The Lead
With 10 touchdown receptions and plenty of game-changing plays in some of the Broncos' biggest wins, wide receiver Courtland Sutton had a season to remember in Denver this year and compiled quite the highlight reel. Still, Sutton’s toe-touch snag against Buffalo stands in a class of its own, and in compiling a list of the regular season’s coolest plays on a recent "Good Morning Football" segment, analyst Peter Schrager made sure to include the catch in his top ten.
With Denver leading the Buffalo Bills 3-0 in the second quarter of their Week 10 "Monday Night Football" contest, Head Coach Sean Payton looked to stay aggressive on offense and called for a play-action pass on fourth-and-2 in the Bills' red zone.
The play broke down early, as Buffalo pass rusher Shaq Lawson nearly sacked quarterback Russell Wilson for a turnover on downs. Instead, Wilson escaped Lawson's grasp, then lofted a pass to the end zone that Sutton corralled while keeping both feet in bounds. After replay review, the officials reversed the play from an incompletion to a touchdown and extended the Broncos' lead in a game they ultimately won 24-22.
Schrager ranked Sutton's catch as his seventh-coolest play of the season and broke down what made the play so thrilling to watch.
"End of the first half, fourth-and-2, the courage to call this play — play action to Javonte [Williams]," Schrager said. "Shaq Lawson is in Russell Wilson's face, but watch what Russ does. [He] just spins, and then from all the way over here, Courtland Sutton comes, and look at this catch. Incredible.
"At the end of the first half, Denver on the road in Buffalo, season on the line at that point, and Russell Wilson with the perfect pass, and that is a touchdown. They originally called it incomplete, [but] they reviewed it — touchdown."
The advanced statistics back up Schrager's claim. Not only did Sutton's catch rank as the most improbable completion of the season according to NFL Next Gen Stats with a 3.2 percent chance of completion, but it also ranks as the most improbable completion in all of the seasons in which Next Gen Stats has tracked the metric.
For Sutton, the catch was nothing new. A few weeks earlier, the veteran receiver made a one-handed touchdown catch in the corner of the end zone against Kansas City, and he said after the Broncos' win against Buffalo that he'd earned the benefit of the doubt on his unbelievable catches.
"Oh, I knew I was in," Sutton said. "I knew it, but they kind of tried to play me like they did in Kansas City. It is what it is. At some point, they're going to start calling them touchdowns and then review them after that."
