Jaylen Waddle's breakout vs. Jaguars shows what he can unlock for Broncos offense

DENVER -- The Broncos were on the verge of securing a victory Sunday that would calm the waves of outside angst that had been crashing around the team since its Week 1 flop in Kansas City.

First, they had to solve something of a bugaboo for quarterback Bo Nix and the offense, even as they have marched into the tier of NFL contenders the past two seasons.

"We haven't necessarily been great in the four-minute offense in the past," wide receiver Courtland Sutton said, referring to the grind-the-clock drives that can melt games away.

To be fair, the Broncos also haven't had Jaylen Waddle in the past. It was little surprise that the electric wide receiver, the player Denver traded three draft picks to the Dolphins to acquire in March, helped seal Sunday's 20-13 win against the Jaguars. After all, Waddle had already flipped the game with one devastating route after another, tugging at the seams of Jacksonville's defense and unraveling it like a frayed sweater.

"You can see the explosiveness, the run after the catch, all of those things," Broncos coach Sean Payton said, moments after handing Waddle the game ball in Denver's victorious locker room. "I'm glad he's ours."

The Broncos had climbed out of a two-score deficit and held a 20-13 lead with 3 minutes, 47 seconds to go. They faced a third-and-3 at their own 27-yard line. As Waddle motioned to the right, cornerback Jourdan Lewis, who intercepted a Nix pass in the end zone earlier in the game, shadowed the receiver. Waddle, to that point, had already caught seven passes for 109 yards.

As Waddle cut toward the sideline at the first-down marker, Lewis closed hard in an attempt to deflect Nix's pass before it could hit Waddle in a tight window. Only Nix wasn't throwing the ball. He was waiting for Waddle to uncork a double move that was so devastating it dropped Lewis to his knees. All Nix had to do from there was loft the ball to Waddle for 29 yards and a first down.

"Credit all the game planners who drew that up," a grinning Waddle said after the game. "We knew what they were going to be in with the situation the game held. We just went out there and tried to close the game and we did."

The Broncos first had to figure out how to wake up a dormant offense. Denver punted on its first three possessions Sunday, hardly discernible from the unit that put up 176 yards in the blowout loss to the Chiefs. Penalties bogged them down once again, and they struggled to stay out of third-and-long scenarios.

With one splash play, everything seemed to change. Nix took a shotgun snap on first-and-10 at midfield in the second quarter and moved to his right as pressure neared. Waddle emerged from the slot on a deep post, and Nix fired a ball on the run for a 49-yard gain that put Denver at the Jaguars' 1-yard line.

A disastrous goal-line series forced them to settle for a field goal, and on the next possession, their march inside the 10-yard line ended with Nix's interception while trying to hit Sutton in the corner. Nobody on the offensive side of the ball in Denver's locker room was under the illusion that significant improvements weren't needed as they continue through an early portion of the schedule loaded with contenders.

But Waddle's big gain was an early sign of how Denver's offense can operate when the speedy receiver starts finding a rhythm. What it can open up for the rest of Denver's targets.

"Because he plays in the slot or goes to 'Z,' there are some (advantageous) matchups," with Waddle, Payton said. "They're a zone coverage team by nature. We caught them in some man looks. … There's so many things he can do."

Waddle's lack of production in Denver's 31-10 loss to the Chiefs in Week 1 was one item on a crowded list of issues stemming from a team-wide flop that included missed tackles, protection breakdowns, questionable calls and basically anything else that can go wrong in a football game. But Waddle's one-catch, 2-yard debut was at the bottom of the list of things Broncos coaches were concerned about moving forward.

"He's going to get his touches," Payton promised ahead of the meeting with the Jaguars. 

The Broncos scored on four of their final five possessions Sunday, excluding the final drive that ended with Nix in victory formation, and Waddle lit the fuse as he sprinted into holes in Jacksonville's cloud coverage. On a third-and-7 play early in the fourth quarter, Waddle motioned into the slot and then sprinted into a crack just behind linebacker Branson Combs and caught Nix's pinpoint pass for a first down. Right guard Quinn Meinerz ran up to Waddle and chest-bumped the receiver. It was an illustration of the "infectious" impact, as Payton called it, that Waddle has had on the Broncos during his first season in Denver.

"I've been cheesin' just watching him go out there and see him have the success he had," Sutton said. "… I think that's only the tip of the iceberg for him. We had some plays in our back pocket that we didn't even get to. … It was very promising and I look forward to seeing where it goes the rest of the season.

The Waddle-infused rebound for the offense Sunday was only part of the story, of course. Trevor Lawrence entered the game playing the quarterback position as well as anyone in the NFL recently. He had thrown 19 touchdown passes against only one interception in his past seven games dating back to last season.

But Denver's defense made life difficult on Lawrence from the start. The unit sacked him twice -- penalties erased two more takedowns -- but it consistently hurried him in the pocket and limited some of the downfield shots that had been there in Jacksonville's 34-20 victory in Denver last season.

"That's a talented group, and we knew the challenge we were going in for," said defensive end Zach Allen, who had a team-high four pressures Sunday. "I think we had 11 straight wins (going into last year's Jacksonville game), so to get a little humble pie was nice going down the stretch. It was good to bounce back."

The Broncos came up with a third-down stop in the red zone midway through the third quarter when linebacker Alex Singleton broke up a pass intended for LeQuint Allen at the goal line. On Jacksonville's next possession, holding a 13-6 lead, Lawrence's pass up the left sideline to Parker Washington was underthrown, allowing Riley Moss to secure the interception.

"After he made that play," defensive end Eyioma Uwazurike said, "it felt like it was our time."

What followed was another fourth-quarter comeback that Nix orchestrated. The third-year quarterback now has nine of them since entering the NFL as Denver's first-round pick in 2024, more than any other QB in that span.

"There's this glimmer in his eye that's like, 'I know y'all got me, and I've got y'all,'" Sutton said of Nix entering the fourth quarter. "Let's go out there and go do it."

Nix did it by finding No. 17 again and again, as Waddle's 138 yards were the most by a Broncos player in his home debut since Rick Upchurch (153) in 1975. If it truly was only the tip of the iceberg for Waddle on Sunday, the Broncos offense as a whole may just be getting warmed up.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.