguars that even in Year 5 of the Trevor Lawrence era, he has not caught on as the start he was supposed to be entering the league, and the Jaguars have not caught on as a team the average fan wants to see. The Broncos have a bigger fan base, but Bo Nix also has not yet developed into a big national star.
Even lesser NFL games generate TV audiences that every other sports league could only dream of. But it says something about the tastes of the average fan that the 10-4 Jaguars against the 12-2 Broncos is perceived as a lesser game by the viewing public.
