Courtland Sutton’s hands had that old glitter again. But his arm? The arm was pure gold.
“Yeah, I mean, shoot, it was something that once we had started practicing it during the week, I was like, ‘All right, feel good about it,’” the veteran Broncos wide receiver said Sunday after his first 100-yard receiving game in nearly two years. “And depending on how the game goes, sometimes it gets called, sometimes it doesn’t get called.”
With 4:29 left in a 28-14 win over the hapless Carolina Panthers, Sutton got his number called. On fourth-and-2 from the visitors’ 43-yard line, Denver coach Sean Payton elected to go for it — and go for it with some practiced trickeration.
Broncos quarterback Bo Nix took the snap and pitched it quickly to Sutton, the 6-foot-4 wideout camped out to his right on the wide-receiver screen play they’d worked on leading up to the game. The Texas native dropped back a few steps and gave himself time to find fullback Michael Burton all alone up the right hashmark for a 28-yard gain.
“It was cool to be able to have the opportunity,” Sutton said. “But I mean, outside of me, I’m more happy that I was able to throw it to (Burton) and get him involved in the game. He does a lot of dirty work on offense for us and on special teams. So to be able to toss the pass to him and (have) him be involved in the offensive performance that we had, it was pretty cool.”
More cool: Sunday was Sutton’s first 100-yard receiving game since Week 2 of the 2022 season, a day in which he snatched seven passes from Russell Wilson for 122 yards.
“It was nice, it was nice,” said Sutton, who notched eight grabs for 100 yards through the air. “I mean, at the end of the day, we got the win and I’m just happy that we were able to get the ‘W.’”
The Texas native had logged 93 of those yards by halftime, and it took a while for Sutton to get his century mark. Even that moment came with a quirky aside. With 2:21 left in the tilt and the Broncos up 28-7 at the Carolina 9, the veteran wideout collected an 8-yard toss from Nix and tried pulling a pile of Panthers over the goal line. At the 1-yard line, the pile won, as Carolina linebacker Trevin Wallace punched the ball out of Sutton’s grasp and Panthers defensive tackle Shy Tuttle recovered at the 2.
Carolina finished the game by marching 98 yards the other way for a silver-lining touchdown to make it 28-14. But the 14-point swing, and Sutton’s role in it, didn’t amuse Broncos coach Sean Payton in the slightest.
“It just can’t be, ‘My bad,’ anymore,” the Broncos coach told KOA radio, “or else we’ll find some other receivers.”
On a lighter note, Sutton’s only the fourth Bronco to ever post a stat line of 100 or more yards receiving and 25 or more yards passing in the same game. And Sutton’s now the only player in orange and blue to ever do it twice — the Texan completed a 38-yard pass while racking up five receptions for 122 yards in a 27-23 loss at Minnesota on Nov. 17, 2019.
Sutton’s now 3-for-3 passing over his NFL career for 82 yards and three first downs.
“I’ll take it,” the receiver said with a grin. “Club of one. Club of one.”
Elite company
| Player | Year | Opponent | Passing yards | Receiving yards |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Al Carmichael | 1960 | Houston | 26 | 117 |
| Rod Smith | 2003 | Kansas City | 72 | 130 |
| Emmanuel Sanders | 2018 | Arizona | 28 | 102 |
| Courtland Sutton | 2019 | Minnesota | 38 | 122 |
| Courtland Sutton | 2024 | Carolina | 28 | 100 |
Source: Pro-Football-Reference.com.
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