Comeback

• Bill BarnwellSep 15, 2025, 08:45 AM ET

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  Bill Barnwell is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com. He analyzes football on and off the field like no one else on the planet, writing about in-season X’s and O’s, offseason transactions and so much more.

  He is the host of the Bill Barnwell Show podcast, with episodes released weekly. Barnwell joined ESPN in 2011 as a staff writer at Grantland.

You certainly can’t say it was a boring Sunday. While there were a few blowout victories here and there, we saw seven of the 12 games Sunday decided by seven points or fewer. Outside of the 49ers, who firmly shut the door on the Saints to seal up their second consecutive close victory on the road to start the season, none of those wins felt resounding.

Three teams pulled off comebacks by scoring in the final two minutes of regulation or overtime. The Cowboys topped the Giants, the Bengals beat the Jaguars and the Colts pulled out a last-second victory over the Broncos.

I’m going to break down those three games. What happened? How did those teams fuel their comebacks? Are these types of performances sustainable? And should we feel concerned about the three losers of those games?

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Let’s begin in Dallas, where the Cowboys needed help from one of the superstars it still has to overcome the absence of the one it traded away. (And if you want to read more about the Giants’ side of things, come back Thursday, when I’ll have my annual look at the league’s 0-2 teams and how they’re essentially all about to suit up for playoff games in Week 3. It’ll be the Chiefs’ first appearance in that column, too.)

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Demoted to the 1 p.m. ET window after seemingly decades of being a nationally televised game between two of the league’s most storied franchises, the Cowboys and Giants responded with their own version of last week’s Ravens-Bills game. After a Dak Prescott interception started the second half and the Giants responded by stalling out in the red zone and turning the ball over on downs, these two teams scored on nine of the remaining 10 possessions in regulation. The lead changed hands six times in the process before the Cowboys finally took advantage of an inexplicable Russell Wilson interception in overtime to set up Brandon Aubrey for a 46-yard field goal to win the game.

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It was Aubrey’s 64-yard field goal at the end of regulation that sent the game to overtime — a once-in-a-lifetime boot for most professionals that seems almost ho-hum for the league’s biggest leg. Cowboys kickers have a habit of bailing out coaches who mismanage end-game scenarios the moment their team crosses that fake “field goal range” line, and Brian Schottenheimer appears to be no exception.

After a Prescott pass to Jake Ferguson got the ball to midfield with nine seconds left, the Cowboys decided against using their two remaining timeouts and their $60-million-per-year quarterback to make Aubrey’s kick easier. Instead, they handed the ball off to Javonte Williams for a 3-yard gain. Aubrey came through, but that sort of late-game management won’t play well when the Cowboys try to beat stiffer competition.

The Giants weren’t supposed to give the Cowboys much trouble after an ugly loss to the Commanders in Week 1. But in what was seen as potentially his final start as a pro QB if he played poorly, Wilson put together his best start since leaving Seattle. Through the end of regulation, his 93.1 Total QBR was the second-best mark of the day and would have been the best mark he posted in a game since the 2021 season. After hitting Malik Nabers with a 48-yard touchdown pass to take the lead back for the Giants with 25 seconds to go, Wilson was 27-of-36 for 433 yards, three touchdown passes and no picks. He took just two sacks on 39 dropbacks and added a first down on a 15-yard scramble.

Of course, I’m leaving overtime out of that equation, and that appeared to be the moment when the carriage turned into a pumpkin. The Giants couldn’t score on the second drive of the extra session, when a field goal would have won them the game. When Wilson got the ball back again, he threw an incomprehensible interception under pressure.

Generously, I’d like to think that he was trying to throw the ball out of bounds in Nabers’ direction (or somewhere close enough to make it a 50-50 ball) and just missed by about 5 yards. However, there was nothing in the pass concept suggesting that Wilson was throwing somewhere Nabers was supposed to be on that play. The interception didn’t end the game — the Cowboys only took over on their own 30-yard line — but it changed the Giants’ best-case scenario from a win to a tie.

Before then, though, Wilson was having a blast picking the Cowboys apart deep. On throws traveling 20 or more yards in the air during regulation, Wilson went 7-of-10 for 264 yards and three scores. The last time somebody completed seven or more deep passes in a game was when Nick Mullens did it for the Vikings against the Lions on Christmas Eve in 2023. And frankly, while these aren’t easy throws, the only one of these completions that was really spectacular was the late TD pass to Nabers to take the lead. I say that less to disparage what Wilson did and more to just emphasize how vacant and open for business the Cowboys’ defense was downfield.

