The Denver Broncos won the opening coin toss and deferred to the second half to bring out Trevor Lawrence and the Jacksonville Jaguars offense to start the game. Interestingly, the Jaguars only sent out former-Broncos wide receiver Tim Patrick as their lone team captain on the coin toss.

Jonathon Cooper almost got a sack on the first play, but Lawrence was able to dump it off for an incompletion instead. Two plays later on third and four, Riley Moss chased Lawrence down for a sack to force a quick three-and-out. Denver wouldn’t do anything with their possession due to a dropped pass by RJ Harvey and a false start on Garett Bolles, so the Jaguars would get the ball right back.

The Broncos defense wasn’t playing to start the game. Talanoa Hufanga and Jonah Elliss made create open field tackles for minimal gains, then John Franklin-Myers broke through inside to sack Lawrence to force another three-and-out early in the first quarter.

On the first play of their next drive, Jaleel McLaughlin nearly broke one for an 80+ yarder but was caught by a shoestring tackle for just a 16-yard gain instead.

Two plays later, McLaughlin ripped off another nice gain of nine, then on third and one, Nix was stuffed on a quarterback keeper. They decided to go for it on fourth and inches where Harvey just barely dove forward to pick up the first down. The Jaguars would challenge the spot, but the call stood for the critical first down on their own side of the field.

Bo Nix then fired a sideline pass to Courtland Sutton who toe-tapped for a 17-yard gain into Jaguars territory. Nix went right back to Sutton for another quick pass for a 14-yard gain into field goal range.

They’d stall out from there, however, and had to settle for a 44-yard field goal attempt by Wil Lutz that doinked off the right upright to keep the game scoreless.

The defense seemed to keep the pressure going with Lawrence a bit skittish in the pocket and quickly found themselves in a third and nine. But he settled in on third down with a last second throw after having all day to find Parker Washington for a first down and a 21-yard gain.

After a nice pass breakup by Riley Moss on first down and a stuffed run, Lawrence was again in a third and long. The Broncos got another sack and fumble, but the play was blown dead. P.J. Locke was charged with a penalty because he didn’t hear the dead ball whistle to give the Jaguars another first down.

The crowd noise hurt the Broncos on that play to put Jacksonville into field goal range.

The first quarter wound down with the Jaguars scoring a touchdown on a Lawrence third down throw to Washington for 12 yards.

David Adelman’s coaching rite of passage wasn’t quite enough to spark an improbable Nuggets comeback.

Arguing calls in what he felt like was “a reactionary game to earlier in the week” when Rockets coach Ime Udoka insulted the referees after a loss to Denver, Adelman earned his first career ejection as an NBA head coach Saturday. Houston won the grudge match, 115-101, snapping Denver’s six-game winning streak.

The Nuggets (20-7) shot 40% from the field and 28% outside the arc in their lowest-scoring game of the season — an anomaly of a performance from the league’s best offense. But their defense was stingy enough to stay in the game for most of three quarters. Then Rockets guard Reed Sheppard executed an 11-0 run single-handedly to finish the third with an 82-66 lead. Denver kept scrapping but never fully recovered.

The margin was 17 with 8:40 to go when Adelman took exception to a no-call in front of his bench, watching Nikola Jokic attempt to play through a crowd. The first-year Nuggets coach angrily confronted the officiating crew out to mid-court even after being handed his second technical foul, which automatically results in an ejection.

“It seemed like he just kept walking away further and further,” Adelman said, laughing. “I just thought we would talk, and it turns out, they told me I had to leave.”

He received a raucous ovation from a sold out Ball Arena crowd as walked off the court to the locker room.

“I just felt like both teams were playing so hard, extremely hard. Physical,” Adelman said. “I give the Rockets so much credit. They crash the glass every time. And then we get two somewhat soft fouls on our best player. … Honestly, I was confused, and so I was just looking for answers. And I went out there to find them, and it turns out I had to leave. Sometimes, confusion can lead to destructive things. You’ve gotta think things through yourself sometimes. You go to other people, and sometimes they just don’t want to hear you.”

Jokic was held to 25 points on 20 shots and five assists while spending a large chunk of the afternoon sidelined due to foul trouble. Jamal Murray scored 16 points on 13 field goal attempts. Denver’s end-of-bench players briefly threatened to turn the game upside down in garbage time before Houston held on.

Sheppard went for 28 points, six assists and three steals on a 6-for-9 day from 3-point range. He was outdone only by Kevin Durant, who scored 31 and shot 5 for 6 from deep.

After only four days away, the Rockets returned to Denver with every reason to treat this game with playoff-level seriousness — not just due to the overtime thriller that left Udoka fuming, but because they also squandered a mid-week opportunity to bounce back against the lowly Pelicans.

It had been a costly week for them already, not to mention the $25,000 fine Udoka incurred on Monday for saying two refs “didn’t have any business being out there” and the crew chief appeared “star-struck.”

Adelman brought a chip on his shoulder to the arena Saturday even before opening tip.

