During an ugly drought in which Denver's wheezing offence went 25 drives without crossing the goal line, the unbeaten Broncos' only touchdowns came via pick-6s from Pro Bowl cornerbacks Aqib Talib and Chris Harris Jr.
You'd have thought the offence had sprung the blocks the way the players reacted on the sideline.
"We're trying to win ballgames," tackle Tyler Polumbus said. "It doesn't matter where we get the points."
Never in his NFL career has Peyton Manning been so reliant on his defence or his kicker to bail him out.
At 39 and learning a new system on the fly without his old reliable safety valves in Wes Welker, Julius Thomas and Jacob Tamme, Manning has too often put the ball in the wrong hands.
He leads the league with 10 interceptions, as many as he threw in all of 2013, when he opened the season with seven touchdown tosses against Baltimore — as many as he's thrown through six weeks this season.
Manning used to be the one whose play led to all the laughter in the locker room. He averaged 44 touchdown throws in his first three seasons in Denver, including a record 55 two years ago.
More often than not, the Broncos needed every one of his precise TD passes because their defence was deficient, riddled by injuries or just too conservative.
Now under Wade Phillips, who's turned loose waves of pass rushers in an aggressive 3-4 scheme, the Broncos have piled up 26 sacks by 11 different players to go with 18 takeaways.
Led by Von Miller, who has an NFL-high 31 quarterback hurries, the Broncos have made game-saving plays in crunch time in all six wins. Subtracting the 34 points opponents have scored off turnovers, including three pick-6s, Denver's defence is allowing just 11 points a game.
"If we don't produce those numbers, don't play how we've been playing, who knows? We could easily be 0-6," safety David Bruton Jr. said. "We're 6-0 and have a long season to go and a lot more work to do."
Especially the offence, where the line has been beset by injuries, the tight ends are non-factors, the running backs keep getting stuffed, the receivers keep dropping passes and Manning is looking his age.
Brandon McManus has bailed them out by making 16 of 17 field goals.
Denver's defence faces a gauntlet of challengers in November in Aaron Rodgers, Andrew Luck, Alex Smith, Jay Cutler and Tom Brady, so a more efficient offence will take some pressure off them to come up big all the time.
Manning & Co. will have to do better than the 1.5 TDs they're averaging per game. Even Tim Tebow's scoring-challenged teams averaged two TDs a game, which got him a one-way ticket to New York.
No other NFL team has as big a disparity as the Broncos do in terms of their second-ranked defence and 29th-ranked offence.
For most of his first three seasons in Denver, it was Manning and his receivers who were having all the fun and the Broncos defenders were mostly along for the record-breaking ride.
Now it's the other way around.
There's no discordance in the locker room, though.
"We have faith in Peyton," Harris said. "We know it's not just him. We know we need to get the run game going, get everybody going. We know that once they start clicking, it's going to be over."
The offence has lots of work to do, and things started to improve last week at Cleveland when the Broncos topped 150 yards rushing, albeit against the league's worst run defence.
What they need to do is get healthy up front, and their five-day furlough should help.
When they were running the ball well last weekend, they got the look they wanted on defence and Manning hit Emmanuel Sanders in stride for a 75-yard touchdown that ended their 25-drive streak without reaching the end zone.
Should the Broncos' offensive struggles continue, this defence is confident it can carry the load all season, much like the 2000 Ravens or 1985 Bears.
The defence even has depth. Last week, practice squad graduate Shaquil Barrett filled in for DeMarcus Ware (back) and was selected as the team's defensive player of the game with nine tackles, two QB hits, a pass breakup and a sack-strip-recovery in addition to his tackle for loss and shared sack in overtime that pushed the Browns out of field-goal range following Manning's third interception.
"It's fun to watch stuff like that," coach Gary Kubiak said.
Doesn't Polumbus know it.
"This is a team game," he said, "and however you win ballgames, the whole team's going to be happy."
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