It had been 18 years since an NFL team won a game like the Broncos did

The Denver Broncos aren’t going to win many games like the one they took on Sunday, and Sean Payton knows it.

You can’t rely on the gift that Jonathan Taylor dropped under the Broncos’ Christmas tree. Or on the one served up by Adonai Mitchell attempting to lateral the football back to Anthony Richardson, a play of which Colts coach Shane Steichen said “looked great all week” in practice.

The Broncos didn’t do the things they felt they needed to do in order to win … and they won anyway.

“At halftime, I said to them that every key indicator and key to victory we outlined at the start of the week that we are doing the opposite relative to what we thought would be important,” Payton said.

So, how rare was the Broncos’ win?

Consider these three numbers:

48

Consecutive games lost by teams that had fewer than 200 yards and threw at least three interceptions heading into Sunday.

The Broncos became the first team to win such a game since Dec. 3, 2006, when the Chicago Bears turned back the Minnesota Vikings 23-13 despite mustering just 107 yards, with Rex Grossman flinging three interceptions.

Chicago won that game thanks to five takeaways of its own — just as Denver had Sunday — along with defensive and special-teams touchdowns. The Broncos got the first half of that with Nik Bonitto’s return of a lateral to put them up two scores, and a 60-yard Marvin Mims Jr. punt return set up another score.

59

Years it had been since the Broncos won a game in which they gained fewer than 200 yards and had at least three interceptions prior to Sunday’s win.

Denver had lost 10 games in a row with that stat line since a 31-21 win over the Houston Oilers on Nov. 14, 1965. Win or lose, the Broncos hadn’t posted a game with those two numbers since Oct. 12, 1992, when the Broncos fell 34-3 at Washington on a night when John Elway and Tommy Maddox threw a combined three interceptions — two for Elway, one for Maddox — and the Broncos mustered just 128 total yards.

9-233

Record of teams that had fewer than 200 yards and 3 or more interceptions thrown since 1978, when the NFL liberalized rules to favor offensive passing games.

When adding in the element of allowing at least 140 rushing yards, the Broncos are just the third team to win with that collection of data points since 1978 — against 144 losses.

In other words, the Broncos won a game that you can expect to win 2.04 percent of the time.

You’ll take the victory. But a sustainable path it is not.

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