In the worst position they’d been in for months, Troy Franklin was still willing to push his verbal chips in on his boys on the other side of the ball.
After the Broncos went three-and-out on their first drive of the second half last Sunday against Green Bay, the Packers hovered over them with a dagger. Up 23-14. With the ball, and with quarterback Jordan Love dealing. Still, Franklin smacked his thigh on the bench and gave a full-throated endorsement of this Denver defense, as captured by NFL Films.
“I believe in our defense,” Franklin told fellow wide receiver Courtland Sutton, sitting on the bench. “They do it every single week.”
And a snap later, they did it again, reigning Defensive Player of the Year Pat Surtain pulling off a full-extension swan dive to pick off a deep ball from Love and swing another eventual win.
This Broncos defense is not perfect. Far from it. It is prone to communication errors in coordinator Vance Joseph’s match-coverage-heavy scheme. It has been bruised by tight ends and sliced open by running backs in the passing game. It surrendered a 40-yard TD run to Packers running back Josh Jacobs last Sunday that still frustrates defensive-line coach Jamar Cain, days later. The Broncos bend. And bend.
But they rarely break. It starts when opponents march into their territory — and inside the 20-yard-line, where the Broncos have still surrendered far and away the lowest percentage of touchdowns in the red zone (38.5%) in the NFL entering Week 15. This is their mentality, honed since defensive coordinator Vance Joseph’s first meeting of the year, as linebacker Alex Singleton recalled Friday.
If a team gets in the red zone five times and kicks five field goals, Singleton remembers Joseph preaching, what’s the score? 15.
“That’s a low-scoring offense,” Singleton said. “And so, that’s what we preach. However bad it gets, or however you get down there, force ‘em to kick the field goal and you win football games. And we’ve proven that time and time again this year.”
They did it in an ugly win over Houston in Week 9, holding the Texans scoreless on three trips to the red zone, including separate stands from their own 1- and 2-yard lines. They did it in perhaps their worst defensive start of the year against the Packers last Sunday, standing up Green Bay at the 19-yard line in the fourth quarter as Love mounted what would’ve been a go-ahead scoring drive. And they’ll have to do it against the Jaguars on Sunday, in another bout with another highly efficient situational offense.
After a fairly uneven start — 20.9 points per game and a 4-3 record to begin the year — Jacksonville has become one of the hottest offenses in the league thanks to its ability to finish drives. The Jaguars are tied for fifth in the NFL in red-zone touchdowns, and average the most yards per game from inside the 20-yard line of any team in the league.
“They just believe in themselves,” Singleton said. “It’s a confident team. You watch them play, and that’s what it looks like.”
Indeed, these Jaguars and first-year head coach Liam Coen have fully embraced the underdog narrative across a 10-4 start. A week ago, these Broncos took clear offense to that underdognarrative themselves, with quarterback Bo Nix coining the phrase “overdogs” after beating the Vegas-favored Packers on the Broncos’ home turf.
They’re overdogs in this one, all right, as wide circles of the Jaguars’ fanbase took apparent issue on social media with Broncos head coach Sean Payton calling Jacksonville a “smaller-market team” in praising the franchise this week.
Denver’s defense has been more susceptible to well-designed aerial attacks in recent weeks, surrendering more passing yards across its last three games than in any three-game stretch thus far in 2025. Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence rolls in with a 123.0 quarterback rating across his previous three matchups, playing the best football of his five-year career.
It’ll all collide in the red zone Sunday in Denver, where the Broncos will be tasked to stiffen yet again, with a faith in themselves they’ve felt for 14 weeks and counting.
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