For the fourth straight season under head coach Sean Payton, the Broncos knocked off a defending Super Bowl champion.
They did so Thursday night, 17-14 in overtime, against Seattle, adding the Seahawks to a list that includes Kansas City in 2023 and 2025 and Philadelphia last year.
That’s the good news for Payton’s team. So, too, is the reality that they are 4-2 after playing five teams that early this season look like legitimate contenders to hoist the Lombardi Trophy come February.
The Broncos are a contender, too, but to maintain that standing through the rest of the fall, they’ve got a lot to iron out.
Here are 7 thoughts on the win.
1. The Broncos have an offensive “disconnect” that will cost them if they don’t find solutions quickly
The Broncos offense is in the midst of a multi-week power outage.
It’s certainly not their only issue offensively through six weeks, but they’re lucky it didn’t cost them more in Thursday’s overtime win against Seattle.
Denver’s longest offensive gain was 23 yards and that was an 8-yard completion to Marvin Mims, Jr. plus a 15-yard penalty.
Next? A 16-yard screen pass to RJ Harvey in the second quarter.
The furthest completion downfield for Nix was 7.3 air yards, marking the first time he hadn’t completed a single pass more than 10 yards down the field. He averaged 0.9 air yards per completion, the second-lowest mark of his career.
The @NextGenStats chart has #Broncos QB Bo Nix at 0.9 air yards per completion. Second-lowest mark of his career. pic.twitter.com/9Xzdyxprqf
— Parker Gabriel (@ParkerJGabriel) October 16, 2026
“We’re definitely capable, we’ve shown it,” Nix said of the offensive malaise. “I don’t know where the disconnect is, to be honest with you. The shot’s called, you read it out, it’s not there. You make the right play with the football and check it down and go to the next play. We’re really, for some reason, struggling to find those explosive plays.
“That’s what makes an offense really spectacular is finding explosive plays and right now we don’t have those.”
Overall, Nix is 3 of 16 on passes of 10-plus air yards over the Broncos’ past three games. He completed two last week against the Los Angeles Chargers, including a touchdown to Courtland Sutton and a deep crossing route to Evan Engram, but went 1 of 9 against San Francisco and 0 of 3 Thursday night. In the Broncos’ first two games, Nix completed 4 of 6 passes of 20-plus air yards for 124 yards. In four games since, he’s 2 of 7 for 61.
On the Amazon Prime postgame set, former NFL quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick did not hold back, calling Nix’s performance “almost disrespectful to the quarterback position.”
“First of all, the guy doesn’t want to throw the ball. That’s fine,” Fitzgerald continued. “He’s throwing to the flats, he’s throwing behind. He has no trust from his coach. He calls a screen play on third-and-8. Just run up and let the clock keeps going. What does he do? He throws it away. … Then in overtime he’s got two chances to be competitive, the last one being a designed run for him to run, make somebody miss and get a first down for your football team. …
“He’s not playing competitive football right now.”
Ryan Fitzpatrick gave his thoughts after the Broncos’ overtime victory#TNFonPrime pic.twitter.com/AQ5wuThFjc
— NFL on Prime Video (@NFLonPrime) October 16, 2026
Against Seattle, Nix’s first-blush contention was that he did the right thing with the football more often than not.
“I thought I saw the field really well, especially early when we were given opportunities to sort of be aggressive,” he said. “As the game went on, it felt a little bit like the third downs were the key. Every once in a while we had an opportunity to throw it deep again and then they were in a soft Cover 2 shell covering it deep and we had outlets with 10 yards of open space.
“I don’t understand why we can’t really push the ball vertically right now. Defenses are just sitting back there hanging out. So we’re just going to keep running the football and hopefully find ways to get more out of it.”
The Broncos did run the ball with some success — at least in dedication, if not overwhelming efficiency — in the first half, churning out 51 yards and a pair of touchdowns despite averaging 3.1 per carry. Critically, they ran the ball 17 times compared to 15 passes.
In the second half, with the lead every second except the final :03 of regulation, they threw it 14 times against 11 runs. That included seven passes and three rushes in the third quarter.
Nix said himself he doesn’t know where the disconnect is.
He’s playing the worst football of his professional career. The Broncos overall are among the worst offenses in football through six games and on pace to challenge for the worst head coach Sean Payton has ever overseen. They are currently tracking well behind 2021, Payton’s final year in New Orleans – and only year there without Drew Brees as his quarterback.
That year, the Saints averaged 304.5 yards and 21.4 points per game. Through six this fall, the Broncos are averaging 252.2 yards and 19 points.
Denver’s 168 offensive yards are the lowest output of the Payton era and lowest by a Broncos team since Dec. 26, 2021 against the Raiders (158). Payton himself has now coached 298 regular season games and only two of them featured fewer yards for his team than this night.
