Courtland Sutton & Jarrett Stidham carve up the Falcons in the Denver Broncos’ first preseason game

**Henry Chisholm** (0:00)
This is the DNVR Broncos Podcast from the Toyota Lounge. The Broncos are 1 and
Does it feel good?

**Bennie Fowler** (0:08)
I think it feels really good. I think, look, football's back. I sound like Sean. Doesn't Sean always start his press conference and they ask him a question and he always says, look. But football being back, I think is incredible. The Broncos being back is incredible. Now you're back to pursue that chance of getting another Super Bowl for this organization and the Broncos start the pre-season off great, and they looked really good and look, yes, it is pre-season. I just tweeted that you're not going to overreact because it is still the pre-season. It is still very vanilla offenses and defenses, but this is a right step forward.
It's the right step in the right direction for the Broncos. You didn't want to see them get blown out. You wouldn't want them to be Atlanta right now, so you'll take it.

**Henry Chisholm** (0:58)
Yeah, absolutely.
It's one of those things where we always say pre-season doesn't matter, and then you get here and see what we saw in the first 20 minutes of that game. How could you not leave that feeling good about where the Broncos are? It's a nice reminder that this is just a really good football team. When the Falcons are throwing a bunch of starters out there, some backups too, the Broncos can just manhandle them.

**Bennie Fowler** (1:21)
Hundred percent. Pre-season doesn't matter in terms of like a lot of these things and game plans don't translate to what will be out there in week one. But what it does translate to is the depth of the football team, the rookies showcasing their ability, you know, things like that matter. They have to get reps. They have to go out there. They have to perform. How are you going to see how people perform in the bright lights? You know, you have second year players like a Jahdae Barron coming back. You want to see him. We talked about that in the pregame. You want to see him make some plays and some strides and to develop and you got a chance to see that today. So preseason does matter, especially for guys like myself. When I was playing preseason matter to me, I had to play in all the preseason games because I was an undrafted player and had to show how I could make the team. And some of these guys are out here fighting for their lives in terms of their spots and in ways to make plays and make this roster.

**Henry Chisholm** (2:13)
Yeah, it was.
It means a lot for a lot of people. There are a lot of those guys who get chances. And we'll talk about some of the guys who, you know, you'll deal with that fumble just a killer like and there's there's a list of those mistakes that get made over the course of a game. And every time you're thinking, you know, the long snapper who is the reason why they're not able to get the field goal off, you miss out on three points there. And that's the rookie long snapper who's brought in for a chance to compete for the job to push the veteran and those those low points, they hit pretty hard for those guys. I know that that's that's a play that he will remember for the rest of his life.

**Bennie Fowler** (2:54)
Yeah, you know, for sure. It's your opportunity to play on Sundays and continue to play and get paid handsomely for it. I mean, that is the one that that was the one down spot today was special teams.

**Henry Chisholm** (3:05)
Yeah, it was, it was, let's just start big picture. What's the one thing that you think you learned today?

**Bennie Fowler** (3:15)
That Sean Payton was not lying when he was talking about Jonah Coleman not looking like a rookie. Yeah. Like, you know, you hear coaches say that you go out there, you see it in practice, but they're not taking each other to the ground. And you don't really know how he's going to perform and what it's going to look like because it's not live during practice.
And just the way that he was running the ball, the physicality that he ran it with, the decisive cuts that he had when he was running the ball, and then also the broken tackles. I feel like that's not something that the Broncos have had from a young player. JK. Dobbins had that throughout the year last year, but a younger player, it was really good to see that. That would be my biggest takeaway just in terms of the way that he played.