Wilson picked them apart with big throws against all kinds of coverages. The Giants hit two long completions against Tampa 2, where linebackers Kenneth Murray Jr. and Jack Sanborn couldn’t get near seam routes from Wan’Dale Robinson. Nabers torched Trevon Diggs off the line for a big gain on a fade. Wilson hit a couple more go balls against three-deep looks, where Diggs and fellow starting cornerback Kaiir Elam just couldn’t get close enough to squeeze routes. And then there were a pair of long completions against quarters coverage, where the two corners were simply going to have to run with the Giants’ wide receivers and couldn’t do so.

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Russell Wilson’s heave finds Malik Nabers for late go-ahead TD

Russell Wilson airs out a 48-yard touchdown pass to Malik Nabers to give the Giants a late lead in the fourth quarter.

Personnel-wise, perhaps none of this should be surprising. Elam wasn’t able to get on the field consistently for much of his tenure with the Bills, and he wasn’t convincing when Buffalo did get him in the lineup. Murray, another former first-rounder and fellow addition for the Cowboys this offseason, has allowed a career passer rating north of 107 in coverage. And Sanborn is in Dallas because he played under new defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus in Chicago and came cheap, with the former undrafted free agent making $1.5 million in 2025.

Diggs, meanwhile, is the microcosm of why things are so frustrating for the Cowboys on defense and unlikely to get better. He has struggled to get back to his former form after tearing his ACL early in the 2023 season, but it’s going to be even more difficult in 2025 because of what the Cowboys have done to their roster. Last season, even with Micah Parsons sidelined for four games (ankle), the Cowboys were sixth in pressure rate and second in sack rate. In fact, Dallas led the league in both categories across Parsons’ four years with the organization before his recent trade to Green Bay.

Without Parsons, the Cowboys are still generating pressures, but the sacks haven’t come. They rank sixth in pressure rate but just 19th in sack rate, and that has come against two of the most sack-friendly quarterbacks in football in Wilson and Jalen Hurts. Against pressure, Wilson was 6-of-10 for 99 yards and a touchdown throw before the overtime interception.

When Diggs and currently injured cornerback DaRon Bland were at their best during the Dan Quinn days in Dallas, the presence and even the threat of Parsons influenced what opposing coordinators were comfortable calling. It was easier for two of the league’s most aggressive corners to sit on routes, trusting that Parsons would get home before any receiver could get past them. And while that still led to some big plays and long completions, Diggs and Bland were able to more than make up for the missteps with league-leading interception totals.

Now, without that reliable pass rush, the cornerbacks can’t sit on routes at the sticks and trust that the ball is going to come out quick. They have to be prepared to consistently deal with scramble drills and plays out of structure. You might have noticed that Jayden Daniels went 3-of-10 for 44 yards on throws 10 or more yards downfield on Thursday night against Parsons’ new team; Green Bay’s corners — the weakest spot on its roster — suddenly have much easier lives as a product of their new star teammate.

Even while allowing the explosives downfield, the Cowboys were able to survive by relying on New York’s penchant for self-immolation in the red zone. In a matchup of last season’s worst red zone offense against its worst red zone defense, the Cowboys swung the game in their favor by limiting the Giants to one touchdown, three field goals and a turnover on downs across five trips inside the 20-yard line.

One of those was on a meltdown from fill-in left tackle James Hudson III, who was benched and limited to special teams duties after he committed two unnecessary roughness penalties and two false starts in a four-play sequence. One of the penalties cost the Giants a first-and-goal opportunity at the 2-yard line after a deep Robinson catch. It would have been one of the more unique moments of Sunday’s action if Xavien Howard hadn’t strung together four penalties in six plays for the Colts later in the afternoon.

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Donovan Wilson gives Cowboys ball back with OT INT

Donovan Wilson leaps to pick off Russell Wilson and give the Cowboys the ball back in overtime.

