For quite a while Sunday, this Broncos game looked and felt like so many others over the past three months.
When rookie running back RJ Harvey broke into the open field early in the third quarter, dove to the left pylon and drew Denver even with Jacksonville, a familiar jolt flowed through Empower Field at Mile High.
Another close game. This team lives in those. It’s their habitat, head coach Sean Payton said just a week before. The 2025 Broncos? They win these games.
They hadn’t dropped one like it since September.
Over the final 27 minutes, 59 seconds against Jacksonville, however, that all changed.
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At last a team stood toe-to-toe with Denver and landed the knockout punch.
At last somebody built a lead the Broncos couldn’t overcome.
At last Denver’s 11-game winning streak came to a crashing halt.
Jacksonville and quarterback Trevor Lawrence did to Sean Payton’s team what nobody had been able to for three months to the day.
They scored 17 straight points in 9:08 of game time across the third and fourth quarters and built a lead even Denver’s group of comeback artists couldn’t close, stamping a 34-20 loss on the Broncos with authority and throwing the doors open on the race for the AFC West and the conference’s top seed.
“Part of this process is not fooling ourselves. They beat us tonight,” Payton said he told his team postgame after its first home loss since Oct. 13, 2024. “They beat us good in all three areas and it starts with me. Even though that hurts going down, you can’t spit it out. You have to swallow it. That’s the truth. They beat us in all three areas.
“We have to coach better. We have to look at what we’re doing. We have to make sure we’re not doing too much and we have to do that all on a quick turnaround. So that’s kind of how I saw that game.”
The Broncos woke up Sunday morning with a path, albeit an unlikely one, to clinching not only the division but also the No. 1 seed if they could find their 12th straight win.
Instead, both goals remain unfulfilled for Payton’s team.
Not only that, but Denver cannot accomplish either Christmas nlght in Kansas City. Any finality in the division will have to wait until at least Saturday. If the Los Angeles Chargers win that day against Houston, then Week 18 between the Broncos and Chargers at Empower Field will determine who takes the crown from the Chiefs after their nine-year reign.
In terms of the conference, Denver (12-3) now sits just a game ahead of a group of contenders that includes Jacksonville, Buffalo, New England and the division-rival Los Angeles Chargers.
“It’s never fun to lose, but if you were to spin it a way, you can say that it’s an opportunity for us to refocus and tap back into what got us into the position to be able to be at 11 (straight),” veteran receiver Courtland Sutton said. “Winning the games at home and all that stuff.
“Us having two big games coming up going into playoffs, you could look at it as a refocus opportunity for us to move forward going into these last few games and rolling into playoffs.”
Denver still controls its own path. Win the next two, and the top seed is theirs. What is different now, though, is the Chargers can say the same thing about the AFC West. Two wins and it’s theirs. What is gone, then, is any margin for error for the Broncos unless Jim Harbaugh’s team also falters.
It evaporated into abnormally warm December air on the Front Range because all the Broncos’ bugaboos — yes, even 12-win teams that mount massive winning streaks have them — showed up in succession and first-year coach Liam Coen’s team punished them.
Denver arrived to Week 16 as the NFL’s most penalized team and paid a heavier cost than 61 yards on six infractions Sunday. Two of them — an early game personal foul on P.J. Locke for leveling Lawrence when he didn’t hear the play get blown dead and a pass interference on rookie corner Jahdae Barron — immediately preceded Jacksonville touchdowns.
The Broncos have surrendered yardage to tight ends and running backs in the passing game consistently this season, a relative weakness made more vulnerable by the recent losses of safety Brandon Jones (pectoral) and inside linebacker Justin Strnad (foot) to injury.
On Sunday, tight end Brenton Strange and running back Travis Etienne each caught touchdowns.
The Broncos roared to 12-2 despite a negative turnover differential but went minus-2 against Jacksonville, which now tied for third in the NFL at plus-12 in that department.
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Over the past five games the Broncos have allowed opposing quarterbacks to average 267.6 yards per game and throw for nine touchdowns against four interceptions. They put Green Bay away a week ago thanks in part to a pair of picks against quarterback Jordan Love, but the well went dry against Lawrence, who has now thrown 14 touchdowns without an interception in Jacksonville’ s now six-game winning streak.
All of that combined to put Denver in a vulnerable position against Jacksonville and then two uncharacteristic faults ensured the afternoon ended in frustrating fashion.
First, the Jaguars scored four touchdowns in the red zone against a Broncos defense that entered allowing touchdowns at a league-low 38.5%. Jacksonville became the first team to score four times in the red zone against Denver at home since New England on Nov. 12, 2017.
Denver’s defense also struggled to tackle. Parker Washington alone racked up 90 of his 145 yards after the catch, including on a field-tilting 63-yard gain one play before Lawrence hit Etienne to put the visitors up 31-17 late in the third quarter.
“We missed a lot of tackles today,” inside linebacker Alex Singleton said. “Just little, tiny things that got us to where we are. We’re a 12-win team. I’m not going to sit here and let you guys (expletive) on our parade.
“We have two games to go be the No. 1 seed in the AFC.”
That number could have been one or even zero.
Instead, the streak is over and the postseason race is on.
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