Sports

Broncos Ryp(ien) the Cardinals a New One

Too bad the first decent win of the season comes mid-December.
Brett Rypien has a good reason to smile.

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Well, that was a long time coming.

The Denver Broncos might – maybe, perhaps, hopefully, possibly, we’ll see – have started down the long road to redemption with a pretty decisive win on December 18. Decisive, that is, in the second half. Call the first half Brett Rypien just getting settled in.

Rypien was key to the win Sunday against Arizona’s faltering defense. The Cardinals, as a team, looked more like the Broncos in their first thirteen games of the season: unready, unbalanced, unable to do much. But you know what they say: Fourteenth time’s the charm.

Sunday’s Broncos looked re-energized under the leadership of backup QB Rypien, in only his third career start. While Russell Wilson had been cleared to play, the team (and fans) shrugged and said, “Eh, let’s see what the kid can do.” Whether or not this affects Wilson’s being back under center on an ongoing basis is anyone’s guess, but it seemed clear from the play against the Cardinals exactly which of the two QBs inspires clear eyes and full hearts on the offensive line.

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Of course, there’s that slight hitch in the giddy-up regarding switching out Wilson: his $165 million guaranteed contract.

And to be fair, Denver caught an injury-related break when Colt McCoy went down in the third and left the game under concussion protocol. McCoy had already thrown an interception; his replacement, Trace McSorley, threw two more. Justin Simmons caught two of the three of those, making this the third straight year in which Simmons has had five on the season. Latavius Murray had 24 rushes for 130 yards in one of the best performances from a Broncos RB all year. DeShawn Williams kept the Denver D strong with 2.5 sacks. It was a good day.

And sure, Sunday’s game felt a little less messy, but it was still too little, too late for a team that had already been eliminated from playoff contention, the sixth-straight losing season since winning Super Bowl 50. Time will tell if this is the start of something new or just a nice break in a long string of sucking pond water.

How did Broncos country take this late-season win and how the team (finally, sorta) showed up? Here are twenty tweets that tell the story:

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