There isn’t just one problem for the Giants in the red zone. One drive stalled because of the Hudson penalties. Another ended on downs when Cam Skattebo dropped a pass into the flat that would have produced a first down. Kenny Clark had back-to-back pressures to blow up another sequence and force the Giants into a field goal. In general, the Giants can’t run the ball consistently, and the only truly dynamic playmaker they have in tight quarters is Nabers.

Through two weeks, by EPA per play, the Giants are the fourth-best offense in the NFL outside the red zone but the worst by a considerable margin inside the 20-yard line. I would say that has to regress toward the mean, but I was also saying that before the season — and well, it hasn’t yet.

The Cowboys narrowly avoided their nightmare scenario of starting 0-2 in the division. Amid the widespread frustration surrounding Parsons’ departure, there are a few reasons to be optimistic. The run game has been surprisingly effective early this season, with Williams turning 18 carries into 97 yards against the Giants, including a 30-yard touchdown. As Jerry Jones would happily tell you, Dallas’ run defense is better than it has been in years past, too. And with some better hands from CeeDee Lamb against the Eagles, they might be 2-0 right now.

Of course, without a spectacular kick from Aubrey, the Cowboys might also be 0-2.

Some back-and-forth battles are more spectacular than others. That fateful Bills-Chiefs game in the 2021 postseason was a prize fight with two great teams trading haymakers and somehow surviving to land another shot. The Broncos-Colts game in Indianapolis was something closer to two teams opening the door for each other and refusing to go through. The last one to make a critical mistake was going to lose.

That mistake came from the Broncos, who appeared to be escaping with a two-point win after a Spencer Shrader field goal miss from 60 yards, only for a long conference among officials to end with defender Dondrea Tillman getting flagged 15 yards for leverage. He attempted to dive over the center and instead hit him with an Ultimate Warrior-esque big splash. Teammate Eyioma Uwazurike clearly pushed down on long-snapper Luke Rhodes to help create more space for Tillman’s leap. It’s one of the more obscure rules in the NFL to decide a game in recent memory, but it is a clear and obvious foul. Shrader hit a 45-yarder with his ensuing kick to push the Colts to 2-0 and drop the Broncos to 1-1.

From the Broncos’ side, this felt like the same story for the second consecutive week, just told with a completely different plot and a new ending. Last week, an abysmal performance from Bo Nix kept the Titans in the game. But despite turning the ball over four times, the Broncos were able to ride a dominant defensive display against a hapless Titans offensive line to hold onto a narrow lead before sealing things up with their running game in the fourth quarter.

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This week, Nix was much better for most of the contest, going 22-of-30 for 206 yards, three touchdown passes and an interception. The jittery feet, inconsistent ball placement and ill-advised decision-making that popped up throughout Nix’s Week 1 performance weren’t on display against the Colts, especially during an excellent first half. He made a beautiful throw on a scramble drill to hit Troy Franklin for 42 yards in the second quarter, wasn’t sacked and turned just under 37% of his dropbacks into first downs, which is right above league average. His 72.6 Total QBR was up more than 45 points from where it fell in Week 1, when Nix finished 29th of 32 quarterbacks.

But after turning the ball over three times against the Titans, Nix threw a critical interception in the fourth quarter. With the Broncos up five points and in position to either kick a field goal or potentially go up two scores with a touchdown, Nix was put into a dropback passing situation on third-and-3 and attempted to throw the ball with defensive lineman Grover Stewart in his face. The tackle deflected the pass, and while Nix had an open Courtland Sutton on a crosser, the throw wobbled and sailed to safety Cam Bynum, who picked up his second INT in two games with Indianapolis.

For the second week in a row, there also were special teams blunders. After a Colts field goal got them to within one score, the Broncos drove back into field goal range, only for Wil Lutz to miss a 42-yarder with 3:20 left that would have restored Denver’s five-point lead. On a day in which Shrader was 5-for-5 on field goal tries, the miss by Lutz meant the Broncos lost out on six points on trips near or into the red zone.

And there were also penalty issues. After J.K. Dobbins had a 23-yard run to put the Broncos briefly into the red zone, he was flagged and penalized five yards for spiking the football. On the next play, the Broncos ran Dobbins for no gain, and tight end Adam Trautman was flagged for a face mask penalty, pushing the Broncos into a first-and-25 situation. A screen on third-and-24 got them back into field goal range, but the penalties brought the drive to a halt and kept them from scoring a touchdown that probably would have sealed the game.

