The Denver Broncos defeated the Cleveland Browns 41-32 on Monday night in a back-and-forth battle of big plays.

“Holy cow,” Broncos coach Sean Payton said in his first words as he took the podium. “Some games go in a direction you think they will go. Obviously this game went in a completely different direction. We did enough and made enough plays in the end to win.”

The Broncos passed for 400 yards, including a 93-yard scoring dart from Bo Nix to Marvin Mims Jr., and the defense added two pick-6s, including a corner kick by Ja’Quan McMillian with 1:48 left to seal the win secured.

“It was a big play, the game was full of them,” Payton said of McMillan’s pick-6. “That was significant. That was one of the key acts.”

That’s an understatement.

Considering how easily Jameis Winston and the Browns’ offense moved the ball up and down the field, a two-point lead with just under two minutes left seemed tenuous at best.

Monday night had more explosiveness than a Fourth of July festival. The teams combined for 952 yards, 73 combined points, 47 first downs, 145 offensive plays, 6.6 yards per play and a partridge in a pear tree.

Every time the Broncos tried to pull away early, the Browns responded. A pick-six by Nik Bonittopick in the second quarter gave Denver a 21-10 lead, only to see the defense allow Winston to push Cleveland downfield to end the half in the end zone.

Early in the third quarter, Nix fired a pass so perfect that even Da Vinci would have been jealous as Mimis took it 93 yards to the house to extend Denver’s lead to 28-17. On the next play from scrimmage, Winston hit former Broncos wideout Jerry Jeudy for a 70-yard TD bomb. And we walked around.

According to NFL Research, it was the first time since at least 1991 that there were offensive TDs of more than 70 yards on consecutive plays in a game.

A previously impenetrable Denver defense was run up and down the field, allowing 552 yards of offense, including 497 yards and four touchdowns from Winston and 235 yards and nine catches from Jeudy.

“When we look back at the tape, we’re obviously going to look at a lot of things defensively that we would have done differently,” Payton said. “We have to. We had two interceptions for touchdowns and a third interception. I told them in the locker room it wasn’t nice, and yet in the end we did what we had to do, especially late.”

The two pick-6s saved the day for Denver. The win moved Payton’s team to 8-5 and solidified its two-game lead for the No. 7 seed with four games left.