Kiszla: Broncos avert another crisis of Sean Payton’s making vs. Bears

CHICAGO — When the Broncos had every right to quit on Sean Payton, proud NFL veterans Russell Wilson and Kareem Jackson stepped up to save this irascible, unlovable Denver coach from another crisis of his own making.

After the Broncos came back from a 21-point deficit Sunday to beat the bad news Chicago Bears, 31-28, franchise owner Greg Penner graciously awarded Payton a game ball to celebrate his long-overdue first victory on the Denver sideline.

“I don’t want to sugarcoat anything. We’re going to play a lot better teams on our schedule,” Payton said, remaining steadfastly true to his Coach Grumpypants nature.

So let’s not sugarcoat it. Payton did not rally Denver against the league’s worst team. The Broncos won in spite of a coach who has been slow to embrace the players in Denver’s locker room as his guys.

You might find Wilson so earnest as to be corny, so scripted as to be robotic and so past his prime as to not be worth anywhere near his big, fat contract extension.

But none of us can deny the obvious: Wilson willed an 0-3 football team on the brink of entering the sweepstakes for the No. 1 pick in the 2024 NFL draft to victory. And he did it on a sunny autumn day when the Broncos often played like an embarrassment to the city of Denver, the color orange and themselves.

With the Broncos trailing by two touchdowns early in the fourth quarter, Wilson entered the Denver huddle and began to quietly preach.

“He looks you dead in the eye and says; ‘We’re going to do this.’ And there’s no reason not to believe him … He’s Russell Wilson for a reason,” Denver offensive tackle Mike McGlinchey said.

McGlinchey then revealed how Denver’s quarterback noted anxiety festering in the eyes of the Bears, causing Wilson to promise: “They can feel we’re going to win this game.”

OK, beating Da Bears is a long way from carrying the Broncos to the Super Bowl. But DangeRuss is not washed.

By completing 21 of 28 passes for 223 yards and three touchdowns, Wilson provided more evidence that he’s still capable of performing like a top 10 quarterback in this league on a regular basis.

While a 51-yard field goal by Wil Lutz with 66 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter provided the final margin of victory, the two biggest plays of the game were made by Denver’s much-maligned defense, which at one very low point in the third quarter was on an almost unfathomably bad streak of surrendering 18 touchdowns and a field goal in a stretch of 25 possessions.

With under three minutes remaining in the final period and the score tied, Chicago eschewed an easy field goal and went for the kill shot, needing 36 inches to move the chains on fourth down, with the football resting on Denver’s 18-yard line.

Broncos linebacker Alex Singleton came up huge in that critical moment, stepping into a hole and stuffing Bears running back Khalil Herbert for no gain.

“You’ve got to hate losing,” Singleton said. “But (bleep), you’ve got to love winning, too.”

That shining moment of hero ball by Singleton, however, could’ve never happened if not for a scoop and score for a 35-yard touchdown by Denver edge-rusher Jonathan Cooper early in the fourth period that knotted the scoreboard at 28-apiece. The tide-turning TD was set up by a strip sack of Bears quarterback Justin Fields by Nik Bonitto, who has thoroughly earned the right to displace Randy Gregory as a starter.

“You get so down and we’ve been so down this year,” Singleton admitted, that it has been a challenge to fight the feeling that all is lost.

So it should be duly noted that during the first half, when by all appearances the Broncos were embracing the idea of tanking this season for the right to draft USC quarterback Caleb Williams No. 1 overall next spring, that Jackson gathered his reeling teammates on the Denver bench and read them the riot act, his hands punching the air to punctuate a passionate message to play with a renewed commitment.

“Every guy on our side of the ball is passionate about it. We’re huge competitors. With that comes pride and ego, when it comes to doing our job,” Jackson said. “When it’s not looking like it should look … sometimes it comes out. I was just trying to be the best leader I can and get guys going.”

Payton is an old-school disciple of Bill Parcells and a believer in the power of making everybody around him miserable by picking a fight or manufacturing a crisis.

Since taking the gig in Denver, Payton has been quick to slam predecessor Nathaniel Hackett for doing one of the worst coaching jobs in league history, but slow to get touches for two rookies, receiver Marvin Mims Jr. and running back Jaleel McLaughlin. Both showed out Sunday with explosive plays against the Bears, showing why they both should be in starting lineup going forward.

Late last week, staring at the possibility of an 0-4 start to his tenure in Denver, Payton said: “We don’t have to worry about creating a crisis if it’s real, right? We have a crisis.”

Let’s not sugarcoat it.

The Broncos remain a team in crisis.

Up next: The Jets and an offensive coordinator named Hackett, who will be anxious to show he’s not as stupid as Payton thinks.

“We can move on to next week and dive into the whole Jets fiasco,” Payton joked.

If he can’t beat one of the worst coaches in NFL history, what would that make Payton?

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• 2023
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