Pat Surtain II saw the ball in the air and his eyes got big.
“No way this is happening,” he thought to himself as he left Jakobi Meyers’ hip pocket and made his move.
A 10th straight accurate throw from Las Vegas quarterback Gardner Minshew on Sunday afternoon at Empower Field and maybe none of the ensuing festivities come to pass.
Maybe the Raiders find themselves dancing once again in the legacy blue, 1977-replica painted end zone and in full control yet again in this rivalry.
Instead the ball sailed, Surtain pounced and the Broncos did the celebrating.
The Broncos’ best player made the biggest play of the season to date, picking off Minshew at the goal line and racing 100 yards the other way for a touchdown to kickstart an eventual 34-18 victory.
Instead of maybe trailing 17-3, Denver found itself tied midway through the second quarter thanks to the All-Pro cornerback.
“I caught the ball and I saw a full (field) of green grass,” Surtain said. “This is a touchdown.”
It wasn’t just that.
It turned the game on a dime.
It started a landslide that buried the Broncos’ embarrassing eight-game losing streak against the Raiders underneath a pile of points.
It rescued an alumni-packed, throwback celebration of a weekend in Broncos Country that looked to be teetering toward disaster.
A ninth straight loss to the Raiders? Not on this day.
The Broncos reeled off 34 straight points beginning with Surtain to turn dud to domination.
It’s their first win in this rivalry since the Raiders have called Las Vegas home, their third straight this season and the latest in a string powered by Vance Joseph’s dynamic, playmaking defense.
“Pat’s got my vote for defensive player of the year,” defensive lineman Zach Allen, himself in the process of playing the best football of his career, said after Surtain’s second career two-interception day.
“Certainly it was a huge play,” head coach Sean Payton said. “At least a 10-point play.”
Consider the setup to this day. The Broncos went all out in debuting their retro uniforms. They celebrated the 1977 Orange Crush defense. They welcomed Steve Foley and Riley Odoms into the team’s Ring of Fame and honored Randy Gradishar’s enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. They put as many era-specific details in play as they could find, from the side wall decorations to the end zone paint to the graphics on the scoreboard to the soundtrack.
They picked the right opponent, too, but for that one little problem: The Raiders had won an unfathomable eight straight in this series.
Team president Damani Leech followed play-by-play man Dave Logan’s energetic lead before the game at the Ring of Fame ceremony, throwing down the gauntlet.
“I’m glad Dave’s already made this a PG-13 event, so I’ll just go ahead and admit we’re trying to kick the Raiders’ ass today,” Leech said to a roar from the watching crowd.
Except for the first quarter-plus, Minshew and the Raiders delivered the beating.
He threw a 57-yard touchdown to rookie tight end Brock Bowers just 2 minutes, 3 seconds into the game. Then Las Vegas went 68 yards for a field goal. Then 64 more in setting up a first-and-goal from the 5-yard line midway through the second quarter.
At that moment, before Surtain’s pick-six, Minshew was 9 of 9 for 115 yards, the touchdown and a pair of bedeviling first-down runs. The Raiders overall had rushed 12 times for 87 yards.
They’d run 21 offensive plays for 202 yards.
After the pick-six: Minshew went 3 of 8 for 22 yards, was picked again by cornerback Riley Moss and was sacked twice. He went from perfect passer rating early to benched down the stretch in favor of Aidan O’Connell. Surtain picked off O’Connell, too, tipping a fourth-quarter pass to himself.
The Raiders mustered just 128 yards on their final 44 offensive snaps and 72 of those came on a late drive when the Broncos already led by 24. They had 10 first downs on the first three possessions and just three outside of the late touchdown drive the rest of the way.
“They did a good job of of picking up stuff (early),” Allen said of the Raiders. “They kept seven in protection — basically they had one more than us on those first couple of third downs — but after that it was, ‘OK, we figured it out and made the adjustments.’ That was the cool thing about today. As a whole defense, we made some really good adjustments, pass game and run game, that ended up paying off.”
The defense and special teams combined to set the offense up at midfield or better on four of the Broncos’ final six possessions which helped that group, eventually, kicked into gear, too.
Rookie quarterback Bo Nix accounted for three second-half touchdowns — scoring passes to Jaleel McLaughlin and Josh Reynolds plus a 1-yard sneak — and threw for 206 yards overall.
The 34 points constitutes Denver’s most since 2021 and just the second time in the past four seasons they’ve hit that mark or better.
More important, though: This week and this game over the past eight years more often than not has ended in letdown. It looked headed that way again Sunday on a postcard of an afternoon.
Instead, something different.
“It was a special day today, seeing a bunch of legendary guys on the field cheering us on,” said Surtain, who swapped jerseys afterward with Hall of Famer Champ Bailey.
“I knew we was poised for success.”
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