The Broncos went up 19-8 early in the fourth quarter, but a fumbled pass allowed the Giants to answer with a 41-yard field goal from Dart to Theo Johnson. Bo Nix answered again, bringing Denver within 10 with 5:19 left on a 7-yard TD run. The defense forced a Dart INT that the Broncos turned into another quick score. A three-and-out gave Nix the ball with 2:42 left, and he marched the Crew 68 yards in six plays for the score.
The defense gave the lead back, with the help of several penalties, but those 37 seconds were enough time for Nix to not only put his club in field goal range, but make Wil Lutz an easy 39-yarder.
“I don’t even know how to score 33 points in a quarter,” Nix said, according to the team’s release. “It’s kind of crazy, but it’s just all we had to do and we did it.”
The Broncos’ 33 points in the fourth quarter set a franchise record. It also marked the most points in a fourth quarter in NFL history by a team shut out for three quarters, according to NFL Research.
“We’re fighters,” Marvin Mims Jr. said. “We battled back and won in the end. To be down that much and come back to win, that says a lot about our team.”
The sad part early on was that there weren’t a ton of moves costing the offense. It wasn’t back-to-back pick-sixes or something wild that dug his hole. The offense simply couldn’t get out of the way. Terrible penalties, poor throws, poor catch attempts and poor blocking. You name it, the offense got through it early.
“We had to find a way to clean up our mess,” Broncos coach Sean Payton said.
In the fourth quarter, they finally figured out how to move the ball again.
After the first score of the final stanza was scored by Troy Franklin’s two-yard TD on a punt, Nix felt things turn.
“I was thinking about how I was going to answer questions if we got banned,” Nix said. “…When we scored and got the two-point conversion, it was like we knew how to play again.”
Hopefully, because of the blood pressure concerns in Denver, moving forward, it won’t take three quarters of a game for the Broncos to figure out how to play again.