Last week, the Broncos had a significant margin of error for mistakes on offense and special teams because their defense was able to bully the opposing offense. But this week, the Broncos’ defense wasn’t able to carry Sean Payton’s team to a victory. It allowed the Colts to average more than 7 yards per play and make six trips into the red zone. And Indy became only the second team in NFL history (after the 2024 Commanders) to go two consecutive games without a punt, fumble or interception.

The Broncos weren’t able to slow down the Colts’ run game in particular, with Jonathan Taylor gashing Denver for 165 yards on 25 carries. Though the Colts lost Ryan Kelly and Will Fries to the Vikings in free agency and swapped out Anthony Richardson Sr. (who played a meaningful role in the quarterback run game) for Daniel Jones (who has mostly been limited to sneaks and scrambles), they’ve been extremely impressive on the ground to start the season.

They were able to take advantage of a tactic that’s becoming widespread around the NFL. Defenses have been stemming (or making slight adjustments to their alignment or front just before the snap) for years. But after seeing it come more into vogue with the best college defenses in recent seasons, we’re seeing more NFL defenses use it to create confusion for blocking schemes just before the snap.

On Sunday, the Colts hit three first downs in the second half on run plays in which the Broncos stemmed just before the snap, trying to change the blocking calculus for the offensive line or free up their linebackers to attack the football. Those runs all hit the places the Broncos were making late adjustments. There’s nothing wrong with stemming or making late adjustments on the front as a tool, but just as it creates uncertainty for the offense, it can also make things hairy for the defense on the fly. Take the 68-yard run by Taylor in the fourth quarter on the drive after the Nix interception.

THERE GOES JONATHAN TAYLOR. 69 YARDS!

DENvsIND on CBS/Paramount+https://t.co/HkKw7uXVnt pic.twitter.com/PJaCD6ZM0x

— NFL (@NFL) September 14, 2025

It’s tough to see on replay, but just before the play begins, edge defender Jonathon Cooper sneaks one gap to the interior and tries to create more difficult blocking angles for the run blitz that’s coming from cornerback Ja’Quan McMillian. The Colts are running a wham concept, where the tight end comes across the play after the snap and attempts to take on an unblocked defensive lineman; in this case, Tyler Warren has to get on his horse to try to influence nose tackle D.J. Jones. Jones nearly makes the tackle for a loss, but Warren does just enough to get him out of Taylor’s way, while McMillian is blocked out of the play by Michael Pittman Jr.

Now, the Broncos have to improvise. Alex Singleton ends up in the gap where Cooper was before he stemmed, but Taylor does a great job of quickly regaining his balance and juking Singleton before running away from him. Taylor actually has two potential lanes to hit for huge gains after beating Singleton; he chooses to go outside, simply accelerating away from safety Brandon Jones and heading up the sideline.

The Broncos thrive in coverage, meanwhile, by playing a ton of man. With cornerback Pat Surtain II capable of taking on anybody one-on-one, the Broncos played man coverage on 56.3% of opposing dropbacks last season, the second-highest rate in the NFL. They led the league in EPA per dropback (minus-0.07) on those man coverage snaps and were comfortably the best defense in man by the same metric against the Titans in Week 1.

Yet on Sunday, Jones went 13-of-22 against man coverage for 221 yards. The Broncos pressured him on more than 54% of his man-coverage dropbacks but turned only one of those 12 pressures into a sack. Jones and his offense deserve credit for what they accomplished in those moments, but Colts coach Shane Steichen also had an answer for all the man coverage ready to go.

Everyone’s favorite man-beating play in the NFL is mesh, the concept that almost always includes two crossers passing in opposite directions over the middle of the field, an over route above those crossers and a wheel or “rail” route out of the backfield. Steichen’s Colts run mesh more than most teams, and while it wasn’t always a success, they went back to mesh over and over again in key situations Sunday, when they felt as if the Broncos were likely to play man.

I counted at least four instances of mesh in important spots. Two were disappointing; Pittman dropped one crosser in the red zone, and though Warren got open on an underneath drag route on fourth-and-2 with 13 minutes to go, Jones was pressured and sailed his throw. (He also had Taylor open on a wheel route against Tillman for what could have been a touchdown.)

