Best plays

With a 20-20 game and less than half of the fourth quarter to play, the Broncos had placed themselves in a precarious position. They had allowed the Chargers to hang around due to five turnovers on offense. The defense had battled and admirably, giving up just 10 points on those turnovers but couldn’t force one themselves until third-string safety Shiloh Keo came up big.

“I was just in the middle of the field,” said Keo, “trying to keep everything in front of me and just let the rush do its job. We have some of the best in the league and they put some pressure on [Rivers] and it forced him to float the ball a little bit. I just took advantage of the opportunity and just squeezed that ball and it led to a touchdown.”

The play immediately turned the game around, giving the Broncos a short field to try and retake the lead. They did so in just one play. Manning handed the ball to Hillman and he did the rest.

“It was just a call that I just so happened to hit and it was a perfect call for what they were doing,” Hillman said. “They shifted the line to the left and we ran right, and we scored. It felt good to know that we went up, now we had to rely on the defense and they did their thing obviously like they do week in and week out, and we came up with the win.”

The run gave the Broncos the lead they needed to seal the victory and displayed the one-two punch of Hillman and Anderson once again. They were the only constant throughout the game for the offense.

Honorable mention: Demaryius Thomas started the game off with a bang. On the second play from scrimmage he took an eight-yard curl route and turned it into a touchdown. He took the ball up the west sideline and made two defenders miss before cutting back toward the middle of the field. His 72-yard touchdown tied for the team’s second-longest of the season and gave him his 32nd 100-yard receiving game, the most in Broncos history. Those were the only points the Broncos would score in the half and turned out to be the point difference when the game concluded.

“I thought we were going to put up a lot of points after that play, the cornerback could’ve made a tackle but really didn’t,” Thomas said postgame. “I went down to score. I went down and made a big play. We could’ve scored again but had a turnover so I thought it was going to be 28-3 at halftime. It could’ve been that way but we fought through it and got the win.”