The Denver Broncos impressively won their fifth consecutive game Sunday, knocking off the Dallas Cowboys in a 44-24 win where quarterback Bo Nix looked in control throughout the matchup.<\/p>\n
Nix threw four touchdowns, and running back RJ Harvey rushed for two. Nix finished 19-for-29 with 247 passing yards and one interception.<\/p>\n
Following last week\u2019s 33-point fourth-quarter comeback<\/a> against the New York Giants, the Broncos rattled off 27 points in the first half to put them 17 ahead of the Cowboys (3-4-1) and keep them in the driver\u2019s seat the rest of the way. There was a worrisome development for Denver (6-2), however, when cornerback and reigning Defensive Player of the Year Pat Surtain II did not return for the second half of the game due to a shoulder injury<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Cowboys, meanwhile, failed to put together any sort of feasible comeback attempt. Quarterback Dak Prescott threw two interceptions and no touchdowns, going 19-for-31 with 188 passing yards before he was pulled late in the game for backup QB Joe Milton.<\/p>\n Denver\u2019s home-field advantage proves massive<\/p>\n When the Broncos lost to the Buffalo Bills in the first round of the playoffs last season, Denver coach Sean Payton laid out one goal for 2025 immediately. The Broncos wanted to be playing their first playoff game at home, not on the road.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a hope for any team with big aspirations, of course, but it could be particularly pivotal for Denver. Sunday\u2019s victory marked the ninth in a row for the Broncos at Empower Field at Mile High, the longest active streak in the NFL. They have not dropped a home game since losing to the Pittsburgh Steelers at home in Week 2 last season. The Broncos\u2019 ferocious pass rush thrives in any ZIP code, but it is especially dangerous\u00a0when opposing offenses have to use silent counts or generally battle the crowd noise. The mile-high elevation remains an advantage.<\/p>\n The Broncos will end Week 8 with sole possession of first place in the AFC West. They still have to face the Kansas City Chiefs twice. They host the Los Angeles Chargers in Week 18. But Denver has a real shot of hosting its first playoff game since 2015 this season, and it\u2019s easy to see how much of an edge that would be. \u2014 Nick Kosmider, Broncos beat writer<\/p>\n Broncos\u2019 offense suddenly sizzling<\/p>\n Dallas\u2019 defense for much of Sunday\u2019s game looked like a bouncer trying to keep patrons out of a bar with a bubble wand. The Cowboys mustered almost no resistance outside of a first-drive interception by Nix that appeared to come as the result of a miscommunication with his receiver. They were bad. Really, really bad.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, it\u2019s hard to ignore the production from Denver\u2019s offense the past two weeks \u2014 or, to put it more accurately, the past five quarters. The Broncos scored 33 fourth-quarter points to stun the Giants last week. They followed that up by scoring 44 points in the first three-and-a-half quarters of Sunday\u2019s game. That\u2019s 77 points in less than five quarters.<\/p>\n Perhaps most encouraging for the Broncos: the contributions from their young skill-position players. Harvey scored his first career rushing touchdown on a 40-yard burst in the first quarter. He then added another rushing touchdown on a play that began with him taking a snap in the wildcat formation. He also caught a 5-yard touchdown pass from Nix in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n Rookie wide receiver Pat Bryant scored his first touchdown on a highlight-reel 24-yard reception from Nix in the back of the end zone. Second-year receiver Troy Franklin had the first two-touchdown day of his career.<\/p>\n The Broncos will face a far better defense next week in Houston, and it\u2019s hard to imagine them facing a defense the rest of the way that plays as poorly as Dallas did Sunday. The impact of young players was nonetheless encouraging Sunday. The Broncos will need more of that if they want to knock the Chiefs off their AFC West perch, finally. \u2014 Kosmider<\/p>\n Cowboys struggle on both sides<\/p>\n Dallas\u2019 defense again was not good enough for the Cowboys to have a realistic chance to win. It\u2019s not a good unit when healthy, so when the secondary is playing several backups, subpar play should be expected. If not for several dropped Broncos passes, the final score would\u2019ve been much worse.<\/p>\n And the Cowboys\u2019 offense was nowhere close to being good enough. That\u2019s what has to happen for Dallas to have a shot against good teams this season, especially on the road. There\u2019s no room for costly pre-snap penalties, and there can\u2019t be field goals on drives that reach first-and-goal from the 3. There probably will be some positives to build off over the next couple of months, but defensively, they\u2019re just not close to hanging with quality opponents.<\/p>\n A big trade deadline move? Jerry Jones would have to make two or three notable defensive moves for Dallas to be a legitimate playoff contender. \u2014 Jon Machota, Cowboys beat writer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Denver Broncos impressively won their fifth consecutive game Sunday, knocking off the Dallas Cowboys in a 44-24…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,113,104,103,7706,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-22699","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-cowboys","10":"tag-dallas-headlines","11":"tag-dallas-news","12":"tag-denver-broncos","13":"tag-nfl"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}