For three months, the Broncos had victory parties in the locker room. They turned on the smoke machine and the disco ball and pumped up the music.

On Sunday, their locker room was mostly silent.

Denver was manhandled 34-20 by Jacksonville at Empower Field at Mile High, putting an end to an 11-game winning streak and a 12-game home winning streak, which were the longest runs in the NFL. Now, rather than having a stranglehold on the AFC West and the No. 1 playoff seed in the AFC, the Broncos (12-3) will have to really battle for playoff positioning in the final two weeks of the season.

“We hate losing more than we love winning, so we got a mindset it’s always going to be that way after a loss,’’ said Broncos outside linebacker Jonathon Cooper. “This one stings.”

The Jaguars (11-4) won their sixth straight game and still have a shot at the top seed in the AFC. With the Los Angeles Chargers (11-4) winning 34-17 Sunday at Dallas, they moved to within one game of the Broncos in the AFC West and their game at Denver in the regular-season finale on Jan. 3 or Jan. 4 could be for the division title. Before that, the Broncos play at Kansas City on Christmas night.

Jacksonville quarterback Trevor Lawrence outdueled Denver counterpart Bo Nix by completing 23 of 36 passes for 279 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions and also running for a score. Nix completed 28 of 47 passes for a career-high 352 yards and a touchdown but threw an interception and lost a fumble on a bad exchange with running back Jaleel McLaughlin.

“It’s tough to go on (an 11-game) streak,’’ Nix said. “We got hit in the mouth today, and they played a good game and we let it get away. But you’d rather have it hit you now than in the first round of (the) playoffs.”

The game ended with an injury to rookie wide receiver Pat Bryant on the penultimate play He was hit hard by Montaric Brown on an incompletion from Nix. A penalty flag was thrown but the officials then picked it up, ruling Bryant was not hit in the head or neck area.

Bryant was down on the field for several minutes with players gathered around him. He was immobilized on a board and taken off the field on a cart and by ambulance to a local hospital before being released with what a source said was a concussion. Broncos coach Sean Payton said after the game that Bryant was “moving his hands and legs” and “that’s encouraging.”

“You never want to see somebody in that situation, and I feel responsible because I threw it,’’ Nix said. “You can say it’s part of the game, but you just never want to see it and you really pray he is OK (and) he can be back out there as soon as he can.”

Denver rolled up 445 yards of total offense and gave up 346 yards. The Broncos had five sacks, but Lawrence often had too much time to throw.

“Yeah, he did,’’ said outside linebacker Nik Bonitto, who has a team-high 12.5 sacks but had no sacks Sunday and just one quarterback hit. “That’s really on me. Nobody else but me. … I played (poorly). I don’t think I played to my standard. … I didn’t come ready to play today and that kind of reflected on the rest of the defense.”

Bonitto said the Broncos haven’t played “our type of ball” on defense since the bye week and they “got to get better.” In the four games since the bye week, the Broncos have allowed an average of 25.8 points after giving up an average of 17.5 points in the first 11 games.

Lawrence threw touchdown passes of 12 yards to Parker Washington for a 7-0 lead in the first quarter, 3 yards to Brenton Strange for a 14-10 lead in the second quarter and 10 yards to running back Travis Etienne late in the third quarter for a 31-17 lead. When Cam Little kicked a 26-yard field goal with 13:36 left in the game, following Nix’s fumble, that gave the Jaguars a run of 17 straight points after the game had been tied 17-17.

The Broncos lost for the first time since a 23-20 road setback against the Chargers on Sept. 21. They lost at home for the first time since falling 23-16 to the Chargers on Oct. 13, 2024.

“I said this to the team (after the game), ‘‘Part of this process is not fooling ourselves. They beat us tonight. They beat us good in all three areas, and it starts with me,’’’ Payton said. “Even though that hurts going down, you can’t spit it out and you have to swallow it.”

The Broncos were hampered by missed tackles throughout the game, especially after completions by Lawrence. Washington caught six passes for 145 yards and broke tackles on several of his receptions

“We missed a lot of tackles in space,” Payton said. “There were a lot of yards after the catch that showed up.”

Penalties also were a problem. Safety P.J. Locke was called for unnecessary roughness when he hit Lawrence on Jacksonville’s first touchdown drive after he didn’t hear a whistle that had stopped play following a Jaguars’ false start. In the third quarter, on a drive in which Lawrence’s 1-yard touchdown run put the Jaguars up 24-17, the Broncos had a roughing-the-passer call on defensive tackle Malcolm Roach and a pass-interference call on cornerback Jahdae Barron.

Before that, Denver looked to be gaining momentum. Running back RJ Harvey, after the Broncos trailed 17-10 at halftime, had scored on a 38-yard run on the first possession of the second half to tie the score 17-17. Harvey finished with 50 yards on seven carries.

The Broncos also had a 15-yard touchdown pass from Nix to Courtland Sutton in the second quarter that tied the score 7-7, and they got two field goals by Will Lutz. But they couldn’t slow down Jacksonville’s offense when it counted.

“We just have to get out of our own way,’’ said linebacker Alex Singleton. “Guys know what we need to do, and we just have to do it. We just have to play clean football. … We need to get off the field (on defense).”

After the game, the Jaguars were ecstatic. Head coach Liam Coen made note of Payton having said last Wednesday about the Jaguars, “It’s a small-market but you see a real good team.”

“Just thankful that a small-market team like us can come into a place like Mile High and get it done,’’ Coen quipped.

Meanwhile, after 11 straight victory parties, there was mostly silence in the Broncos’ locker room.