Denver set the tone early. The Broncos led 10-0 after the 1st quarter and 13-7 at the half, then got nothing in the 3rd while Carolina scored again to go up 14-13. With Courtland Sutton's group already short Jaylen Waddle, who left with a concussion and was ruled out for the rest of the game, the Denver offense went flat for a full quarter. A team that had lost 3 straight looked like the one in control.
Then the 4th quarter happened again. Denver put up 13 points in the final frame, its biggest quarter of the day. Vavel's game report credits Nix and Jonah Coleman with the late push. Coleman was the rookie the preview pointed to after his 51-yard catch and go-ahead score against Kansas City. Carolina answered with a touchdown of its own, which kept the final 2 minutes tense.
The game ended on a defensive play. Young had Carolina moving with a chance to win, and Bonitto beat the protection and stripped him with 1:18 to go. The preview worried about the Panthers' line, and that line held up for 58 minutes. It failed on the one snap that mattered most. Per Yahoo, the win was Nix's 17th straight in one-score games, the longest such streak in the NFL since 1950. The preview noted that 3 of Denver's 4 previous wins came by one score. Now it's 4 of 5.
The preview said Carolina's receivers would test Denver's thin secondary, and Young's 3 touchdown passes say they did. Denver started without safeties Talanoa Hufanga and Brandon Jones and cornerback Kris Abrams-Draine, then lost cornerback Riley Moss in the 2nd half when he left for a concussion evaluation. The box-score search didn't break down how Tetairoa McMillan and Jalen Coker split the work, but a 276-yard, 3-touchdown day against that lineup shows what Carolina was aiming at.
Denver is now 7-2 and has won 5 straight. The Broncos still haven't pulled away from anybody, and they don't seem bothered by it. Carolina drops to 3-5 with a 3rd straight loss. Unlike the 43-13 blowout against Tampa Bay, the Panthers had this one in hand going into the 4th quarter and lost it on a single snap. The weekly concussion checks on Waddle and Moss are now Denver's biggest worry.
There's an honest knock on Denver here. The Broncos needed a late takeaway to beat a team missing 2 starting linebackers, a starting guard and a starting corner. There's also a fair argument for them: closing out games this reliably is a skill, and they have done it enough times now that it's hard to call it luck.