But it worked in two other situations. Taylor caught a touchdown pass in the red zone when the Broncos simply didn’t cover the wheel route, giving Jones one of the easiest throws he’ll ever make for a score. And then on a critical third-and-6 with 1:50 to go, the Colts not only dialed up mesh again but also threw at Surtain, hitting Alec Pierce on the underneath drag route for a huge first down and forcing the Broncos to use their final timeout.

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Colts stun Broncos after penalty gives Indy a second chance

Spencer Shrader misses his initial kick, but the Broncos are called for a personal foul, giving the Colts a second chance which is converted for a game-winning field goal.

From there, Steichen curiously chose to take the air out of the football. Indy ran twice for 2 yards, drew the clock down to 17 seconds, took a timeout and then ran the ball a third time with Taylor, who lost two yards on a failed counter run. The Colts obviously were hoping to gain more than 1 yard on those three plays, but I was surprised to see Steichen almost entirely take the ball out of Jones’ hands. Settling for what ended up being a 60-yard field goal was a bad process, even if it ended up working out well for them in the end.

It seems foolish to start the discussion about this game without touching on the biggest storyline. It’s clear that Bengals star quarterback Joe Burrow is going to miss time after suffering a serious toe injury during Sunday’s win over the Jaguars, with further testing to determine whether he will be week-to-week as he heals or sidelined for several months if the injury requires surgery. (Update: Sources told ESPN’s Adam Schefter that Burrow will need surgery.) Neither option would be good, but it’s easier to imagine the Bengals hanging on and playing vaguely .500 ball with Jake Browning at quarterback for one month than it would be for three.

When we last saw Browning starting in 2023, he went 4-3 and had a 60.9 Total QBR, which was good for ninth in the NFL from Week 10 onward. The Bengals helped Browning out by posting the league’s second-best average YAC per reception over that span, but he also had the league’s third-best off-target rate and third-best precise pass rate, the latter measuring how reliably each QB puts the ball on his receivers in stride with throws near the torso. Browning was throwing some of the shortest passes in the league, but he’s an accurate passer.

He’s also prone to more negative plays than Burrow, as Browning ran worse-than-average sack and interception rates during his time under center. While he was sacked only once on Sunday, the backup did throw three interceptions after entering the lineup. Two were wild throws under pressure, including one where the Bengals were not able to pass off a simple twist up front. The third was an attempt to fit a dig into a space that simply was not there. Those sort of throws are going to happen when you haven’t played live football in more than a year.

If all you knew about this game was that Burrow went out in the second quarter, Browning threw three interceptions and the Jaguars scored 27 points, you probably would have assumed that this was going to be a fourth straight losing home opener for the Bengals. And frankly, this should have been a Jags win; when Devin Lloyd intercepted Browning’s pass and handed the ball to Trevor Lawrence’s offense on the Cincinnati 12-yard line with 5:22 to go, the Jaguars were in the driver’s seat. Up three, they needed one touchdown to make it a two-score game, which could have put things out of reach.

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Instead, Jacksonville melted down. It had some solid success running the football for the second consecutive week, but a misdirection attempt with Travis Etienne Jr. on first down lost four yards. A second-down pass went off Dyami Brown’s fingertips (his second drop of the game). After a third-down run got the Jags to fourth-and-5, Liam Coen called for the Jags to run mesh. (Yes, everybody runs it — and often in key situations.) The Bengals responded by playing zone, which isn’t the ideal look for mesh, but Brian Thomas got open right over the ball, only to drop Lawrence’s pass and turn the ball over on downs.

Let’s talk about the play itself before we get to the decision. Thomas is being hounded on social media after this game for wanting to avoid hits, with the most damning evidence being Lawrence’s second interception of this game, where Thomas appeared to stick one arm out halfheartedly with a collision coming. It’s not a great look, though I’m not sure why Thomas would suddenly exhibit some reticence about contact after breaking plenty of tackles a year ago and racking up 146 yards on tight-window catches, per NFL Next Gen Stats.

I’m also not sure the fourth-down incompletion has anything to do with the other play. While the Jags are running these crossing routes, Thomas’ shallow route has only about two yards of depth, meaning he needed to pick up three yards after the catch to at least move the chains. Because he’s facing zone, he is supposed to throttle down and present a stationary target for Lawrence. (Against man, he would continue running his route to run away from coverage.) As the ball arrives, Thomas begins to turn upfield to look and see where he needs to run for the first down, not whether a hit is coming. It seems more likely that he took his eye off the ball a fraction of a second too early than anything else (although only the second-year wideout can say for sure).