Nix himself threw for 107, meaning two of his three lowest career passing totals have come in the past four days.
2. Payton’s offense had chance after chance to extend the lead or put the Seahawks away and failed repeatedly
Payton’s team has played a run of the NFL’s best defenses over the opening stanza of its 2026 season. They’ve come out of it 4-2 and in prime position, all things considered.
Payton, asked Thursday night what he liked most about where his team sat after six games, kept it simple.
“The record,” he started his answer.
Certainly, he would not have said his offense. Or the way his quarterback is playing at present. Or what his passing attack looks like so far this season. Or the running game, for that matter.
The Broncos have myriad issues offensively. Against Seattle, among the league’s toughest groups under head coach Mike Macdonald, Nix and company put together perhaps their most promising start of the season. That wasn’t a particularly high bar to clear, but it was impressive nonetheless.
Then they played perhaps their worst stretch of the season. That’s really saying something and it sends Denver into a mini bye week and long weekend facing the reality that they are not close to where they need to be on that side of the football. Perhaps solutions are close at hand, but they looked a long way off during the second half Thursday night.
The best thing that can be said about the group on this night is that they did not turn the football over.
“We thought that was going to determine the game,” Payton said.
And yet, Nix and the offense put Denver’s defense in bad spots time after time after time down the stretch with offensive work that veered from listless to entirely non-functioning.
Nix opened the third quarter with a 10-yard completion to Courtland Sutton off of play-action. One play, one first down, 10 yards.
The final 28 plays of the night netted 22 yards, one more first down and a whole lot of heartburn for the 76,973 on hand at Empower Field.
“I’m a golfer man, there’s no pictures on the scorecard,” right tackle Mike McGlinchey said. “We keep finding ways to make par. We’ll figure out ways to improve. But I’d much rather be on the side of trying to improve with a 4-2 record than the other way around.”
After Denver’s pair of touchdown drives covered 74 and 79 yards respectively and churned out 11 first downs in the process, the Broncos offense took the field with the lead seven times.
They generated two total first downs.
They went three-and-out twice in the final 5:41 while their defense went from rolling to reeling.
They had a chance to salt the game away with one first down in the final 1:25, but instead handed the ball off twice for two yards and then saw Nix have an off-time swing pass to RJ Harvey batted down.
“When they sit with all their timeouts, though, it’s a little bit more time than you think,” Payton said.
The minimum, though, should have been to make Macdonald take all three of his timeouts. The group couldn’t even muster that.
Denver never had to find out if it could have found a way to drive the length of the field in overtime because Ja’Quan McMillian’s interception set the offense up at the Seattle 43-yard line.
Eight yards and no first downs doesn’t qualify as a win, but the Broncos avoided disaster and kicker Wil Lutz did the rest.
4. After a weekend off, the Broncos will probably have roster decisions to make
Denver rookie running back Jonah Coleman is eligible to return from injured reserve after Thursday’s game and the expectation has been that he’ll be ready to return to practice next week when the team begins preparations for Arizona.
The Broncos have missed Coleman’s burst and make-miss ability, particularly between the tackles, though six games.
Adding Coleman back to the roster ahead of the Cardinals’, of course, would necessitate making another roster move.
The Broncos have at least a couple of other possibilities on the horizon, too.
Offensive tackle Frank Crum and tight end Caleb Lohner are each also eligible to return from injured reserve, though to this point neither has formally begun practicing. Once either does, then a 21-day clock begins to be restored to the 53-man roster.
Crum’s injury, which a source said required a minor clean-up procedure on his knee, was the shorter recovery timeline and happened late in the preseason. Lohner, meanwhile, missed all of training camp and the preseason and general manager George Paton said in late August that he would probably be in line to return in late October.
The Broncos have the option with each of waiting until there is an injury need or a spot opens up. Still, they are each players who in theory have interesting cases for playing time as the season progresses.
Crum was used as a jumbo tight end last year and even caught a touchdown in the postseason. Not only that, but he also proved adept on Denver’s field goal block unit and blocked an extra point against Kansas City last year.
Lohner is entirely unproven at the NFL level, but Payton this spring raved about his growth going into his second season as a pro and indicated he thought the former University of Utah basketball player would be a physical presence in the run game in addition to being a good athlete at 6-foot-6 and 260 pounds. Given the lack of production overall from the tight end group so far this season, that’s at least an intriguing avenue to explore at some point.
5. The defense could have reinforcements inbound before too long, too
The Broncos got cornerback Riley Moss back for Thursday night against Seattle, though he only played spot duty while ceding most of the snaps to Jahdae Barron and Kris Abrams-Draine.
