Broncos won a game so ugly it set a record no one wanted to see
The Denver Broncos’ Thursday night win over the Las Vegas Raiders was a defensive slugfest that left fans, and the record books, stunned.
If you skipped Thursday night’s matchup between the Denver Broncos and Las Vegas Raiders, congratulations. You saved yourself three hours of offensive misery.
Broncos-Raiders was perhaps the most Thursday Night Footballest Thursday Night Football game of all-time pic.twitter.com/VgyH801amP
— NFL Memes (@NFL_Memes) November 7, 2025
Denver escaped with a 10-7 win that somehow kept them atop the AFC West, but it was more of a game of survival than anything else.
NFL’s ugliest stat line in nearly 50 years
Neither the Broncos nor the Raiders topped 150 passing yards, the two combined for 17 total points, and the night ended with a stat line so bizarre it hadn’t been seen in nearly half a century: Both teams had more penalties than first downs.
According to Next Gen Stats, the last time that happened was in 1976, when two expansion teams, the Seahawks and Buccaneers, combined for a similar mess of flags and futility.
On Thursday, the Broncos were penalized 11 times while recording only 10 first downs. Oddly enough, the Raiders ended up with the exact same numbers. That’s the kind of symmetry no team wants.
Despite being 8-2, Denver’s offense continues to struggle. Quarterback Bo Nix threw for just 150 yards, while the team managed only 220 total yards. NFL teams were previously 0-24 in games where they scored 10 points or fewer with under 220 yards of offense, until Denver somehow broke that trend.
“It starts with me,” Nix said after the game. “Between penalties and sluggish football, we’re just not playing very good. … We’ve got to find some juice.”
While the offense has been dragging, the defense has been carrying the team. The Broncos’ pass rush sacked Geno Smith six times, holding the Raiders to a mere 188 yards of offense.
Running back J.K. Dobbins spoke bluntly about the imbalance:
“Yeah, cool, we’re 8-2... [but] the defense is winning us the games, and we’re not helping them,” he said. “We can’t keep doing this to them.”
Broncos RB J.K. Dobbins: "The defense is winning us the games, and we're not helping them. We're not doing them any justice. We're not. I feel bad the way we play on offense and the way they play on defense because they're doing so great and then we're doing so bad. And they're… pic.twitter.com/W3OZNTktLJ
— Andrew Mason (@MaseDenver) November 7, 2025
The Broncos have found ways to win over and over again this season, but their margin for error is shrinking fast, especially with Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs coming to town next week. At some point, “winning ugly” stops being sustainable. (Then again, I wrote that same thing before this game, and look-a what happened.)
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