DENVER — The most honest first half of the season was followed, on Sunday Night Football, by the least honest second half, in a game the Denver Broncos won 30-to-26 by scoring exactly as many points in the final thirty minutes as a normal team scores in a full game. The Los Angeles Rams, for their part, did everything a professional football team can do to lose a game that was, at the halftime whistle, arguably a tie.

The first half, by all available accounts, was a thing to be seen once and then never spoken of. The Broncos came out of a dismal first half with the kind of body language that usually precedes a locker-room intervention, a timeout that goes too long, and, in at least one case, a player sitting on the sideline with the expression of a man who has just remembered a phone call he has been avoiding for three years.

"I'm comfortable with a team that can play with grit in the fourth quarter," Rams coach Sean Payton said afterward, "and I'm uncomfortable with the way we've played at the start of games," which is the football equivalent of "the building is on fire and the fire is in the lobby."

The second half, in which the Broncos outscored the Rams 30-to-something, was a different sport, a different team, and, by several observers, a different century. The Rams, who had the ball in the closing minutes, managed to finish the game with a combination of a huge third-quarter catch and a final drive that produced, in the end, a score that left both teams’ players staring at the turf as if the scoreboard had personally insulted them.

THE GAME, PER THE SCOREBOARD

  • First half: best described as "a thing to be seen once"
  • Second half: 30 points by the team that was not supposed to be there
  • Final: 30-to-26, Denver
  • Rams coach's assessment of his team's starts: "uncomfortable"
  • Player body language at halftime: "avoiding a phone call"
  • Both teams' final expressions: scoreboard-related, in both cases

The broader lesson, if there is one, is that the second half of an NFL game is not, mechanically, the same event as the first half of an NFL game, and that a team which has played a “dismal” first half has, by that point, cleared its liability and is operating in a legal sense as a different entity. The Broncos, who are now 2-and-1, have described this not as a system but as “a moment,” which in football is a word that means the players do not know what just happened either.

At press time, the Rams’ film room was full, the Broncos’ film room was full, and the scoreboard, which had been the subject of considerable personal offense to both sides, was, by report, “still up,” which the Rams described as “a fine outcome” and the Broncos described as “we’ll take it.”