Should the Jags have kicked a field goal to go up six? Overwhelmingly, we can say the answer to this question is no, and it shouldn’t even be considered anything revolutionary or aggressive at this point. Going for it allows you to score a game-sealing touchdown or hold onto the football with a first down or penalty. Even if you fail, you’re handing the ball over deep in opposing territory, with that opponent often anchored to a game-tying field goal down three as opposed to striking for a game-winning touchdown. Down six, that team would have no choice but to play four-down football and go for the jugular.

ESPN’s model had the decision to go for it as a 5.9% win probability swing relative to trying a field goal. The Bengals ultimately didn’t settle for three, but their drive also required two fourth-down conversions, including a 25-yard pass interference penalty on Travis Hunter that extended the game and served as Cincinnati’s biggest play. And if you want to treat what we saw as gospel, of course, the Bengals proved that Jacksonville kicking a field goal to go up six wouldn’t have made a difference, given that they marched downfield for a touchdown on a long field anyway.

Hunter is off to a slow start as a pro. Through two games, he has nine catches for 55 yards on 14 targets as a receiver. An early injury to Jarrian Jones forced Hunter to play 60% of the defensive snaps on Sunday, and while he forced Andrei Iosivas out of bounds to prevent a catch, Hunter allowed a first down via illegal contact before the 25-yard pass interference call that extended the game. With Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins on the other side, it seems telling that the Bengals were willing to put their game on the line with a fade to Iosivas, their third-best wideout, isolated against Hunter. It’s obviously too early to draw meaningful conclusions, but so far, Hunter hasn’t been a difference-maker on either side of the ball.

Realistically, the Jags should have put this game away before it came down to a final drive. In the second quarter, Lawrence threw a brutal interception in the red zone under pressure from Trey Hendrickson and then nearly threw another, only for that one to be overturned. That second drive ended when Lawrence scrambled 3 yards past the line of scrimmage, threw a pass to Brenton Strange and argued for pass interference on what was an illegal forward pass. Brown dropped what should have been an easy touchdown catch on a crossing route in the fourth quarter, too. Both those drives ended in field goals when they should have been touchdowns.

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Jake Browning storms over for go-ahead Bengals TD

Jake Browning leaps into the end zone to give the Bengals the lead late in the fourth quarter vs. the Jaguars.

Of course, this stuff happens to the Jaguars all the time. The malaise that eventually ended the Doug Pederson era and brought Coen into town started with the help of Browning, who took on an 8-3 Jaguars team in his second start filling in for Burrow. The Jags were competing for the top seed in the AFC that day, but after Lawrence was injured late and the Jags lost in overtime, it started a brutal losing streak. They lost 18 of Pederson’s final 23 games in charge. They went from ascending to rapidly descending overnight.

And with that in mind, you can understand why there’s a fatalistic feeling about what’s going on with the Jags, even though I’m not sure it’s entirely supported by the evidence. Thomas stopping on a route is proof that he doesn’t want to get hit. Lawrence visibly waiving off a Coen criticism in the fourth quarter is a sign that he’s not impressed with his new coach. Blowing the late lead with some dismal work in the red zone is a sign that these are the same old Jaguars.

Maybe they are. I’m just not sure I’m comfortable drawing that conclusion after two games, especially given that they were a drop or a pass interference penalty away from starting 2-0. That Coen has finally gotten the run game going and that the defense has nearly as many interceptions in two games (five) as it did all of last season (six) are more meaningful positives to me.

And as for the Bengals, well, luck is in the eye of the beholder. It’s obviously not lucky to lose your MVP candidate at quarterback for a significant stretch of time in September. And yet, does this feel like a team that deserves to be 2-0? The offense melted down against the Browns, who lost after their kicker missed an extra point and a chip-shot field goal in the second half. The Bengals turned the ball over three times and needed some very fortuitous drops to win Sunday. I’m not sure they can keep playing this way and expect to keep racking up victories.

And unfortunately, with a two-game road trip against the Vikings and Broncos to come, they’re about to face much stiffer defensive competition without their best player.

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