ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Sean Payton wanted to attempt a fake punt. On fourth-and-11. From his own 38-yard line. In overtime of a tie game in the divisional round of last season’s NFL playoffs.
Stripped of further context, it sounds like an idea that borders on lunacy. Until you recall the path of the moon ball as it left Josh Allen’s arm, moments after the Broncos ultimately checked out of the fake-punt call Payton had radioed in and then booted the ball back to the Bills.“We just wanted (a fake call), late in the game, (where) we have the lead and we aren’t able to get the first down,” Payton said as training camp began last week. “We’ve seen this script with a player (like Allen), and this is a great sign of respect for one of the elite quarterbacks in our league. … We looked at it again in this playoff game, that if we were in that position where we are punting and a field goal is going to win it, (we’d call a fake) — and, I’ll be darned, we were in that position.”Jaylen Waddle's splashy start in DenverNick KosmiderAllen effortlessly flicked his wrist to release the ball from his own 25-yard line on third-and-10. With each tick of the ball’s descent, Denver’s resurgent season appeared more doomed. Veteran Bills receiver Brandin Cooks was running under the heave, ready to help author a signature playoff moment for Allen while putting the Bills firmly into range for a winning field goal.In that season-on-the-line moment, Broncos defensive back Ja’Quan McMillian rapidly processed what a catch by Cooks would mean. He envisioned, if subconsciously and only for a micro-second, the pain a completion would bring — and then refused to experience it.“I had to pull something out of my … yeah, you know,” McMillian said in a quiet corner outside the Broncos’ sparkling new training facility earlier this week, a slow grin growing across his face. “As I’m falling to the ground, I knew I had to either make sure he dropped the ball or I came up with an interception. That’s what I did.”Cooks appeared to catch the ball as it fell from the frigid sky into his hands. But as the two players tumbled to the ground, McMillian ripped the ball away before Cooks could complete the reception. McMillian made the instantly iconic play — he remains as sure it was an interception as Cooks remains sure it was a catch — because it’s what he’s always done. And soon, whether it is during this training camp, during the season or in the weeks to follow, the Broncos will have a chance to show just how much they value the clutch playmaking McMillian has displayed since entering the NFL as an undrafted free agent in 2022.Ja’Quan McMillian is heading into his fifth season with the Broncos. (David Zalubowski / Associated Press)“He always finds a way,” said Mike Houston, who coached McMillian at East Carolina University. “There’s been times where you say, ‘Ehh, I don’t know if (he’ll get to the ball),’ and then, ‘Yep, he made the play.’ So when he makes that play (against Buffalo), it doesn’t shock you. It’s who he is.”McMillian is set to play this season on the one-year, $5.76 million restricted free agent tender he signed in March. That is already a hearty raise from the $880,000 he averaged during his first four seasons in the league, but it’s also a far cry from what he’ll command when he signs a multiyear contract at some point in the near future — be it with the Broncos or someone else.“He’s one of our core players,” Broncos general manager George Paton said at the NFL Combine in February, “and we love having him here.”Among corners who spend the majority of their time in the slot — McMillian led all players with a 90 percent rate of snaps in that spot in 2025 — recent extensions have ranged from $10 million in average annual value (Jacksonville’s Jourdan Lewis) to $13.3 million (Chicago’s Kyler Gordon). Given the particular importance of his role in coordinator Vance Joseph’s defense and the rising market for defensive backs in general, McMillian could well be in position to exceed those totals.“He makes the whole thing go,” defensive end Zach Allen said earlier this week when asked about McMillian’s role in a defense that has grown into one of the league’s best the past two seasons. “The fact that he’s able to cover, blitz, the whole nine. J-Mac’s incredible. We were literally just talking about it in the locker room that we’re lucky to have him.”It was hard to envision McMillian rising to this spot with the Broncos back in 2022, at least to outside observers. After becoming a second-team All-American with ECU as a junior in 2021, breaking up a school-record 16 passes, he decided to enter the NFL Draft. But no team was willing to chance a draft pick on a 5-foot-10, 183-pound corner who had only played on the boundary in college, so he signed with Denver on a deal that came with a $15,000 signing bonus and $75,000 in total guarantees.Houston was disappointed not to have McMillian return for his final year of college eligibility, but he knew the young defensive back would stick in the NFL in no small part because of his innate feel for making the plays demanded in a game’s most critical moments.