“We were minus-10 in personal fouls with five minutes to go in the fourth quarter (on Monday). Both of our centers fouled out,” Adelman pointed out in his pregame news conference. “I know the narrative was the opposite, which is fine. I know I had no centers at the end of the game. So things work in weird ways. This game will be just as physical.”

He decided to take his turn chewing out the refs in the first quarter, working hard to earn a technical after Jokic was forced to sit down with two fouls. Both were called on loose balls while fighting for a rebound.

The officiating trio was headed by Marc Davis, who was also the crew chief for the playoff game two years ago when Murray threw a heat pack on the court in frustration.

“Marc is one of the best officials in the league. I thought the other guys, they did the best they could,” Adelman said. “I just felt, like I said, I was confused with the flow of the game. I’ve gotta be better than that, too. That game wasn’t over. I let the emotions get the best of me. But when you care abut your players and you feel a certain way, sometimes, you react.”

Houston made the Nuggets burn energy and clock just to get into their actions. Murray, whose offense has been consistently efficient, ran into one of his first clunky games of the year. Generating clean looks in the half-court offense was laborious. Often, Denver’s safest bet was to clear out a side for Jokic to play in isolation. But he struggled with the late double-teams Houston often sent to him. Durant played excellent help defense, as he did Monday.

Jokic picked up his fourth foul with 7:18 left in the third. Adelman decided to sit him for the rest of the quarter and have him ready to play the entire fourth, but that required a difficult survival game without him. Houston was already ahead by double digits.

The Nuggets almost weathered the storm. Morale was high and the margin was 71-66 shortly after Bruce Brown scored a second-chance bucket and chirped at Durant, his former teammate. But all it took was one heat check from Sheppard, and the gap was too wide.

“We had a game plan, that we were kind of down (the floor). Bigs were down,” Jokic said. “… When he makes one or two, that’s his superpower. That’s his thing. He’s gonna shoot more.”

Brown said after the game that Durant had crossed a line with his trash-talk during the game. Both players declined to get into the specifics of what was said. Durant seemed to relish getting a last laugh of sorts. He gleefully waved Adelman goodbye after the ejection and eventually treated Ball Arena to a cheeky celebration after burying a fourth-quarter 3-pointer over Murray.

More than halfway into his first term, Mayor Mike Johnston finally met with his own Bicycle Advisory Committee and reiterated a familiar promise: Denver can increase road safety without taking any convenience away from drivers. “We want this to be a city where it is safe and easy to get around by bike or by foot,” Johnston told Westword after the meeting. “We want to build infrastructure and a culture that makes that easier, and we think we can do that without making it more difficult for drivers.”

The mayor is wrong. If Denver is serious about making our streets safer for everyone — people driving as well as people walking, biking, rolling or taking transit — then we have to be honest about what that requires. Real safety improvements will sometimes mean slowing cars down, reallocating space or asking drivers to take a slightly longer route. In other words, we must be willing to trade a bit of convenience for a lot of safety.

We already make this trade-off all the time. Parking in front of the fire hydrant across from my house would be extremely convenient, but I don’t do it because it would put my neighbors at risk if a fire broke out. I don’t enjoy going through security screening every time I attend a Denver City Council meeting, but I accept it because it keeps a critical public forum safe. These small inconveniences are simply part of living in a community where everyone’s well-being matters.

So why is the idea of asking drivers to accept minimal inconvenience — a few extra minutes, a block or two of walking from their parking spot to their final destination — treated as politically impossible, even when it could prevent deaths and life-altering injuries?

Denver committed to Vision Zero nearly a decade ago, pledging to eliminate traffic fatalities. Yet year after year, the death toll remains stubbornly high, topping eighty lives lost annually since the pandemic. The reason is not mysterious: City leaders have consistently prioritized driver convenience over safety, even as people continue to die on our streets.

For generations, Denver’s street designs have catered not just to driving, but to driving dangerously. The majority of streets on the city’s High Injury Network — just 5 percent of streets where half of all traffic deaths occur — are major arterials like Colfax, Federal, Colorado, Speer and Alameda. These corridors are engineered to move as many vehicles as quickly as possible. People walking and biking are left to navigate speeding traffic with minimal protection, crossing up to eight lanes just to reach the other side.

We know what works. The data is unequivocal: On streets like these, the most effective safety improvements reduce the space available for fast-moving vehicles. Road diets, narrower lanes, shorter crossings and dedicated space for sidewalks, bike lanes and bus lanes all make streets safer for everyone — including drivers — by bringing speeds down to survivable levels.

And yet, Mayor Johnston’s recent decision to abandon the planned road diet on Alameda Avenue is only the latest example of the city retreating from proven safety measures because they might inconvenience drivers. The city noted that its revised plan for Alameda would save drivers an extra sixty seconds of driving time, compared to the original road diet.

The mayor must confront a hard truth: We cannot keep people safe without changing the status quo, and the status quo is built on prioritizing speed and convenience over human life. Denver cannot have it both ways.

So the real question for Mayor Johnston is this: How many lives is Denver willing to sacrifice to preserve driver convenience?

So far in 2025, we have lost 87 people — and counting.