DENVER – Ultimately, even a coach with as long of an NFL head coaching resume as Sean Payton could only breathe a momentary sigh of relief after the Denver Broncos’ wild 41-32 victory over the Cleveland Browns on Monday night at Empower Field at Mile High.

“Holy cow,” Payton said as he took the podium.

Payton had just seen his Broncos win a game despite giving up 497 passing yards and four touchdowns to Browns quarterback Jameis Winston and receiving 235 yards from former Broncos first-round pick Jerry Jeudy, while Cleveland had one Total offense totaled a staggering 552 yards. But in the flurry, the Broncos’ defense also threw three interceptions – two returned for touchdowns – and Denver improved to 8-5 to stay in the No. 7 seed in the AFC playoff race.

“Some games go in a direction you think they will go. Obviously the game went in a completely different direction. We made enough plays to win,” Payton said. “… We got the next win and that was the most important thing. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but we did it.”

“It’s really just about making the next drive without worrying about the score, not worrying about what happened before,” Broncos rookie quarterback Bo Nix said. “…We just had to put everything together as best we could and find a way to win a game…a game like this is literally going to have to produce more points no matter how it happens.”

The total Jeudy received was the most the Broncos had allowed in a game in franchise history. Winston’s passing total was the second-highest by an opposing quarterback against the Broncos, behind only Tony Romo’s 506 yards passing in 2013.

The Broncos had leads of 21-10 and 28-17 in the second half, only to see the Browns take a lead on Winston’s 5-yard scoring pass to Nick Chubb – Winston’s – with 8 minutes, 57 seconds to play Fourth touchdown pass of the game from 32-31.

However, on their next possession, the Broncos drove 61 yards on 11 plays, including two third-down conversions, to take a 34-32 lead after a 27-yard field goal by Wil Lutz. The Broncos finally stopped the roller coaster ride when cornerback Ja’Quan McMillian intercepted Winston on the next possession and returned it 44 yards for a touchdown (outside linebacker Nik Bonitto had returned an interception 71 yards for a touchdown earlier in the game).

“Things got a little ugly on the sidelines…we just had to get everyone together,” safety PJ Locke said. “We said, ‘We’re going to be tested, there’s going to be games like this, we’re going to be tested now,’ but we pulled it out, we just pulled it out. It was crazy…we had ultimate belief.”…JMac came up with a great piece.”

“The big game was full of that, but that was significant,” Payton said. “Just a different game, we have to learn from it. Here we are in December at a time when all these things are important, we have to learn from them.”

Broncos linebacker Cody Barton intercepted Winston in the end zone with 44 seconds left in the game, ending the Browns’ last-gasp attempt for air. The win keeps the Broncos on track in the AFC playoff race and also improves their AFC record to 4-4, a potentially important tiebreaker in the coming weeks.

The Broncos have a bye next week and return to face the Indianapolis Colts (6-7) on Dec. 15 in Denver. It’s the first time since 2016, the first year of the current playoff drought, that the Broncos have been at least three games above .500 this late in a season.

The Broncos have not played in a playoff game since their Super Bowl 50 victory to close the 2015 season.

“Apparently. If we go back and watch the video defensively, we’ll find a lot of things we would have done differently,” Payton said. “…And yet we had two interceptions for a touchdown, another interception. I told them in the locker room that it wasn’t pretty, but in the end we did what we had to do, especially late… I’m proud of that. That’s how we fought and got the next win.”