DENVER — Sean Payton didn’t take the points in the first half of the AFC championship game, and it lingered to the end of the Denver Broncos’ 10-7 loss to the New England Patriots.
The Broncos were ahead 7-0 in the second quarter when Jarrett Stidham ran and was a yard short of the first down. Payton had a decision to go for it on fourth-and-1 or take a short field goal. He went for it. The Broncos rolled out Stidham on a pass, he was pressured and the pass fell incomplete.
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The Broncos didn’t score again. The Patriots won as snowy weather wrecked both offenses in the second half. The field goal would have helped.
Payton said he liked the way his defense was playing and wanted to try to go up 14-0.
“I felt like we had momentum, to go up 14,” Payton said after the game. “I felt we had a good call.
“I think the feeling was, let’s be aggressive.”
Payton said the Broncos had a run called but switched to a pass after seeing the Patriots play six men on the line. He said in hindsight, the run was “a better decision.”
Payton was asked if he regretted passing on the field goal.
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“There’s always regrets,” Payton said. “It’s also a call you make based on the team you’re playing and what you’re watching on the other side of the ball. Yeah, there’s always going to be second thoughts.”
Broncos players didn’t second-guess the call. They regretted only that they didn’t get the first down.
“That’s not for me to judge or decide,” right tackle Mike McGlinchey said of going for it. “Sean has done an unbelievable job all year with us. When we get the call to go for it, you’ve got to execute.”
The play itself never really had a chance, with Stidham immediately feeling pressure and having to throw quickly. It would have been short even if his low pass was caught.
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“We were moving the ball well on that drive, and you get an opportunity, fourth-and-1 and convert and go up 14 if you can,” Stidham said. “Just didn’t work out on that one play, and that’s football.”
Payton was speaking generally about the way the game played out, with offense becoming nearly impossible on a snow-covered field, when he made a good argument for why the three points he passed on would have been extremely valuable.
“You don’t know that it’s going to be like this three-point game, but it became apparent with each possession that a field goal, that type of thing, was going to be really important,” Payton said.
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Turnover is big momentum shift
As the Broncos think back on what might have been, four things might stand out with the first being the decision to not take the field goal in the second quarter.
The game was obviously tougher with Stidham replacing Bo Nix, who was hurt late in the Broncos’ divisional round win over the Buffalo Bills. There’s nothing the Broncos could have done about that. Also, they couldn’t control the weather, which made the second half almost impossible for both offenses.
Lastly, the entire outcome might have been different if not for Stidham’s one big mistake. Late in the second quarter he was under heavy pressure, and instead of taking the sack he tried to push pass the ball forward to avoid losing yardage. That turned out to be a big mistake when the pass went backwards, making it a live ball. The Patriots recovered. New England’s only touchdown of the game came after that, on a 12-yard drive.
“Obviously, I can’t put our team in a bad position like that,” Stidham said. “I was trying to throw it away to TB [Tyler Badie], he was in the area, and the pressure, he just got up on me really fast and I was trying to get rid of it. I can’t put the ball in a position like that, that was completely on me.
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“I thought I’d thrown it forward, and obviously the replay or whatever said differently. I probably should have eaten the sack anyway.”
Stidham’s teammates lauded him for playing well given the circumstances. But that play, along with the fourth-down decision that came earlier, changed the game.
“That sequence of plays, obviously, was a big turning point in the game,” wide receiver Courtland Sutton said. “Momentum is a dangerous thing in this sport, and when you have it you want to be able to hold onto it as long as possible.
“They capitalized on that situation and got a little bit of momentum.”
Snow dictates second half of Patriots-Broncos
Despite passing on the field goal, Nix being out and Stidham’s big turnover, the Broncos still might have won in somewhat normal conditions. The snow and wind made it anything but normal.
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The Patriots took a 10-7 lead with a field goal on their first drive of the third quarter. By the end of the third quarter the field was covered in snow. The Broncos had 32 yards and one first down in the second half. When a bad punt gave them field position at New England’s 33-yard line, the offense got just 5 yards and Wil Lutz’s field-goal attempt was tipped at the line.
The Broncos’ defense played well enough to win, limiting Drake Maye to just 86 passing yards and sacking him five times. But trying to move the ball with a backup quarterback in a snowstorm was a miserable challenge.
“When it starts snowing it makes it impossible to throw the ball forward,” McGlinchey said. “It’s kind of a bummer about being down before [the snow] started.”
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The Broncos went 14-3 and got the AFC’s No. 1 seed, only to lose their quarterback to a shocking injury late in the win over the Buffalo Bills and then have weather turn the second half of the AFC championship game into an offensive nightmare.
“To think that all we fought through this year, all the games we had to win, knowing we’re definitely the better team but it just didn’t work out that way today,” Broncos defensive end Nik Bonitto said.
The Patriots who are headed to Super Bowl LX, would probably disagree that the Broncos are the better team, but Bonitto was convinced.
“Yeah. We know,” Bonitto said.
