Jaylen Waddle’s quiet Denver debut flips into a 138-yard day in a Broncos' 20-13 comeback over Jags
New faces doing the heavy lifting.
The Denver Broncos closed their game on a 17-point blitz Sunday for a 20-13 win over Jacksonville that snapped the Jaguars ' nine-game regular-season winning streak, and leading the way were trade acquisition Jaylen Waddle and rookie running back Jonah Coleman.
The Broncos (1-1) had 11 one-score wins last season and a dozen comebacks. After a season-opening dud at Kansas City in which Waddle and Coleman struggled, the duo came up big as the Broncos powered past Trevor Lawrence the Jaguars after falling behind 13-3 early in the third quarter.
Waddle caught eight passes for 138 yards a week after catching just one pass for 2 yards in his Denver debut, and Coleman's first NFL score was a tiebreaking 3-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter. He salted the game away with heady play down the stretch as the Jaguars burned all their timeouts but failed to get the ball back.
Waddle “showed his swagger all day,” and Coleman displayed his “great football IQ,” said Broncos quarterback Bo Nix, who improved to 24-11 as a starter, the same record John Elway had after 35 games.
“I’m glad he’s ours,” Broncos coach Sean Payton said of Waddle, the speedster the Broncos acquired from Miami for a first-round pick ahead of the NFL draft last April.
And he was glad he could turn to Coleman, a fourth-round pick out of Washington, who was pressed into duty with J.K. Dobbins and R.J. Harvey both out with hamstring injuries.
After allowing a field goal to open the second half, the Broncos (1-1) responded with a field goal, a 7-yard touchdown toss from Nix to Nate Adkins and Coleman's first career TD, which came with 7:21 remaining after Dobbins got hurt.
The Jaguars (1-1) had won their past nine regular-season games — by a combined 177 points — including a 34-20 statement win in Denver last December.
After Coleman's touchdown broke a 13-all tie, Denver's defense, which missed a whopping 28 tackles against the Chiefs in Week 1, forced a punt. The Broncos offense chewed up the final 4:41 behind Coleman's six carries for 31 yards, including a 12-yarder in which he he slid down inbounds at the 18 just ahead of the two-minute warning, allowing Nix to finish the win.
“He came up big when we needed it,” Payton said of Coleman, who played just three snaps and had zero carries in the opener but led the Broncos with 39 yards on 10 carries Sunday.
Lawrence led Jacksonville on three scoring drives as the Jaguars built a 13-3 lead on Bhayshul Tuten's 1-yard TD run and two field goals by Cam Little, from 44 and 23 yards. Little was wide left on a 54-yard try in the fourth quarter before Denver's go-ahead touchdown drive.
The Broncos started out slow, failing to punch the ball into the end zone after Waddle's 49-yard reception at the 1, settling instead for Wil Lutz's 20-yard field goal. And Nix was picked off in the end zone by Jourdan Lewis, which led to Little's 44-yarder as time expired, giving Jacksonville a 10-3 halftime lead.
The Jaguars stalled at the Denver 5-yard line on the opening drive of the second half and Little's 23-yarder made it 13-3.
The Jaguars caught a big break on the game's opening drive when an illegal contact flag on cornerback Riley Moss negated a strip-sack by Nik Bonitto and recovery by Alex Singleton deep in Jacksonville territory. Moss had a big interception late in the third quarter that led to Denver's tying touchdown.
“It was a good day for the team to bounce back," Moss said, “but you know there’s still things that we’ve got to work on.”
Ditto for the Jaguars, whose coach, Liam Coen, said he was pleased with the start but “the fourth quarter was when you needed a drive, right? You needed a stop, you needed a catch, you needed a play, we just didn’t do it. We just didn’t make it.”
“Definitely disappointing," Lawrence said. "I felt like we played the opposite way in the second half than we did in the first half.”
So did Denver.
Mile High comeback
Tim Tebow returned to Empower Field at Mile High for the first time since throwing an 80-yard touchdown pass to the late Demaryius Thomas on the first play of overtime against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Jan. 8, 2012.
The former Broncos QB and Jacksonville native served as the Broncos' alumni flag planter and was recognized as the Broncos’ “Legend of the Game” for their home opener.
Injuries
Dobbins promised during camp that he'd stay healthy for 17 games this season, and he'll need a quick recovery to keep that pledge.
Up next
Jaguars: host the New England Patriots on Sunday.
Broncos: host the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday night.
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