“He had so many of those where he would just come up with something,” Houston said. “We were at Marshall his junior year. We were down and came back and took the lead with a minute-and-a-half to go, but then Marshall’s driving down the field. It’s inside of 30 seconds left in the game. They try a one-on-one ball in the front corner of the end zone and J-Mac picks it at the 1-yard line to win the game. We went on a four-game win streak after that win up there and that was the year we had our first winning season at ECU in almost a decade. It was a pivotal play, in crunch time, that spurred the season we had.”Ja’Quan McMillian led the American Athletic Conference in interceptions in each of his last two seasons at East Carolina. (James Guillory / Imagn Images)McMillian’s first season as a de facto starter in the NFL in 2023 featured a similar stretch. His first interception came off Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and helped Denver beat Kansas City for the first time since 2015. One week later, against Buffalo on “Monday Night Football,” he ripped the ball from running back James Cook on the game’s first play and recovered it, setting the tone for a Broncos upset.It was more of the same last season. His game-clinching sack of Mahomes in Week 11 — he also intercepted him early in the game — set the Broncos on the path to their first AFC West title in a decade. When they needed to overcome a jittery start against the Chargers in Week 18, the No. 1 seed in the AFC on the line for Denver, it was McMillian who pounced on a deflected pass and returned it 45 yards for a touchdown that invited a nervous fan base to exhale.“When I see someone who’s really good at taking the ball away, I see football IQ and someone who is playing with good leverage,” Payton said. “It’s easy to say, ‘Take it away,’ but sometimes, if you’re not in position, you’re just trying to catch up and make a tackle. I think he’s a great study.”It would be easy to attribute McMillian’s propensity for monster takeaways to a spidey sense for the ball. After all, this is a player who, as a freshman cornerback entering West Forsyth High in North Carolina, picked off the very first pass thrown his way in his first summer 7-on-7 tournament.“The dude,” as safety Brandon Jones put it, “just makes plays.”Yet, to chalk it all up to some innate magnetic superpower that draws McMillian and the ball together would be to discount all that occurs behind the scenes. Cornerback Riley Moss, one of the stars of this Broncos camp who is also entering a contract year, worked with McMillian and trainer Chad Wilson in Florida this offseason for the first time. It gave Moss a greater appreciation for the intentionality with which McMillian approaches improvement.“He’s always getting better at something,” Moss said. “When we got out to the field, it’s business first and that’s what I respect about him. That was the mentality he had during my first year here (in 2023). He had to scratch and claw to get where he’s at right now.”McMillian is entering his fourth season as the nickel in Joseph’s defense. His knowledge of the scheme, he said, is such that he can spend more time mastering its higher-level nuances. He has a greater understanding of how to prepare his body for the rigors that come with battling bigger receivers and being sent into the backfield on routine blitz assignments, all requirements of the “Swiss Army Knife” role, as Jones describes it, that McMillian fills in Denver’s defense.“I can go more in-depth with just knowing where my help is going to be,” McMillian said. “It slows the game down and makes it much easier. I’m just playing with experience now.”Not many players have the experience of creating a play that will live forever among a franchise’s great playoff highlights. The Broncos held a team meeting in June, ahead of the start of OTAs. It happened to fall on McMillian’s 26th birthday, so Payton gifted the defensive back a portrait of the distant future.“We played that interception and I told him, ‘There will be a day you come to visit me, and I’ll be having applesauce,'” Payton said. “‘I won’t remember your name, but I’ll remember that play.'”The grin on McMillian’s face widened earlier this week as he recalled the scenario his head coach put in front of the team during offseason workouts. When he thinks back to the play, what he appreciates most is that he was able to show up for his teammates in a moment that pushed the Broncos to within a game of the Super Bowl.“I love making plays for them. That’s who I play for, them guys,” McMillian said. “We put the work in for the biggest moments. It’s great to be in history and make that play and always be remembered for that play. But that was last year. I’m on to this year and hopefully we can do even more and go even further.”
