The moment Bran­don Jones secured his first inter­cep­tion of the sea­son on Sun­day against Tam­pa Bay trans­port­ed him back in time.

It came in the first quar­ter of Sunday’s 26–7 road vic­to­ry over the Buc­ca­neers when Jones got a bead on Bak­er May­field. Read­ing the quarterback’s eyes as turned toward receiv­er Mike Evans, the Bron­cos safe­ty stepped in front of Evans for the pick before zig-zag­ging across the field for a 37-yard return to Tam­pa Bay’s 9‑yard line.

“I saw Mike Evans take a ver­ti­cal release out of some sort of bunch look. I knew the route he was going to run and was able to make a good inter­cep­tion,” Jones said. “I just turned into this lit­tle kid play­ing recess.”

After miss­ing the major­i­ty of train­ing camp while nurs­ing a ham­string injury, Jones is still play­ing his way into game shape. But that hasn’t stopped him from being a reli­able pres­ence on the back end of the field.

Through three games, Jones has the third-most total tack­les on the team with 19. In the six times he’s been tar­get­ed, Jones has allowed four catch­es for 26 yards and a pass­er rat­ing of 36.1. His per­for­mance thus far has been one of the rea­sons the Bron­cos are eighth in take­aways (four), sec­ond in pass­ing yards allowed (133.1 per game) and third in total defense (259.3).

“(Defen­sive coor­di­na­tor Vance Joseph) knows when to dial it up,” Jones said. “We all have that juice and ener­gy, and real­ly want to play extreme­ly well for him.”

Jones came to Den­ver hop­ing to prove he can be known for more than his blitz­ing abil­i­ty. Sun­day was a sam­ple of what the for­mer Texas stand­out can do as a play­mak­er. His inter­cep­tion and fum­ble recov­ery in the fourth quar­ter were momentum-swinging.

After Jones’ inter­cep­tion set up a rush­ing touch­down from run­ning back Jaleel McLaugh­lin, he helped put the game out of reach in the fourth. Sec­ond-year cor­ner­back Riley Moss punched the ball from tight end Cade Otton before Jones made the recov­ery and burst 34 yards down the field. Den­ver got back on offense and ran down the clock to secure its first win of the season.

Despite the vic­to­ry, Jones was frus­trat­ed because he let two oppor­tu­ni­ties to score a touch­down slip through his fin­gers. Jones said he got car­ried away and didn’t see the path­way his team­mates cre­at­ed for him on both takeaways.

“I got a lit­tle too busy with my eyes, try­ing to look around,” Jones said. “A lot of the defen­sive guys were upset because they swore that they had the key block to lead me into the end zone and that I refused to fol­low them.”

Jones has had a smooth tran­si­tion into Denver’s defense despite the prac­tice time he missed dur­ing the sum­mer. He said Joseph’s scheme has sim­i­lar­i­ties to Miami’s defense in 2023, which was led by for­mer Bron­cos coach Vic Fan­gio — now the defen­sive coor­di­na­tor in Philadelphia.

Even though Jones didn’t have a ton of phys­i­cal prac­tice reps in the sum­mer, he was engaged in walk­throughs. The biggest chal­lenge, how­ev­er, was the lack of car­dio. Jones said he was “super wind­ed” after both turnovers.

“Not being able to do a lot of run­ning has been a lit­tle chal­leng­ing,” Jones said. “Slow­ly but sure­ly, I’m get­ting my full endurance back.”

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