Pat Surtain II left his feet with his team on the brink.
By the time he landed, fully extended with the ball in his hands instead of Green Bay wide receiver Christian Watson’s, the Broncos were right back in the game.
The NFL’s reigning Defensive Player of the Year made the biggest single play of his season — and one of the biggest by a terrific Broncos defense in 2025 — early in the third quarter Sunday when he intercepted Jordan Love on a deep ball intended for Watson.
Surtain set the stage for Denver’s 34-26 win over the Packers.
Denver trailed by nine (23-14) at the time, had already surrendered a touchdown to open the second half, and was at risk of getting run out of its own building.
Broncos-Packers report card: Bo Nix authors best game of his NFL career
Surtain changed that with one all-out diving effort.
“Obviously, it was a pivotal situation, and we needed to make a play,” Surtain said.
The Broncos ripped off 20 of the game’s final 23 points, Surtain’s defense put the clamps on a prolific Packers offense in the second half and Denver pushed its winning streak to 11 games.
The impact of a win against Green Bay in any capacity cannot be understated. For Denver (12-2), clinching a playoff berth came as essentially an afterthought. The real keys: Denver pulled a full game ahead of New England (11-3) for the No. 1 seed in the AFC and stayed two games ahead of the Los Angeles Chargers (10-4) in the AFC West.
That all would have been true no matter what the victory looked like.
The impact of a win against the Packers in this fashion, though, speaks volumes about where Sean Payton’s team is as it steams toward the end of the regular season.
It provided a sign that Denver can do something it couldn’t last year: Continue to elevate as the playoffs approach.
This was a heavyweight fight.
Quarterbacks Bo Nix and Jordan Love traded haymakers through the first half. Stars made plays left and right.
Packers’ edge rusher Micah Parsons forced a fumble on Denver’s opening drive.
Broncos defensive tackle Zach Allen hit Love six times.
The collisions had that sound.
The Empower Field crowd drowned out just about everything, especially down the stretch.
“That’s as close as you can get to a playoff game in the regular season,” Allen told The Post. “It really did feel like a playoff game. Physical, too. It was a lot of fun.”
Early in the third quarter, though, Green Bay wrestled control firmly into its grasp. Love engineered a field goal drive just before the half for a two-point lead, then led a brisk touchdown march to open the third quarter. The Broncos went from leading 14-13 to trailing 23-14 without running an offensive play.
After a three-and-out, Packers coach Matt LaFleur dialed up a kill shot: A deep post to Christian Watson in single coverage.
Green Bay’s problem: Surtain represented the single.
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“It was the same formation look they threw a deep pass earlier to him, and it was overthrown,” Surtain said. “Just from recognition, I realized they flipped the formation and ran it on the other side, and obviously, they were trying to attack deep. I kept my leverage, played high and made a play on the ball.”
Quipped Nix: “We may have to use him on offense some. He’s one of the best players in the league for a reason and he showed it on that play. He’s had some ups and downs this season and he’s battled through it.
“That was a Pat Surtain play right there. Not many can make it, he’s one of the ones that does.”
Nix and the offense didn’t need much help Sunday. He tied a career high with four touchdown passes and engineered three straight touchdown drives after the Surtain interception to turn a nine-point deficit into a victory.
Nix finished 23 of 34 for 302 yards and was not sacked by a terrific Packers rush. And yet Payton’s first-blush thought afterward was, “The second half and how we played defensively was the difference in the game.”
In the first half, Love completed 17 of 22 passes for 215 yards and a touchdown, but even amid that torrid start against Vance Joseph’s defense, a key Broncos advantage developed: Green Bay failed on its first two red-zone tries.
By the end, the Packers went 1-of-4 in the red zone while Denver scored touchdowns on all four of its trips.
By the end, Denver held Green Bay to 32 passing yards and 111 total yards in the second half after 215 and 251, respectively, in the first.
By the end, Joseph’s defense had three sacks, a pair of interceptions, and yet another week of crunch-time plays made by more than a dozen contributors.
Talanoa Hufnaga and Dre Greenlaw, Denver’s prized spring free-agent additions, hit with postseason force. Safety P.J. Locke, thrust into duty when Brandon Jones sustained a pectoral injury, filled in admirably.
Corner Riley Moss got tagged with a questionable interference penalty immediately preceding a 40-yard Josh Jacobs touchdown run early in the third quarter, then picked off Love in the fourth.
Outside linebackers Dondrea Tillman and Jonah Elliss logged a sack and an open-field tackle, respectively, back-to-back on Green Bay’s final drive before starters Jonathon Cooper and Nik Bonitto re-entered the game and closed it out with a Cooper sack.
“We knew it was going to be a physical game … ” said defensive tackle Malcolm Roach. “We found a way to dig in and hit another gear and we took off.”
That’s what teams have to do in the playoffs. That’s what the path to a Super Bowl requires. Teams have to find ways to find that gear and meet the moment.
The Broncos did that Sunday night. Nix played his best game as a pro. The defense faltered early but found its footing thanks to Surtain and shut down the Pack.
The whole thing looked like a playoff game, felt like a playoff game and sounded like a playoff game.
That made it different than last week’s workmanlike effort against Las Vegas or so many of the other close calls on this 11-game run.
That made it a critical notch in this team’s belt, not just for the seed and division positioning but for the intangibles, too.
“We talked about it at halftime, and we said, ‘This is the habitat we’ve been living in,’ ” Payton said. “When you get comfortable operating in those games, then you don’t think anything of it.”
Now the Broncos have full control of the board in the AFC. A slip in the next two weeks could still leave the West in the balance until a Week 18 home date with the Chargers, but at 12-2, there’s nothing but blue sky above 5,200 feet as December passes its midpoint.
“I would just assume that we’re probably not going to be underdogs next week,” Franklin-Myers said.
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