Best play
The Broncos came out of half and scored quickly, cutting the Bengals lead to 14-10 with nearly a whole half to play, but they would not take their first lead until they were well into the fourth quarter. However the play to go up 17-14 truly swung the momentum of the game to the home team.
On the eighth drive of the evening for the Broncos, a 13-yard pass to Demaryius Thomas pushed the them into Bengals territory and on the second play of the drive they went to Anderson on a run left. “I think it was a tight zone, and C.J. [Anderson] wound the ball back. Emmanuel did a great job blocking the corner. It wasn’t a crack toss type play. It was more of a zone type play,” Kubiak said of the run call.
Anderson broke it wide to the left and made a man miss while several receivers made blocks. Anderson broke an additional tackle and got to the second level.
“You go to give it to [Demaryius Thomas] for blocking the corner and having me one-on-one with the safety and me, one-on-one with the safety is a pretty good idea,” Anderson said after the win.
He burned the safety to the corner of the field and took the hand off 39 yards for a touchdown. It was reminiscent of his game-wining overtime touchdown run against the New England Patriots but the three-point lead was not enough for the win just yet.
Honorable mention: The Broncos defense started slowly but finished incredibly strong. All that was needed to finish the game was one final stop in overtime. They did it in spectacular fashion, as always. The Bengals had squandered their one forced turnover, a forced C.J. Anderson fumble in the fourth quarter, but the Broncos would not do the same. On the second play of overtime the visitors made a costly error. Bengals center Russ Bodine snapped the ball in shotgun and quarterback A.J. McCarron was not ready.
“The snap caught me by surprise. I was looking to see how they were adjusting to A.J. Green coming in motion and it slipped through my hands and hit my rib protector and bounced off,” McCarron said after the loss.
Waiting there was DeMarcus Ware. “Oh yeah, I knew that I had the ball. When I saw that on the ground, I was so close to it and I was like, ‘There is no way that somebody is going to take this ball from me.’ It felt good to finish the game that way. We thought that we were going to finish it with that field goal.”
The fumble recovery sealed the victory, ended the game and clinched a playoff berth for the Broncos.