They held up as well as could be expected, coming away with key plays including Abrams-Draine’s late pick and several sturdy coverage and tackling reps from Barron.
Seattle star Jaxon Smith-Njigba finished with 12 catches on 16 targets for 134 yards — much of it came late in the game, too — but critically did not find the end zone. Darnold finished 27 of 51 for 278 yards and a pair of interceptions, meaning the Broncos’ makeshift secondary held him to a 52.6 rating overall.
Moss appeared to be on a pitch count and said he only played in base defense, but he should be “ready to roll next week” against Arizona on Oct. 25.
Having a more healthy Moss certainly will be a benefit and, going forward from here, the biggest question for the Broncos’ defense will be whether Pat Surtain II, Talanoa Hufanga or both might be able to get back from the ankle injuries that held each out against the Seahawks– and the Chargers, too, for Surtain — to also play against the Cardinals.
Even if one or both needs another week to get right, the timelines for each suggest they have a chance to be back when Denver hosts Kansas City on Nov. 1 at the latest.
They aren’t the only two defensive starters who are on watch, either.
There’s also the still-developing situation for outside linebacker Jonathon Cooper, who remains on the commissioner’s exempt list as he faces a felony and lesser charges stemming from a pair of domestic violence-related arrests in June.
Cooper had his trial moved from November to March earlier this week, which means there’s no guarantee of resolution in the case before the season ends.
Combine that with the NFL’s standard suspension for domestic violence-related violations of the personal conduct policy being six games — Cooper missed his sixth on Thursday night — and it’s fair to wonder if perhaps his time on the exempt list is nearing an end.
If Cooper is removed from the list, the games he’s already missed would count as time already served. Cooper, though, has been paid while on the exempt list, so he would have to pay back the game checks he’s collected for the first six games to satisfy the terms of a suspension.
So while the exact return timeline of all three remain unknown at the moment coming out of Thursday night’s game, the Broncos may in the relatively near future get a trio of impact players back to a defense that already appears to be rounding into form.
6. An underrated key to the Broncos’ 4-2 start: Second-year punter Jeremy Crawshaw
The sixth-round 2025 draft pick was a busy man Thursday, punting eight times and averaging 49.4 per kick. Rashid Shahid did rip off a 31-yard return late, which marred Crawshaw’s net average a bit, but he finished at 42.9. Besides that, he averaged 46 net on his other seven punts and put two inside the 20.
Perhaps his best work came in the fourth quarter when he uncorked a 56 yarder and angled it out of bounds, flipping the field from fourth-and-20 at Denver’s own 18-yard line and forcing the Seahawks to start at their own 26. Seattle quarterback Sam Darnold mounted a drive but was eventually intercepted by Abrams-Draine.
“He was a little bummed about the last punt,” kicker Wil Lutz said about the punt that Shaheed returned 31 yards. “But I told him, if he didn’t punt the way he punted, we do not win that game. It was a field position game. We said it all week. One of the keys to victory on special teams was field position.
The directional punting is something Crawshaw recognized he needed to work on after his rookie season in the NFL. He’s got tremendous leg talent and can turn over high, arcing spirals with the best in the business. In Year 2, he’s improved substantially at placing the ball along the sideline and pinning returners into Denver’s coverage schemes.
“The offseason was really good for me to sit and work on things that I need to work on,” Crawshaw told The Post earlier this month. “Obviously my game is nowhere near perfect. It’ll take a couple more years, I reckon,for me to really, truly get access to everything that I’m capable of. But that was a big piece of mine to work on consistency and the direction. Seeing what works in games and what can benefit the team the best.”
Lutz likes the way it looks at present just fine.
“What he’s done, his transition from Year 1 to Year 2, I think it’s hard to argue that he’s not one of the better ones in the league,” Lutz said.
7. Speaking of specialists, Lutz’s long weekend will feel better after he drilled a game-winner
Lutz had been off to an unspectacular start to his 2026 season.
Through Denver’s first five games, he’d missed three of his 11 field goal attempts. One of them was from 58 against San Francisco, but Lutz had also uncharacteristically missed from 42 and 43 yards over the past three games.
“Never a slump, just a speedbump,” Lutz said. “I’ve done this long enough, you’re going to go through it. I’ve been through it before. You’ve just got to trust yourself and trust your unit. Credit to those guys for sticking with me the past few weeks.
“It’s never permanent.”
Lutz’s latest chance came with the game on the line from 53 yard and he ripped a clean shot right down the middle. Lutz pulled off his chin strap, ditched his helmet and, humorously, gave the shush signal. In front of the home crowd.
But, hey, can’t knock the excitement after a game-winner like that, even for a veteran like Lutz.
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