On Thursday afternoon, Broncos safety JL Skinner sat scrolling on his phone at Bo Nix’s locker. A team-issued iPad sat nearby, plugged into a nearby charging port. Skinner’s device was dead.
This was a bad week to have a dead iPad. Skinner had film to watch. Everyone in the secondary had film to watch. Life changes with Pat Surtain II injured and unavailable.
“Shoot, he’s Pat Surtain, man,” Skinner mused. “He takes away the number-one every time. You never have to worry about it.”
There is little historical precedent for a Vance Joseph-coached defense in Denver without Surtain, the reigning defensive player of the year. Surtain has missed one game since Joseph took command in 2023 — sitting with a concussion in a 33-10 win over the Saints last year — and a half of football against Dallas last week. Joseph has told reporters multiple times that this Broncos defense tries to funnel the ball in Surtain’s direction. So how do Joseph and the Broncos adjust, now, with the best man-coverage corner in the NFL possibly out for several weeks with a pectoral strain?
They don’t, Skinner made clear. At least not in overall philosophy.
“We’re playing good, man,” Skinner told The Denver Post. “We got White Boy Rick over there. So we ain’t really worried, man. We got Mobile’s Finest in KAD, too, so we ain’t really worried.”
When Surtain didn’t trot out of the locker room after halftime against the Cowboys, the Broncos’ defense “didn’t think anything of it,” safety Brandon Jones said. The game plan was the same, Jones said, even as a second-year cornerback cycled in. There is enough faith in “White Boy Rick” (new CB1 Riley Moss) and “Mobile’s Finest” (Mobile, Alabama native Kris Abrams-Draine).
“Obviously, when we gameplan, it goes through Pat, because it makes it easier, right?” Joseph said on Thursday. “You can be aggressive, and you can play certain coverages with Pat that you can’t play with other guys.
“But we do have a system that fits all players. It’s always players first and system second, so we can adjust quickly.”
The NFL world knows Moss at this point. He has the “hardest job” on the Broncos’ defense in playing next to Surtain, as Joseph said a couple of weeks back, and is now officially the most-targeted player in the NFL (55 through eight games). He is tied for the most penalties drawn among NFL cornerbacks, according to Pro Football Focus. He has also surrendered the lowest catch percentage of any player with at least 30 targets, according to Next Gen Stats.
Denver’s locker room has shown nothing but complete trust in Moss, even now playing in the biggest spot of his career with Surtain out. They call him many names. White Boy Rick, of course, after Rick Wershe Jr., the famous youth FBI informant. Sometimes just Moss. Or Riley. Or “White Chocolate.” Surtain said on his podcast recently that he believes officials are “racial profiling my dawg.”
“That’s the coldest white boy we done ever seen, man,” Skinner said of Moss.
Less is known publicly about Abrams-Draine, who stepped in for Surtain in the second half against the Cowboys to mixed results. He had a massive pick of Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert last year as a rookie. But his snaps were spent next to Surtain, not in place of him. Suddenly, the second-year Mizzou product is the next man up in place of the DPOY.
“He’s extremely intelligent,” Payton said of Abrams-Draine this week, “and I would say, he might have the best hands on this team. He’s got elite ball skills.”
This, of course, will not be a direct one-to-one replacement. Joseph said Thursday that Denver has a plan to pull Surtain’s weight with “multiple guys,” a possible nod to more snaps for first-round rookie Jahdae Barron, who’s primarily been used as an extra defensive back in dime packages.
Joseph did appear to shift overall approaches slightly in the second half last Sunday.
The Broncos started the game against the Cowboys with a few looks of versatile safety Talanoa Hufanga either blitzing or playing near the line of scrimmage. After Surtain suffered a pec strain just before halftime, though, Joseph had “five minutes” to adjust. On their first play of the third quarter, the Broncos pivoted immediately on their first play to positioning safeties Jones and Hufanga deep in the secondary on first down.
Moss told The Post on Sunday that Joseph called more two-deep safety looks to “protect us over top.” And on film, it appeared Denver deployed softer coverages against the Cowboys without Surtain.
Much of that was game situation, though, with the Broncos holding a double-digit lead throughout the second half. And overall, Hufanga played about an equal number of snaps in coverage in the first and second half against the Cowboys — a sign that Joseph didn’t feel the need to constantly drop his safeties back for lack of trust in his corners.
The Broncos will naturally look different against Houston without Surtain. It’s a tough matchup, as Texans receiver Nico Collins torched the Broncos for 191 yards and a touchdown in the team’s last matchup in 2023. But Joseph expects “no drop-off,” he said Thursday.
“Standard doesn’t change,” Joseph said.
Want more Broncos news? Sign up for the Broncos Insider to get all our NFL analysis.